Dr. Gundry 0:23
Whether you’re a nap enthusiast or you swear they make you sleepy, this one’s for you. Today I unveil the truth about napping. And you might be surprised at what you hear. I also reveal the actual number of steps you should be taking every day to promote weight loss. Hint, it’s not 10,000 steps like you’ve probably heard before, but is it more or less. Keep listening to find out and for those concerned with improving heart health, I’ll share some simple lifestyle habits to adapt that seamlessly fit into your daily routine good or ready to improve your well-being without even breaking a sweat. You don’t want to miss this one. We’ll be right back. In most parts of the world, napping is pretty popular. I mean, different countries have their own names for the same universal idea. The siesta in Spain, Riposo in Italy, Úti in Iceland, and in the United States, you’ve most definitely heard someone excuse themselves to go take a quick power nap. Are there actually benefits to napping? Or do we just use it as an excuse to take a break? Well, today we’re going to play one of my favorite games: myth-busting. I found an article titled Health Benefits of Napping on WebMD. Now let’s hear what they have to say. Number one napping isn’t for babies. Studies show that an afternoon nap is great for adults too. There’s no need to feel lazy for indulging in daytime sleep. A short nap in the mid-afternoon can boost memory, improve job performance, lift your mood make you more alert, and destress cozy up to these nap benefits. Now, they’re absolutely right about this. But with one important proviso. What they’re saying is actually true. In Study after study, the idea that a power nap around 15 to 30 minutes, particularly in the mid-afternoon has significant benefits that I do want to talk about. But before we talk about those benefits, what I see in my patients and certainly myself in past years, is that so many of us unfortunately overindulge at lunch, particularly on fast foods. And those fast foods, they’re convenient, they’re easy to bring with you to work throw them in the microwave, they’re easy to order from Uber, or they’re probably right downstairs or around the corner from where you work. And most of these convenience foods are problems with your mitochondria. And I’ve written extensively about this, they actually are so easily and quickly digested into sugars and simple fats, that it causes rush hour in your mitochondria. And your mitochondria rather than boosting your energy literally failed to produce the energy you need. And all of a sudden following lunch, you found yourself not able to concentrate, not able to focus on your work, and literally wanting to put your head down for a few minutes to recover. If you find that pattern consistently happening, the first thing I want you to do is consider what you’re actually having for lunch. And consider that that need for the afternoon power nap is actually being driven because of literally how tired and sleepy you are. And it may be a power failure of your mitochondria that’s actually causing the problem. On the other hand, if we’ve already looked at that possibility, and that is not happening with you, there are actually good recommendations why many cultures use a nap midday or early in the afternoon. It can actually support your memory. Studies have shown that sleep promotes an important role in storing memories. A nap can actually help you remember things you learned earlier in the day, as well as a full night’s sleep. And interestingly enough, napping can actually keep you from forgetting things like motor skills, sense perception, and verbal recall too. Now you actually may be able to connect dots easier. It turns out that if you nap after learning something, you can actually store those memories easier than if you waited all day to do the same thing and go to sleep. In fact, the same thing happens at night. Many people find and studies show that if you want to learn something and have it stick, studying right before a nap, or right before you go to sleep, is one of the best ways to make it stick. Now, it might help you climb the corporate ladder. When you do a task over and over throughout the day. Most of us notice that their performance gets worse as the day goes on. And studies show that a 15-minute power nap can actually make you more consistent and kind of reset the clock. I can tell you during my career as a surgeon, that two or three times a week, we would have what’s called a cardiac catheterization conference, where we look over the angiograms and movies of people we were going to operate on and decide who needed what. And we’d all be in a dark room. And it was almost always right after lunch. And lo and behold, half the people in that room would fall asleep in this nice dark room right after lunch. And we finally decided that having the conference right after lunch was one of the dumbest things any of us could think of. So we actually moved the conference to early in the morning, even before breakfast. Because a dark room and repetitive viewing of something right after lunch is one of the best sleep-producing things that we ever found. Now, napping can improve your mood. If you’re feeling down, taking a nap can actually lift your spirits. I found as a heart surgeon, as a transplant surgeon, when we’d fly all night, to harvest the heart and then bring it back and put it in a little baby, that even if I couldn’t sleep on that long flight, because I was so jacked up of what I was going to do. Studies have shown that just lying down, just closing your eyes, not necessarily going to sleep can actually be a mood booster and can act almost as if you went to sleep. Think of it as a form of meditation. Now, need to be more alert? Don’t feel bad that you need a nap. You’re not alone in this, take that nap, you’re not a bad person. And when you wake up, you’ll notice you’ve got a much more good outlook on life. Now, why do some people feel terrible after a nap? Guite frankly is most of us need to get into deep sleep to actually have a benefit from a nap. Now for some people, that happens right away. But for some people that deep sleep can continue and the need for deep sleep is much longer. And if you’re one of the ones who sets an alarm to wake up from their nap, that alarm may break your deep sleep. And the last thing your brain wants is an interruption from that brain cleaning. And I think that’s why a lot of people literally say, “Oh man, I don’t want to take a nap because I just feel awful.” Again, try to take a nap without setting an alarm and see if that changes things. Now the other thing is naps are actually better than caffeine. If you’re feeling tired but have to work or study to get something done, you’re actually better off taking that 15 to 30-minute nap than having more coffee or more caffeine. And compared to caffeine, napping can actually produce better learning and better memory. So one other thing to consider if you’re a heavy coffee drinker, you may find that contrary to common belief, coffee will make you take a nap. And I’ve certainly found that affected me. You can actually have a coffee nap by having coffee right before trying to go to sleep. It works in an amazing way.
Dr. Gundry 9:55
It makes incredible sense that napping can relieve stress. If you’re under a lot of pressure, take a power 30-minute nap. Often, that’s all you need to do the trip. They’re also good for your heart. It turns out that studies of adults found that people who napped for 45 to 60 minutes had lower blood pressure after going through mental stress. So a nap can actually help stress-filled situations. Now the key is like I started this podcast, you want to know why you need a nap. First of all, are you getting enough sleep at night? Does your partner tell you you’re a snorer? If you’re snoring at night, there’s very strong odds that you have sleep apnea. And you need to get a sleep study. You can even get home sleep studies now and insurance covers it. Daytime sleepiness, the absolute need for a nap is one of the first things I notice when I’m questioning patients about their snoring, or their partners telling me that they snore. Daytime sleeping is a red flag that you need to look into this further. Second, if you’re eating a fast food meal at lunch, and then you feel like a nap, I can tell you that there is a rush hour in your mitochondria. And that’s a warning sign that you need to be changing what you eat at lunch. Now, if those two tests are passed, then go ahead do yourself a favor and have a power nap and see if your performance at work and in-home life doesn’t improve.
Dr. Gundry 11:59
How many steps should I walk per day to stay healthy? I gotta get in my steps.
I’m sure you’ve either heard this before or said it to yourself. And while it’s great to be active and track your movement, is 10,000 steps really the amount of steps you need to make a difference in your weight and health? So I’m sure you’ve heard it all before that 10,000 steps a day is the magic number of steps that you should reach every day in order to be healthy and lose weight. Well, the truth is that this number came from a Japanese pedometer company to sell pedometers, it was completely fabricated with absolutely no experimental basis. All they wanted to do was sell pedometers. So while it is good to get your steps in, you do not need to take that many steps specifically, particularly once during the day. Now Google it and every blog I see out there says we need 10,000 steps a day to lose weight. That’s exactly not true. I’ll give you my own example. As you know, I used to be a big fat obese guy, even though I was running a minimum of 3k, 3000 meters per day, and 30 miles per week, going to the gym one hour every day, and I was gaining weight. So the idea that we should be walking to lose weight is in my experience, blatantly not true. So how many steps should you take? Well, studies show that you really only need about 2,700 to 3,900 steps per day to get the benefit of walking. That’s certainly nowhere near 10,000 steps per day. Now, the other thing that people should realize is, this does not have to be on a continuous basis. In other words, you don’t have to walk 3,000 steps at a single time. That’s also not only not true, but may actually be better ways to get that amount of steps in place. So as you know from my book, The Energy Paradox, there are multiple ways to break up getting your steps in. And I call them exercise snacking. One of the things that a lot of us recommend for very good reason is an early morning walk. Getting sunlight in the early morning particularly as the sun is changing into that from orange to yellow, really activates this crazy receptor behind your retina called the suprachiasmatic nucleus. And that actually sets the rhythm of your circadian rhythm. And really, all you need is like 10 to 15 minutes of this sun exposure to set your circadian rhythm properly. And what better way to get that than to take a 10 to 15-minute walk? I’ll say it again, I say it all the time, one of the easiest ways to accomplish that is to get a dog, the dog will be more than happy to accompany you on your morning stroll to set your circadian rhythm. And it always works, the dog will demand it, my dogs demanded it this morning. So that’s a great way to do it. The other thing that I think it’s really useful to get in those extra steps is to take a walk after dinner. One of the studies that I cited in my first book, Dr. Gundry’s Diet Evolution, was very impactful for me. They looked at people, human beings, and they had half the group walk 10 minutes before dinner, and the other group walked 10 minutes after dinner. And they actually look at their weight. And lo and behold, the people who walk 10 minutes before dinner, didn’t lose any weight. The people who walked 10 minutes after dinner actually lost weight, even though they actually ate the same amount of calories. Now I conjectured that what happens is if you had been out hunting all day, and you then ate dinner and sat around, your body says, “Oh, he’s not going anywhere the rest of the night. And we might as well store these calories as fat.” On the other hand, if you’ve been hunting all day, and then eat dinner, and then get up and start walking again, your body says, “Wait a minute, we don’t know whether he’s walking for 10 minutes, or he’s walking for 30 miles. We better not store this food as fat, we should make it available.” And I think that’s actually one of the important reasons why particularly when I’m in Europe, and actually over in Japan, that I see so many people walking after dinner. And the other thing that’s interesting is nobody’s out power walking after dinner, they’re strolling, and they’re communicating with their family, with their loved ones with friends. So walk in the morning, walk after dinner, it’s going to be amazing for you to get your steps in. And quite frankly, you don’t need very many steps. There’s more evidence of this. Studies have been done comparing people who live in cities versus living in suburbs. And quite frankly, city dwellers are much thinner on average, than suburban dwellers. And one of the reasons for that is that people who live in cities walk a great deal compared to people who live in suburbs. As many of us know, suburbs were designed to make walking very difficult to do. And it was designed to make car travel extremely easy in general. Cities. On the other hand, even if you number one, most people don’t have a car. Number two, if you use public transportation, you are often led off quite aways away from where you really want to be. And you have to walk the rest of the way. Let me give you an example. As many of you know, I did some of my training in children’s heart surgery in London, England, and lived in downtown London without a car for a year. And shockingly, I actually lost 40 pounds that year, in one year. What did I do? Well, quite frankly, I walked all over the place. We walked to the grocery store, we walked to the greengrocers, we walked to the theater, we walked wherever we had to go. Even if we took the tube, the subway, it would let us off quite aways away from our final destination and we walked. And it was a real wake-up going from suburban Ann Arbor, Michigan, to downtown London, England, how effective walking is for weight loss. Now, many people go on vacation to Europe, and they eat all the phenomenal food and they gorge on carbohydrates. And yet they come back and they’ve actually either maintained their weight or surprisingly they’ve actually lost weight. And one of the reasons is particularly if you’re in the towns of Europe, whether It’s London or Paris or wherever, you’re walking significantly farther distances than you ever would have before. And I think that explains a lot of the miracle of eating all that food and still losing weight. Now, let’s suppose you live in the suburbs where most people do, it’s actually pretty easy to get those steps in. One of the easiest things to do, and most of us don’t think about doing it is walk around your office every time you take a phone call, rather than sitting at your desk. Most of us take our calls now on our cell phones, just get up and walk. And please put it on speakerphone so that you don’t have your cell phone near your head. Second thing is, like I mentioned before, get a dog in the suburbs, the dog will make you go out. This sounds stupid. But it works. Wherever you’re going at the grocery store or the mall or the strip mall, or the post office, park your car as far away as possible from where you’re going. The other benefit is usually those spaces are pretty empty, for obvious reasons. And you won’t get the dings in your car if you’re trying to park close. Lastly, consider taking public transportation to work and get off a few stops early and walk the rest of the way. If you work in an office building, this is what I’ve talked about in
The Energy Paradox. Don’t beat yourself up. Don’t think you have to walk up the four or five flights of stairs to the office or how many ever take the elevator up and then walk down the stairs. And do that several times a day. Take an exercise snack break every hour, just set your watch for five minutes. Go out, walk down the hall, walk down the stairs, take the elevator back, and you’ll get those steps in that you need. And you’ll actually get a fantastic workout. All right. Those little steps that you can do throughout the day are really good. But there are other things you can do. For instance, you don’t just need to walk to get exercise. One of the things that’s amazing when you look at super old people who are thriving in their late 90s, early hundreds, they also actually do housework, and housework back in the good old day was actually hard work. We have so many conveniences now that we forget that housework was actually really good for you. I’m old enough to remember when we actually had to get up to change the channel on a TV. Now we only have three channels. But why not play this game? Take your remote when you want to change the channel, get up, walk over to the TV, then click the remote and walk back. While you’re still up, why not do some squats on the couch? Why not just lift your legs up while you’re watching TV and hold your legs up for a minute while you’re watching TV? It’s free exercise, think of it as you’re seated in a yoga class and just hold your legs up, you’ll notice that your thighs are getting a fantastic workout without you seemingly doing anything. Every time I brush my teeth for two minutes in the morning and two minutes at night, I’m doing squats. You don’t do anything else. If you’ve got a bathtub, grab the edge of the bathtub and do planks or push-ups on the bathtub. It’ll be a lot easier than doing push-ups on the floor. And you’ll find that you can actually do push-ups reaching over a bathtub instead of on the floor and you’ll actually get a lot of confidence. And you’ll find that you’re going to do more and more and they’re a lot easier than torturing yourself. So all sorts of ways to get in little exercise snacks. You don’t have to walk a single step to lose weight. Just look at bears during hibernation. Bears do not move for four to five months, and bears lose a tremendous amount of weight. How do they do it? They don’t eat. Always remember that when all else fails, you don’t have to walk to lose weight, you just don’t have to eat.
Dr. Gundry 25:06
Finally, remember that the famous Italian cyclist study that I talked about in Unlocking the Keto Code. These cyclists were put on a training table, they had to eat the exact same amount of food they had to exercise the exact same amount. One group had a 12-hour eating window where they got to eat food. The other group had only a seven-hour eating window where they ate food. Only the group that had the seven-hour eating window lost weight, the other cyclists didn’t lose any weight. Why? Because they compress their eating window and they uncoupled their mitochondria and burn through fuel. The point is, the exercise was no different. It was how they manipulated eating their food. So all sorts of great tricks, but you do not have to walk 10,000 steps a day to accomplish your health goals. Bizarre daily habits that may support heart health. You know, despite modern advancements, heart disease remains the number one most common disease among Americans. And it’s the case of one in every five deaths. So what’s the big problem? Well, 42% of Americans are officially obese. As I say fat in your gut, you’re out of luck. So belly fat contributes directly to heart health, as I explained in all of my books, and I’m going to spend even more time in the upcoming book, but it releases bacteria and bacterial particles into your bloodstream. And that sets up inflammation. Heart disease is not a problem of cholesterol. Heart disease is a problem of inflammation in blood vessels. Most people don’t realize that statin drugs don’t work by lowering your cholesterol. Statin drugs work by lowering the inflammation in your blood vessels. But there are lots of other easy ways to do it. So let’s start with number one. Eat walnuts. First of all, fat does not make you fat. Not only does fat not make you fat, but fats in the form of walnuts or olive oil actually benefit heart health. Walnuts are also a great source of a funny chemical called polyamines. I’ve written extensively about polyamines – which have been shown to increase your overall health, your health span, and longevity. Now one of the miracle fats in walnuts is actually a short chain Omega three fat called alpha-linolenic acid, abbreviated A L A. and I promise there won’t be a test. ALA has been shown in numerous studies, including this one, but also in the Lyon heart diet study to dramatically lessen the incidence of coronary artery disease in people who have coronary artery disease. ALA is present in walnuts. It is present in flax seeds. It’s present in organic canola oil, but it’s present in my favorite oil for ALA, perilla oil. So anyway, you can get ALA into your diet, including walnuts, that’s what to do. Now, alpha-linolenic acid is an essential fatty acid. What does that mean? It means we don’t manufacture it, but we have to have it to properly function cell membranes and mitochondrial membranes. So get yourself some more alpha-linolenic acid and one of the easiest ways to get it is to have a handful of walnuts every day. Alright, number two, take a shot of extra virgin olive oil. Now there are multiple studies showing the benefit of extra virgin olive oil. Extra virgin olive oil is a great way of getting polyphenols into your system. PPolyphenols actually interact extremely well with blood vessels. And in fact, I’ve written several papers showing the benefit of polyphenols on arterial health, on stickiness of blood vessels, and in allowing blood vessel flexibility. There is a saying in longevity that you are only as young as your blood vessels are flexible. And so polyphenols particularly in olive oil are one of the great ways to do it. Multiple areas of the Blue Zones, for instance in Crete Italy, in Sardinia, and even in Acciaroli, south of Naples all use about a liter of olive oil per week. Now they even have olive oil soup in Crete. There are some fantastic polyphenols in olive oil, one of the best is hydroxy tyrosol. It’s a powerful polyphenol that can have huge beneficial heart health benefits. I actually performed a science experiment showing this right here on my YouTube channel. Check it out, it’s incredibly eye-opening. And once again, fat is not your enemy. So I recommend everyone should try to consume about a liter of olive oil per week like they do in Crete. But to make it easy, have a shot of olive oil every day. Bring olive oil to the table, pour it on your meats, your chicken, your fish, pour it on your vegetables, pour it on your ice cream. Number three. Now this one sounds like almost a nonstarter but bear with me. Swallow a whole clove of garlic. Now there’s a compound in raw garlic called Allison. Chronic oral administration of Allison lowered blood pressure in hypertensive rats. If you cook garlic, it’s inactivated. Sorry about that. So swallow it whole or use aged garlic extract. Now garlic was actually well known as being great for your immune health. Now, since you’re swallowing garlic whole, you won’t get that potent garlic breath. So it’s a win-win.
Dr. Gundry 31:35
So how do you do it? Just peel the clove of garlic. I personally like to roll it in olive oil, pop it in your mouth and swallow. The olive oil makes it slippery and it goes right on down. Number four. Your microbiome, your gut, begins at your mouth. And your oral microbiome and your oral health is really just as important as your gut microbiome in terms of heart health. Heart disease begins in the mouth and gums. Bacteria get through your mouth, through your gums into your bloodstream, and actually begin to affect the blood vessels in your heart. In fact, people with gum disease have two to three times the risk of having a heart attack, stroke, or other serious cardiovascular event. Believe it or not when I’m doing surgery, and we’ve actually looked at the plaque that we take out of people when we do bypass surgery, these plaques have been shown to contain oral bacteria. And how do they get in there? It came from your mouth. So the benefits of brushing and flossing go way beyond fresh breath. Also, speaking of fresh breath, most commercial mouthwashes destroy your oral microbiome and actually raise your blood pressure exactly, what you don’t want to do. So instead of mouthwash, use oil pulling and you’ll get great results. In fact, I actually talked about this on episode 221 with Dr. Puneet Nanda, aka Dr. Fresh. It’s great watching and it’s very entertaining to hear his story. Last but not least, cheese please. Now recently, big news was made with a study out of Norway looking at people with stable angina. Stable angina means that these people had coronary artery disease. And if they did too much activity, if they walk too fast, if they exercise too fast, they got chest pain, angina. When they stopped doing that, the chest pain went away. And it was predictable. This is called stable angina. Now what they did was they looked at the effect of dairy consumption, butter consumption, and cheese consumption on what happened to these people’s stable angina. Now what made the news was that dairy and butter dramatically worsened stable angina. In other words, they went on to have heart attacks or needed stents. But what was not mentioned was the fact that the more cheese people ate, the better their angina got. It went away. Hmm. Well, I’ve written extensively about this in Jnlocking Uhe Keto code, and I’m going into it even more in the upcoming book. But cheese has fascinating products that improve heart health in multiple areas. Interestingly enough, four out of the five Blue Zones actually are blue zones because they eat goat and sheep cheeses. The fermentation part process of making cheese produces very important compounds that actually protect against heart disease, having nothing to do with cholesterol. Now, no, you can’t eat nachos and cheese sauce or other highly processed cheeses. If you’re going to have cheeses, look for the fact that they’re made out of Casein A2. These are most cheeses in France, most cheeses in Italy. All goat and sheep cheeses and water buffalo cheeses are Casein A2. So enjoy your cheeses, the right cheeses, please. Exercise snacking. Now everyone knows that regular exercise is absolutely essential for heart health. But that doesn’t mean you have to spend hours in the gym every week. Instead, try exercise snacking. It’s super easy, fun, and great for even the busiest of people like me. So what do you do? Wall sit. Wall sit for up to two minutes several times a day. Now this is hard to do. This is how I get ready for ski season. So don’t give up. Just sit against the wall for as long as you can before your quadriceps are screaming, and then try to push it a little bit longer every day. Get to two minutes and you’ll be shocked at the benefits of wall sitting. Couch planks. Get off the couch during a commercial and just do a plank against the couch. It’s really easy. It’s effortless. My personal favorite do deep knee bends when you’re brushing your teeth. Come on, folks, you’re not doing anything else. Twice a day, just do deep knee bends while brushing your teeth. Okay, time you’re brushing with your deep knee bends. Walk and talk. Instead of taking a call at your desk, get up, carry the phone with you, and walk around the office or walk down the hall instead of just sitting there talking. It’s also incredible for your overall health, including your heart. It’s really the most underestimated form of exercise. Go out and walk every single day and you’ll notice better health, more energy, and a slimmer waistline. And that’s what I tell all my patients to please get a dog. A dog will demand a walk twice a day, and it’ll get you out as well. Question of the week. This comes from swag105 on YouTube. I’d like to know from Dr. Gundry if he thinks maca powder is safe and if so what dose is good to start with. Well, I used to use maca power almost every day and I still actually have some that I go to from time to time. So yes, it’s absolutely safe. It has a great combination of polyphenols, but particularly prebiotic fiber. Work your way up, start with a teaspoon a day and then get up to about a tablespoon a day. I think it’s easiest to take mixed in with a smoothie. So great question. Now it’s time for the review of the week. This comes from bogdownbogdown3462 on YouTube. Thank you, Dr. Gundry, for all your work and for sharing it with us. I had terrible eczema and poor health up until about a year ago when I happened to come across your podcast. I started watching your videos regularly and also followed your advice about food as medicine and I must say today’s the first day in yours that I noticed I do not have any eczema or skin irritation at all bloating has disappeared and energy levels are back to where they were when I was 25. I am 43 now. It is amazing what the food you eat can cause you and the healing your body is capable of. You just eat the right kinds of food. Thanks again, keep them coming. Well, thanks very much bogdownbogdown3462. You know every day I see a commercial on TV telling you that eczema can be treated with a pill or an injection that you’re gonna have to take the rest of your lives. And oh, by the way, you might very well end up with cancer or death. But hey, losing Eczema is better than all that but you’re exactly why I do this. There are simple steps to rid yourself of these common complaints. And you know, good for you for writing in and I appreciate it.
