How Exercise Improves Heart Fitness and Flexibility

PBD Podcast Host: Bryan Johnson, have you heard about Bryan Johnson who says he wants to live forever? He says he's 47 years old. He looks good. He says he's got a body of an 18-year-old when he does his tests. Do you follow what he talks about? Bryan Johnson, I don't know, maybe you've not heard of him.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I've heard of him.

PBD Podcast Host: He's our age. I think he's a year older than us. And his claims are his entire idea is anti-aging. I think he wants to live forever. And he says his body's an 18-year body. What do you say about that?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I say that right now, the tests that are done to measure biological age, and I did talk about this a little bit without going into detail, they're done on a population level. So, it's a very biostatistical test that's done that really relies on large sample numbers. And so, there are these tests that are done. They're measuring epigenetic changes. And they can simply, measure your biological age. But, the standard deviation is about 4 to 5 years. So, when you have, hundreds of thousands of different people coming into that, sample size, it's a lot more accurate. You can actually do a large study and figure out like what someone's biological age is and what different lifestyle factors can regulate that. When you go down to these consumer available tests at the individual level, it's a lot of noise because, again, the standard deviation is 4 to 5 years on average. And so, the test isn't really that accurate on the individual level. So, you could do that test and then do it again in 2 weeks and have 5 years difference, right? So, my take home from that is you can claim all these things being biologically 18. I don't think that's accurate. I think Bryan Johnson is doing a lot of things right with his diet and lifestyle, and he is, improving the way he ages. It's a lot easier to reverse accelerated aging. In other words, if you were doing things bad in your diet, so if you're eating a lot of ultra-processed foods, if you're overweight, if you smoke, if you drink a lot, if you're sedentary and don't exercise, you're kind of accelerating the way you age, and it's a lot easier to slow that acceleration, which makes it look like reverse aging, but if you're already doing everything really that you can to live as healthy as you can, it's really hard to reverse that biological age by 20 years, because you're already doing sort of everything right. And that's where these new technologies come into play. So, I would say I don't believe that Bryan Johnson's 18,

PBD Podcast Host: You don't believe he's 18?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: His biological age is 18. No, not at all. I do believe that he is healthier because he does a lot of things right. He exercises a lot, which is the number one thing you can do. He's eats very clean. He's dialed in a lot of really important metrics in terms of like aging healthy, but I think it's a very sensational statement to say that I'm biologically 18 even though I'm 47. I don't think that's accurate at all.

PBD Podcast Host: It's attractive to men his age, right? People hear and they're like, wait a minute, I'd like to be 18 again. What does it take for me to be 18 again? Is there anything men can do today to get their body to be that much younger?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: I'll tell you about a study that was done from Dr. Ben Levine. This he's a he's probably one of the world's leading experts in exercise physiology. He

PBD Podcast Host: Ben Levine?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Ben Levine, Dr. Ben Levine. He's out of UT Southwestern Dallas. He's got a big research lab there, and he did a study on middle-aged adults. So, these are adults that are age 50 years old. They had no diagnosable diseases. So, they didn't have type 2 diabetes or cardiovascular disease, but they were sedentary. So, they were not exercising and I would argue that is a disease. Being sedentary is a disease. But, what I'm saying is they didn't have any of these other classical diseases. And he took these individuals and asked a question, can I put them on a pretty regimented exercise program for 2 years and reverse the aging of their hearts? Now, your heart aging does you can accelerate it if you are smoking, if you are sedentary, if you eat a lot of added sugar, all these things accelerate the aging of your heart. So, as we age, our hearts get stiffer and our hearts shrink. That really predisposes us to cardiovascular disease, the number one killer in the United States as well as many other developed, countries. So, he took these individuals and put them in two groups. One group was going to get the exercise treatment and the other group was a sham control, sort of a placebo, and they were doing sort of stretching, yoga-ish type of exercises, enough to make them think they were getting the intervention, right? So, the individuals that got the treatment, the exercise treatment, this is a progressive program. It's 2 years long. You can't just take someone who's never really exercised and just immediately make them start doing 5 hours a week of exercise, right? It's too much. So, it was a progressive loading. These individuals over the course of 6 months sort of worked their way up to actually doing 5 hours of exercise a week. A large amount of that exercise was cardiovascular exercise where they were jogging, they were on a stationary cycle getting their heart rate up to the point where they could have a conversation, but it was very breathy. And then they also incorporated what's called high-intensity interval training. Have you heard of this?

PBD Podcast Host: Of course.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Where you're getting, you're pushing yourself a little bit harder where you can't have that breathy conversation because you're working so hard, you're getting your heart rate up to 80% max heart rate or more. And then you recover for a period of time and then you do it again. And there's a lot of different types of protocols out there. They were doing one called the Norwegian 4x4 protocol. This is where you are for 4 minutes going as hard as you can to and maintaining that effort for 4 minutes. You're not going all out. It's a 4-minute interval. So, you're going hard, but you're pacing yourself.

PBD Podcast Host: It's still a HIIT workout.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: It's a HIIT workout and then you have a 3-minute recovery where you're going very light. You're really wanting your heart rate to come down. Then you do that again four times. So, it's 4x4. And that workout they were doing twice a week, then went down to once a week. Okay. So, after 2 years of this, 5 hours a week and I would say they also did some resistance training. They added some of that in there as well. The aging of their hearts was reversed by about 20 years. 20 years. So, their hearts, these were 50-year-olds, 52 at the end of the trial, their hearts looked like a 32-year-old in terms of the structure.

PBD Podcast Host: To 32?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Yes. And this is the structure. So, I'm talking about the hearts grew. Remember I told you it shrinks with age, so they grew. The hearts became more flexible, right?

PBD Podcast Host: Every year at certain point your organs, what did you say, decrease by percent to 2% or was that the heart you were talking about?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: That's the brain. We can talk about that because exercise also affects that, but the heart it does get stiffer and it shrinks over time and depending on how much you exercise, the percentage can change. One of the biggest reasons for the stiffening of the heart is actually taking in a lot of refined added sugar. So, sugar, if it's not immediately taken up into your muscles, which is what exercise does, it really opens the gates and allows glucose to come into your muscles. If you're not exercising, even, after you make insulin and of course you're going to take some into adipose tissue, some into muscle, you're going to have a lot of glucose around in your vascular system. And what happens is it there's a reaction that happens on the molecular level where the glucose interacts with collagen that lines the myocardium and the pericardium around your heart and that collagen becomes stiffer when it reacts with glucose and that collagen is there forever. This is something that's around forever and so that's why exercise is so important for increasing the flexibility of your heart because it's getting that glucose out of your vascular system out of reacting with the collagen surrounding not only your blood vessels that causes hypertension but your heart, right? And so I just think that's the most compelling and just really encouraging study for individuals that are middle-age and really have never exercised that they can actually reverse the aging of the heart by 20 years. And this is what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about doing the DNA test, the epigenetic test that has all the statistical noise. I'm talking about actual structural changes in the heart, right? So that to me would be the best thing that you can do and I said 5 hours a week. Now, for someone that doesn't exercise at all, that probably sounds like crazy amounts of exercise and it is. I do about 6 hours a week of exercise. But the main point is to build the routine gradually.

PBD Podcast Host: Does that count cardio or no?

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Cardio and resistance training. I do both. But, I think that you what's really important here is that people need to think about exercise as part of their personal hygiene. Something you have to like can you imagine do you wake up every morning and brush your teeth? Do you brush your teeth before you go to bed? Why?

PBD Podcast Host: It's a routine now for me.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: It's a routine and you do it because you don't want cavities, right?

PBD Podcast Host: Cavities, breath, cavities, you don't want to go to the dentist, bunch of different things.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Right. It's part of your personal hygiene.

PBD Podcast Host: Sure.

Dr. Rhonda Patrick: Exercise should be thought of as in the same way where it's like I exercise because I don't want to get cardiovascular disease because I want to reverse brain aging and we can talk about studies showing that as well. It's something that you really need to think about as part of your personal hygiene. And as you start to develop a routine, guess what? It is a routine. You just start to do it. There is no question about it. It's not an add-on. It's not an if I have time.

PBD Podcast Host: You're right.