Twitter Personality and Health Coach P.D. Mangan - #26

Health & fitness coach P.D. Mangan was a microbiologist, an avid long-distance runner and vegetarian committed to health. Then his health deteriorated and the doctors gave him no hope for improvement.

So he decided if he was gonna get well, he'd have to find the answers himself.

You can follow PD on twitter at @Mangan150 and contact him at his website, Rogue Health and Fitness.

 If you like what you hear, I wanna make it easier for you to take action on your health.

Head over to i fix hearts.com/book to grab a copy of my book, Stay Off My Operating Table, and if you're ready to go deeper or talk to someone from my team, just go to i fix hearts.com/talk. 

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• Dr. Ovadia: @iFixHearts
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• Dr. Ovadia's website: Ovadia Heart Health
• Jack Heald's website: CultYourBrand.com

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Transcript

#26 - Twitter Personality and Health Coach P.D. Mangan

SUMMARY KEYWORDS 

people, exercise, eat, aging, health, doctor, week, studies, long, hear, metabolic, terms, point, glutathione, diet, workout, food, alcohol, weight, interesting 

SPEAKERS 

Jack Heald, Dr. Philip Ovadia, P.D. Mangan 

Jack Heald   

Welcome back, everyone, it is the Stay Off My Operating Table podcast with Dr. Philip Ovadia. I'm your co-host, Jack Heald. And joining us today is the very first guest on The Stay Off My Operating Table podcast, P.D. Mangan. PD, welcome to the Stay Off My Operating Table podcast. 

P.D. Mangan   

Well, thanks a lot, Jack and Phil, and thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be here. 

Jack Heald   

I've been looking forward to talking to you for a long time. And it was just really cool for Phil to say, "hey, let's do some guests." And you were literally the very first person I thought this would be a great guy. Great have the two of you. Tell us a little bit about who you are. Some of our audience is going to know who you are. But an awful lot is not going to have any idea. Give us your story. And there's a reason why we're talking to you on this particular podcast. So who is PD Mangan? And tell us the things that are appropriate for this particular podcast. 

P.D. Mangan   

Okay. I'm PD Mangan, and I'm 66 years old. I am currently a health and fitness writer and coach, and how I got here. Okay. So that's probably what people would like to know, is  I've long been interested in health and fitness. And I worked in healthcare in my life as a as a microbiologist. That's my academic background, I studied chemistry and pharmacology as well. But most of my career was working in hospital labs. And so I've long been interested in health and fitness. And for a long time, I followed, basically, standard guidelines sent down from above, in terms of diet, so you know, low, low fat, and, and staying away from the bad stuff, because it was my understanding that saturated fat would clog my arteries. And I didn't want that to happen.   

I also from a relatively early age got into exercise in a pretty big way I started running when I was maybe 20. And I liked it. So I kept at it, and eventually running long distances, I've run a few marathons in my life. So I was doing that for a long time, everything was going well, and I eventually, on the diet side, from following these sent from above guidelines, I eventually became a vegetarian. And I was still running my long distances and everything.  And like I said, everything was going on smoothly, until, when I was in my mid-40s, I became ill. And there was, well, I sought help from many doctors, I mean, I probably went to over a dozen over the course of several years. Nobody could help me. Eventually, I got a diagnosis of chronic fatigue syndrome. And then so you know, this was going on and on, and I wasn't getting any better. And at some point, I decided that if I wasn't going to have this for the rest of my life, that I better figure out what's going on, on my own, see if I could do something about it. So I set to work trying to figure it out.   

And I guess I did, I made it made some changes started feeling better, and so on. Got back into it, by this time I had long since quit running, because I was no longer able to do it. But when I started feeling better, I started lifting weights, which by that time I determined was a better way to go.  So meanwhile before I got better at some point in my, in my research, and in this all this journey, I told myself, well if I if I ever figured this out, I'm going to have to write about it, or I should write about it. And then afterwards, after I was a lot better. I remember that I thought, oh, well I told myself I was gonna write about it. So I did. I wrote a book about it. And then when I was done with that book, I thought, well, what am I going to do now? Well, I guess I'll just keep at it. So I wrote more books. I've written six books. And you know and started up my website. And then you know, I'm very active on Twitter now and so That's, I guess, I guess that's how I got where I am right now.  

Jack Heald   

Real quick, how long were you suffering from this chronic fatigue syndrome before you actually cracked the code and started to make yourself well? 

P.D. Mangan   

I had it for 11 years. 

Jack Heald   

And what was your life like during that 11 years? 

P.D. Mangan   

Well, it was not a lot of fun. At one point, I went on disability, but after a few months on disability, I determined that this was not going to work. It's not psychologically healthy, and especially when you're physically ill. So I was able to go back to work fortunately, the kind of work I did was stressful work for sure, but not terribly physically demanding. So I was able to work, so I did that. But otherwise, it my life consisted of a lot of sitting in an easy chair. And, and doing a lot of reading, which I had always done, but yeah, what it was, it was not pleasant. It's, it's, it's not pleasant, being tired all the time, and feeling like you don't have the energy to do anything.  

Dr. Philip Ovadia   

I was just gonna say I first came across you on social media probably about three or four years ago. And my first impression was I hope I can look and act like that when I'm in my early 60s. And as I learned more about your story, and so your background, and you know, what you're talking about, with this chronic fatigue it really mirrors what I see a lot of the time, and people are told, by their health care providers that they have problems that can't be fixed. And ultimately they're able to find a fix by essentially ignoring their doctor's advice. And I'd really like to hear what caused you to look further what, what stimulated you to say, they can't be right about this, there's got to be something I can do. And to keep looking. 

P.D. Mangan   

Yeah, so thinking back on it, I'm not sure, really how much confidence I had, that I would really be able to figure anything out. I mean, I thought, well, there's no harm in trying, and if I don't try, then it'll probably never be figured out. So. So I set to work. And interesting thing that happened, that that was fairly key event in my diving into it was you know, all the time that I had gone to doctors, they couldn't find anything that was wrong with me. In other words physical examination, lab results, all this kind of thing, there's nothing wrong with you that we can find out. And so that that's very tough, like, okay, even looking at it from their point of view, well, what are they supposed to do? So, but at one point, I did get an abnormal lab result, it was a glutathione level. And this is as, as you know, I'm sure that this is not a normal lab test. This is not routinely done.  

And I had fortunately found a doctor who was helping me basically, he, he was a kind of doctor that were as long as I was willing to come back and see him, he was going to try and figure things out. So I kept going back, get going back, some things were helpful, some not. But anyway, he ordered this lab test a glutathione level, and you know, that the, the blood sample had to be put on ice and then shipped off to some lab somewhere. And it came back abnormal. And, and when I saw that result, I thought, well, Oh, that's interesting. What's this? I, I'm pretty sure at that point, I'd never heard of glutathione so I dived in looking into it and started finding out maybe one of the first things I found out was about inositol cysteine. That over-the-counter supplement that replenishes glutathione and that whey protein, also replenishes glutathione and that really the larger point is that protein replenishes glutathione and there I was a vegetarian, And I had this low glutathione level, so a light bulb went off. Like, that was that was really one of the first revelations I had. It's not a good thing to be a vegetarian. At least not in my case, it wasn't. So that that's how that happened. 

Jack Heald   

That's a great one. I love that. So what was that all that had to happen? was you had to start eating meat again? or were there other pivotable moments? pivotable talk real good for an educated guy. Were there other pivotal moments in our journey? 

P.D. Mangan   

Well, sure, I think for example, finding out about vitamin D. This was something I hadn't known about I, of course, probably like most people in my field they you heard of vitamin D, but really didn't know much about it and started diving in, it turns out, hey, there's all these people talking about widespread vitamin D deficiency. And, and how it has effects on a broad range of health issues. And, and then this was another thing that I can remember, I thought to myself, how long has it been, since I sat out in the sun, and soaked up the rays. And it was like, yours since I had deliberately done that. And, and so I started doing that I started laying out in the sun, and in soaking up the rays. And so that was another thing. That did it, I discovered the Paleolithic diet. Okay, so the idea that a lot of modern foods are making us sick, and that we should be eating more in tune with what our ancestors ate. And so that was another big thing. I thought this Yeah, this is important. And this is, this is probably how I should attempt to eat. And so I did, and definitely, that was key to getting me back get it getting me on my return to health. 

Jack Heald   

So, how long did it take you once you found a key? How long did it take you to get back to normal? And are you basically back to where you were? Are you not as far back as where you were? Or are you better than where you were? 

P.D. Mangan   

Yeah, as to how long it took I'm not sure maybe, maybe I'm gonna say six months to a year, what happened was, I was working at it, I started feeling a little bit better and a little bit better. And at some point, I thought I feel I feel kind of okay. And I told myself that I wanted to start lifting weights, if I ever felt better, because like I had said, I had long since quit running. And I do like exercise, it, it's, it's just, there's nothing like it for making you feel good. And feel mentally healthy, for lack of a better phrase. And so, I was feeling better, I decided I wanted to start lifting weights, I had an old barbell with a couple a couple of plates on the end, and so I pulled it out and started working out with it. So I remember the first time I did it I lasted about 15 minutes, and was pretty exhausted, and it took me a few days to recover from that. And then when I felt a little bit better, I did it again. And then I kept that that for about a month or something and, and then I thought I need heavier weights.  

So I went and joined a gym and never looked back in the first month. It first year, rather that I joined this gym. Well you've seen these older photos of me, I was pretty skinny. So you know. But anyway, the first year that I joined the gym and I worked out hard, I put on 25 to 30 pounds of muscle Wow. And you know, so for a knot you know and that and that is possible for a novice trainee especially one like me who's starting from a very low base. And you just train hard, and you eat right, and you can pack on the muscle. So that's what I did. And you know by You know, after a short while after I joined the gym, I realized like, I'm pretty much all better here. And so as far as how I am now, I mean when, when all this started, when my illness started way back when I was, I think 42. And of course, I'm a lot older now. So it's a little bit difficult to compare but yeah, I feel pretty good. I, however, a 66-year-old is supposed to feel soon to be 67. I don't think I feel it. So I train hard, a couple times a week. And other than that I walk every day. So that that's what I do. And yeah, I feel pretty good. 

Jack Heald   

So are you fairly convinced that it was the vegetarianism that kicked you into this state? Whatever it happened to be? Was there some other circumstance or sequence of circumstances? Was it a combination of things? How did you end up so sick? 

P.D. Mangan   

Well, yeah, I mean, the, the what, what got me there in the first place, was probably the combination of my, my running, which I was doing a lot of, I mean, I was, I was running a lot, what I would say, if now is, if not excessively anyway, I was running a lot. And then I wasn't refueling myself properly. I mean, I was, I was doing things like I go out and run eight miles, and then come back and have a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast or something like that, which is just completely inadequate, in terms of rebuilding your body and repairing it. So, I suspect it was a combination of those things, and then you know, and that, and then I, I kept eating in the same way, and I was so tired and, and frankly underweight. I got to that point, anyway. And, and so I, I suppose that was it, figuring out the glutathione, and the protein and, and the vitamin D, and I'm sure many other things did the job. 

Jack Heald   

I just like to point out for our audience, that this particular particularly exceedingly unhealthy man was also working in a hospital. Just like Dr. Vidya Lord, okay, 

Dr. Philip Ovadia   

yeah, it is pretty interesting to note, how many unhealthy people there are working in hospitals. But I guess my next question for you PD would be as you look at what you did to recover from this. And you know, where you are today, how much do you think really came down to what you were eating, versus what you were doing? And there's always this sort of ongoing debate about what role exercise plays in health and what role what we eat plays in our health, and certainly love to hear your perspective on that balance. 

P.D. Mangan   

Right. Well obviously, exercise is important and healthy thing to do. But, but it's also interesting, that exercise can be overdone, and a lot of people do overdo it, especially when you you're talking to relatively high performing people that that want to go hard at it every day. And I was certainly one of those that really wanted to do that. I mean, besides, it wasn't just a matter of like, oh, I'm a high performing guy, therefore, I have to run you know, I mean, I really did like it. There's always this sense of, of overcoming of doing better and, and, and feeling powerful that way. So it is very good. But it’s interesting that the amount of exercise that is associated with the lowest mortality rates, is so surprisingly small so 

Jack Heald   

obviously, I know Dr. Lady understands what you're saying, but I'm not sure I do. 

P.D. Mangan   

So if you look at people who exercise, and you see how much exercise they do, and then you see who dies. Basically, it's all in association, you can't prove cause and effect. But that's what you do in any kind of epidemiological study like that. You just look at a bunch of people, you look at their habits, like whether what they eat, how they exercise whether they smoke anything you know, that you're interested in, and then you follow them for a period of years, and you see who dies, or you might be interested in, who has a heart attack, this kind of thing, that that's a very, very basic sort of study. I mean, in human beings.  

So in animals versus human beings, it's very different. Because like, for example, nobody's ever done a randomized controlled study that proves it, smoking cigarettes causes lung cancer, it can't be done. So you have to look at these kinds of studies, at you know, with large groups of people, and especially when you're looking at human beings, even if randomized controlled studies can be done. In other words, randomized controlled study, this is like you're testing a drug, you take a bunch of people give half of the drug give half of a placebo, then you look at your items of interest so, but human beings just live so long, that it's very difficult to do certain of these studies, like you would do with animals, like calorie restriction increases lifespan in lab animals, okay, so you can do this experiment, rats only live about three years. So you know, you can run this experiment, it's not hugely expensive, it doesn't take forever, because if they live 30%, longer than that's only four years instead of three. But with human beings, if you want to see if somebody is going to live another 50 years, well that that really can't be done. So you're looking at these kind of experiments.  

So anyway, with exercise, they look at a bunch of people who exercise, see how much exercise they're doing, how often this kind of thing, and then follow them for a number of years and see who dies. So this is this was, this particular one that I'm thinking of was part of something called the coconut, Copenhagen City Heart Study. This is something that's similar to the Framingham study in the United States, where they're just looking at a bunch of people over a long period of time, and itemizing what they're doing, what they're eating, what they're smoking what they're drinking, etc, etc. Anyway, they found that the people with the lowest mortality rates in terms of exercise, were doing something like jogging at a moderate pace, a mile and a half to two miles, three days a week, something like that. So like with so many of these things, there's a U-shaped curve that goes with it, okay, so being sedentary is not good in terms of health. And then as you start exercising, mortality rates go down.  

But then once you get past that low point, to greater amounts of exercise, then mortality rates start going up. So that people who are doing things like you know, I don't have that study in front of me, but doing things like running eight to 10 miles every day at a fast pace, had higher mortality rates than these rather slow jogger. So ultimately, anyway, the point being is that people think always think that in terms of exercise, more is always better. And it isn't. You need, like with a drug, they often say the exercise if exercise were a pill that every doctor would prescribe it, so that's great. But if it were a pill, you need to find the right dose for this thing, so these massive amounts of exercise. You know, can you know they can be harmful? It's I mean, it's hard to determine exactly what constitutes excessive exercise. I certainly think that marathon running is not optimal. I don't know I'm going on a digression here. I don't know if I've answered your question Phil. But that that's something about exercise and frequency and how all that works. 

Dr. Philip Ovadia   

Yeah. You know, and certainly I agree with all of that, I think that exercise is a tool that needs to be used in the proper context. And I I'm sure you would agree that exercise ultimately isn't going to overcome the bad diet. And, in fact, the beginning part of your story sort of demonstrates that, I mean, you were certainly exercising plenty. But eating a diet that wasn't optimal for you at least. And the results were that you got pretty sick from that. 

P.D. Mangan   

Absolutely. You know, like the saying goes, you can't out train, or you can't outrun a bad diet. Definitely. And I mean, I came from, sort of opposite end of the spectrum in terms of I was quite thin, and so on. And most Americans are not coming from that, and they're coming from the other end of being overweight. And they are, well, they're not really learning this, that you can't outrun a bad diet, they think they understand, they think they understand how to lose weight, and for many of them, it's by exercising a lot. And if they don't change their diet, for the vast majority of them, that's going to be a completely ineffective way to lose weight. 

Dr. Philip Ovadia   

Yeah, and I think that brings up another interesting point about how many people equate being a normal weight or being having a lower weight with being healthier. And of course, we know that that is not necessarily the case. And you can be normal weight or even underweight and still be quite unhealthy from a metabolic health standpoint. 

P.D. Mangan   

Absolutely, that phenomenon of so-called normal weight obesity, where people who are have technically normal body weight, but they're metabolically unhealthy, they have a relatively low amount of muscle mass, a relatively high amount of body fat, and especially when you get into having visceral fat and so on. Yeah, so there are a lot of, of these people around who are normal weight, but not metabolically healthy. And most of them, I assume, are not doing a whole lot of exercise, and probably an all of them, I would assume, or are very likely not eating right. 

Jack Heald   

So, Dr. O, if you've seen PD, when he was at his lowest point, I know his waist circumference would have would have passed your metabolic health test. The other things that you look at, and you say it, because you're the doctor, I'm not the other. The other four things you're looking at to do a quick evaluation of metabolic health are 

Dr. Philip Ovadia   

your blood pressure, which I don't know, have you ever had high blood pressure? 

P.D. Mangan   

No, no, not that I'm aware of. 

Dr. Philip Ovadia   

Yeah. And then we would look at your blood panel, and we would look at your sugar level, your glucose level, probably okay. But I suspect that when we looked at the other two markers, the HDL cholesterol and triglycerides we might have gotten some hints there. But it's likely that your doctors at the time did not pick up on those. 

P.D. Mangan   

Right, yeah, there's no doubt about that. The all through this odyssey, through the through the healthcare system and seeing all these doctors. You know, nobody asked me about my diet. Ever. 

Jack Heald   

It's just, it's predictable. I shouldn't laugh, but it's just so bloody predictable. It's not like this is new. What did Aristotle who said that your food was medicine? 

P.D. Mangan   

Yeah, yeah. That was 3500 calories. Yeah, right. Yeah. You know, it's interesting, too. I had this thought much, much, much later. So the doctor that I ended up seeing was what is known as functional medicine or integrative medicine. Okay. So, he was an MD, but he had this that was what he that's what he was. And among MDS the Functional Medicine guys or integrative medicine guys are considered tight kind of out there, as far as you're out there and left field. And so and this was in Northern California in the Bay Area. And I used to go in there and his waiting room and you know, there I was, I had been a vegetarian all those years and so on. And I thought I used to see these people is pretty in the waiting room is a pretty, let's say, lack of better word and hippie-ish kind of medical practice and people that going there were sort of that way. Right. And I thought I wonder how many of those people were vegetarians in sitting in that waiting room and going to see that doctor? Like, probably a huge number of them. I mean, I didn't think of this until later. But you know, and people coming with all these complaints that they can't figure out and the other doctors aren't helping them with and, and so on. So. Yeah, I mean, that's how it is no, nobody asked me and, and I had to figure that out on my own. 

Jack Heald   

You know, when I had my health crisis, literally, the very first thing that I had a similar story, went through a myriad of MDS, trying to find somebody who had a clue that they couldn't have bought a clue if somebody handed it to him. I finally ended up in a nature path. And the very first thing he did was fixed my diet. That was numero uno, he said, you got to quit putting food in your body that stresses you. And I was like, whew. 

P.D. Mangan   

But well, you were fortunate to find somebody like that. Oh, yeah. 

Jack Heald   

I was very blessed. Well, yeah, I want to go I'm sorry. Go ahead, Phil. 

Dr. Philip Ovadia   

No, I was gonna say let's pivot a little bit. And we want to hear more about what you do today, and how you're helping people and kind of dig into some of the great content and programs that you've put out there now. 

Jack Heald   

Exactly. 

P.D. Mangan   

Okay, okay. Well, thanks for asking. So, what I'm doing to make my living mainly is health and fitness coaching. So I help private clients, the majority of my clients come to me because they would like to lose weight, and they are not having success on their own. You know, it's an interesting that many of them are, are a lot of them are doing do low carb diets before they get to me, and they end up with me, because they see me on Twitter or elsewhere and they know, kind of something about my approach. So with a lot of them, it involves fine tuning that approach with a lot of them also that the kind of food that's out there, the ultra-processed food that most people are eating massive amounts of, is, frankly, addictive. And I mean, there's a lot of debate about whether addiction is the right term to use for this, but I think for the average person, I think addictive is just perfectly good word to use. And so, many of these people have a difficult time controlling their, their use of their consumption of these oils, processed foods, sugar in the, in the oils, and everything else. And so they, they want some accountability, they want help. So, I do definitely help them with that other people just need better information.  

As far as what I do in, in my own life, to stay healthy is you know, I do weight training, I do high intensity weight training, and I do that twice a week. So, high intensity weight training is a, quite a different modality, from what you might know about conventional weight training like three sets of 10 and then you know, resting between sets and then lots of volume and going in the gym a lot and all that. So high intensity training is really brief and infrequent workouts but have very high intensity as, as the name of course implies, so I do that my workouts take me under 25 minutes to do, but they are very intense workouts. They also function as cardiovascular workouts because I get my heart rate up to 145 When I'm in the midst of this workout, and you know, so I do that a couple times a week  

Other than that, I then on my off days I go walking that kind of exercise, nothing strenuous And as far as like what I eat, which is, of course, very important. I eat meat, I eat fish, I eat fermented dairy, like yogurt and cheese. I eat some, some vegetables. You know, I don't know how many I would eat if they weren't served to me, but they are served to me. So I eat a few vegetables. You know, I drink tea, and I drink wine. I think you know that that's that I eat some eggs. I think that about sums up what, you know what my food and drink consumption looks like. You know, I try to get some sun regularly and get outside and so on. And other than that I'm at my desk a lot. 

Jack Heald   

You said something there that triggered a question I had when I was researching this interview. You have this website, rogue health and fitness.com. And you have a course, the anti-aging blueprint. And I'm reading through it because, well, first of all, if anybody's Anti A I'm against aging, it seems like. But you've got all these different modules, and one of them was alcohol and aging. And I will confess, I'm a huge fan of whiskey. And you've got this little note here. Why you don't necessarily need to give up alcohol to live a long healthy life. I was pleased to hear that the ideal amount of alcohol that you can drink to live healthier and Slow Down Aging. I'm very interested now. And then the big one, which I'm a little concerned about the type of alcohol the most protective to your body. Okay, without stealing the thunder of your course. Can you kind of give us a 30,000-foot flyby on that? 

P.D. Mangan   

Sure. So this is a really interesting topic. And when I've posted about it on Twitter, I've gotten lots of pushback there. There's a lot of people out there who don't want to hear this. And I think in the United States in particular, we have this I don't know schizophrenic or Jekyll and Hyde or whatever attitude towards alcohol in the United States. You know, you're either a teetotaler or you're an alcoholic, that I mean, that is the viewpoint of a large number of people. So this is all this is mostly based on again, the same kind of studies that we were talking about before epidemiological studies. So what they've done, and there's been a lot of research into this into the relation between alcohol and health. So the upshot is that moderate drinking is associated with better health than not drinking at all. And so what is moderate drinking? Okay, so that depends on the study, you're looking at, officially defined by our health over the Lord's here in the United States, moderate drinking is two drinks or less a day for a man one drink or less for a woman. However, there have been other studies that have shown better, better health at higher levels of drinking, anyway. They're, these moderate drinkers have lower mortality rates than nondrinkers. They have lower rates of heart disease, which mainly the lower rates of heart disease mainly accounts for that, lower those mortality rates. They do have lower rates of other things, but you know, the mortality thing is definitely the one you want to be looking at. Of course, there one of the big problems that bedevils these kinds of studies is risk of bias when Okay, 

Jack Heald   

all right, well, no. Well, I, I understand all the qualifiers in the caveat. So I totally get that. Just give me the bottom line. Is it okay for me to have whiskey? I like to have a glass of whiskey, let's say probably on average, three nights a week, and I don't I if I have two shots, that's probably a typical, I don't drink more than that. And I don't drink more often than that. I'm just talking on average. Am I okay? Am I helping or hurting myself? That's all I really want to do. 

P.D. Mangan   

I will say that it is unlikely that you are hurting yourself at that level of alcohol consumption as to what is going on. 

Jack Heald   

I'll have you back on the show that 

Dr. Philip Ovadia   

I would. I just need to qualify it by saying it's okay. As long as it's the whiskey that your favorite heart surgeon by gosh, 

Jack Heald   

I am so enjoying that feel gave me a bottle of what's that called Old 

Dr. Philip Ovadia   

Soul core soldier 

Jack Heald   

or soldier? Yeah, I've definitely been enjoying that a lot. 

Dr. Philip Ovadia   

Oh, we have the first sponsor for our podcasts. The 

Jack Heald   

first port shoulder Bert is a bourbon or whiskey. I think it's I think it's I don't think it's made in Kentucky. Is it? Yeah, it is. Yeah, so they call it Murray. 

Dr. Philip Ovadia   

Not yet. Yeah. They're, they're in the process of moving their distillery down there. 

Jack Heald   

Okay. All right. And the other thing was the best alcohol the type of alcohol most protective to your body. And I suspect I'm not gonna like your answer on this one, but I'll live with it. 

P.D. Mangan   

Well, there is some evidence that red wine is the healthier form of alcohol. Yes. 

Jack Heald   

My wife will be happy to hear that, however. 

P.D. Mangan   

Okay. Okay, good. 

Jack Heald   

Very good. There were some other things that I thought were really interesting. 

Dr. Philip Ovadia   

I want to Oh, go ahead. Yeah, I was actually gonna jump in and go back to your exercise strategy. Because a lot of health professionals and some of those guidelines that you mentioned, that are handed down from above, would say that clearly that is not an adequate amount of exercise to be benefiting 25 minutes, 2025 minutes, twice a week is below the recommended amount. But it's amazing how many people I talk to in the metabolic health space, who do settle right around that amount of exercise. And I just wanted to get a little bit more of your thoughts on the amount of exercise. 

P.D. Mangan   

Right, yeah, that that's interesting. So exercise guidelines that like, like you're saying come from come from above, they don't generally take into account intensity, I mean, they do say things like, if you do low level exercise, like walking you should be doing three and a half hours a week of this type of exercise, and if you do higher intensity like jogging, and so on you should do such and such amount. The thing is, in terms of weight training, and generally exercise in general, is that intensity Trumps volume, and frequency. So there's been some very interesting, 

Jack Heald   

Trump's volume and frequency, yes. Okay, the harder 

P.D. Mangan   

you work out, the less you have to do it. In other words, so there's been a lot of interesting research in in recent years about high intensity interval training. Okay, so, there was, just to give you one example, they took a group of people, one group of people did high intensity sprint interval training on stationary cycles, okay, so they go all out for 30 seconds. And then they slow down and do route low level cycling it for a few minutes, and then they go all out again for 30 seconds. And, and for a total of four for all out bouts.  

Then meanwhile, they took the other group and stuck them on treadmills and had them or possibly it was on the stationary bikes as well, but they had him doing moderate intensity for 45 minutes at a time. And then at the end of 12 weeks, I think it was they did their analysis, blood work and so on muscle biopsies, this kind of thing to see what happened. And so the group that were doing the moderate intensity aerobic training, spending, what is that? Three, four hours a week and I don't know whatever 45 times five is that's 135 minutes I know from because 45-pound plates in the weight room. Anyway. So they, they anyway, they did this monitor intensity training for several hours a week, whereas the total exercise time spent for.  

These high intensity interval training was basically minutes a week, if you only count, they're all out bouts, and they had the same results in terms of VO, two Max in terms of mitochondrial changes, and so on. In other words, the people doing that tiny bit of exercise, but at high intensity, got the same results that that these other people took a lot longer to get. So in terms of weight training, in particular intensity, also trumps volume and frequency, if you train to momentary muscular failure, which means you are going to move that weight or resistance in in such a way and until you can't move it anymore until your muscles literally give out they will not move that weight, then you only need to do one set. And then you go to the next exercise. And you do this bait you use minimal rest between exercises.  

So this is why you know, like, for instance, in my case, my heart rate gets up to it, I've clocked it at 156 When I'm in the middle of my workout, and at my age that is allegedly something like 95% of my max heart rate. So this is this is a way to work out when you work out in this way, at the end of you know, at the end of the workout it of 25 minutes of working out, you basically really don't want to do anything else other than sit down. And you need plenty of rest and recovery. So in my case, if I'm doing this twice a week, I have a minimum two days rest in between each workout. And you know, so on my off days, I go walking and you know, just to stay active. So, and according to according to a calculator that I've used, and I cannot vouch for the accuracy of this, but there is a way to calculate. So VO two Max isn't your maximum oxygen uptake, which shows how fit you are. And this kind of measurement can only ordinarily be done in a specialized lab. But there's a way to calculate it using your max heart rate and your resting heart rate. And I can't remember whether those were the only factors. But anyway, my V02 Max was something around 60 calculated, which is quite high, which you know, according again, I can't vouch for the accuracy. But according to the online charts for my age that's like over the top Excellent. And this kind of working out that I just described you. That's all I do. 

Dr. Philip Ovadia   

Yeah it really kind of revealed how you know, around both exercise and food, I think we have the same problem, in that we focus on quantities instead of quality. And you know, I think it's because it's easy to measure the quantity you can measure how much time you spend exercising, you can measure the amount of food that you eat pretty easily. But the quality of the exercise and the quality of the food is harder to assess. And I think one of the fundamental problems that we suffer from these days systemically is that when it comes to food when it comes to exercise we're focused on the quantity instead of the quality. And it's clear that the quality is more important. 

P.D. Mangan   

Yes, and you know, another problem that comes in here is it's difficult to critique exercise because most people aren't doing any exercise at all. And so you start saying, well, if you start saying things like oh you could do a lot better than walking, for example, and then and then you get this well what do you what are you doing? At least they're out there walking, you know? Well yeah, okay, sure. At least they're out there walking and that's good. But they're you know, if you want to get fit there are better ways to go about it. Also. I mean, face it, the kind of the kind of workouts that I do, and that other people do who follow this line of training is not very attractive to most people. It's incredibly hard work and most people are not, they're just not going to do it. So anyway, there that is. 

Jack Heald   

Well, I wanted to follow up on your anti-aging minutes Festo here. Whatever it is. I'm really interested in the whole field of anti-aging. And you've got this module, “Geroprotectors”, which is a word I'd never heard until I read it, but I like it. What drugs and supplements protect against aging and how to get ahold of them? And before you answer what those are, I'd like to hear a discussion about metabolic health, Dr. O, and its effects on aging, and then see if these drugs and supplements dovetail into that discussion. So what's the story with metabolic health and aging? 

Dr. Philip Ovadia   

Yeah, I mean, I would say that I think we have pretty good. At least I would say ever we may not have the scientific studies, per se, because, as you know, PD mentioned earlier, it's really hard to do aging studies in humans. But I think we have plenty of evidence that would suggest that being more metabolically healthy, is going to have a positive effect on aging. And one of the concepts that I talk about, and that we've talked about together is that it's not per se it may not be as important how long you live, but again, the quality of your life, we get back to that quantity versus quality. I think that most people would say I'd rather live 70 Very good years, and then just drop dead, then live 90 years, but be miserable and sick for the past 20 or 30 years of my life, which is what many people end up doing today. So I think we know we've talked about how metabolic health can prevent many of the diseases that lead to poor aging, and shortened lifespan. And so there's plenty of reason to think that focusing on and improving your metabolic health is going to lead both to better quantity and quality of life. 

Jack Heald   

Talk about the drugs. 

P.D. Mangan   

I want to actually, before I mentioned that I want to do to add to the doctor's statement there. You know, so one of the interesting things about aging that they discovered quite a while ago, 90 years ago now, actually is they found out that when they had their nice little rats in the cage and everything, and they fed them less food, that they lived longer. And this was quite a revelation at the time, but it's anyway been repeated ad infinitum. And it's now known that calories, calorie restriction food restriction is the most powerful anti-aging treatment known in lab animals feed the less, I mean, massively less, sometimes half as much as they would like to eat, and they live a lot longer. So this gets into the hullabaloo about metabolic health. So what's going on there? Well, there's a lot of things going on, because this has been extensively researched. But for example, these animals have lower insulin levels. They're they have lower levels of blood glucose.  

You know, getting into your question Jack about the drugs and supplements. The very interesting commonality that so many of these things have is they lower insulin levels, and they lower blood glucose levels, like Metformin, Berberine, rapamycin, lots of other things. So and then you look at calorie restriction. So good metabolic health is absolutely central to fighting aging. And if you look at the other side of the coin, what you know, you could say, well, what is the opposite of successful aging? The opposite is diabetes. So it's it as people get older, they tend to put on body fat, they tend to become more glucose intolerant, they lose muscle and so on. But the question is, how much of that is really aging and how much of that is our lifestyle? There seems there seems to be as far as you know, as we know from the science looking at animals, there does seem to be a case that Yes. As animals age, they do sort of naturally tend that way to have worse just have higher insulin levels and so on and to put on body fat. But a lot of it is at least in our society now a lot of it is obviously due to lifestyle and there's so much that people can do to prevent it.  

Centenarians have lower insulin levels than other older people who are like 20 years younger than them. So this is an association. But you know, it seems obvious that this is something that has helped them to live to be 100 years old, they have better insulin sensitivity. What gives you better insulin sensitivity, it's, well, the most basic correlation is good body composition, you have a relatively low level of body fat, certainly have a low level of visceral fat, and you have a relatively large amount of muscle. And of course, eating right is important. You know, if you're if you were living on pizza or something, I don't think that's going to be helpful, but it's also not conducive to good body composition, either. Anyway, the larger point is that, yeah, metabolic health is absolutely central to fighting aging. 

Jack Heald   

Well, I'm doing my best trying to get healthy. Dr. Oh, has actually played quite a significant role in that. I'll tell you, I'll tell you a little bit about this after we sign off. Dr. Oh, it's been an interesting last couple of weeks for me. Well, we're coming up on an hour here, I don't want to let you get away without talk a little bit about what you do. So people could get ahold of you where? 

P.D. Mangan   

Well, there's my website, rogue health and fitness.com. And of course, these days, I'm very active on Twitter. My handle is Mangan 150. So those are, those are the best ways people can find me. 

Jack Heald   

All right, we'll make sure those things are linked in the show notes. And the ideal person, your ideal client is somebody who is filling the blanks. 

P.D. Mangan   

Well, I have had all kinds of different clients, but they tend to be mostly high performing middle-aged men. I'd say about 90% of them fall into that category. 

Jack Heald   

I think there's a reality that when we men get to our I've watched it happen a lot, early to mid-40s. There's a myriad of changes we go through. I think there's actually a life portal that we all go through right around there. Anybody who's been through it knows what I'm talking about. Anybody who has it is going to find out. So that doesn't surprise me. It doesn't surprise me at all. All right. Well, I say we wrap it up. Dr. Oh, any last words from you? 

Dr. Philip Ovadia   

Know, I really enjoyed this discussion. PD. Thank you for coming on and look forward to talking more in the future. 

P.D. Mangan   

Well, thanks a lot. It was a pleasure being here. Thanks for inviting me and it was a great conversation. 

Jack Heald   

Very good. Well for Dr. Phillip Ovadia, and PD Mangan, I am Jack Heald. This is the Stay Off My Operating Table podcast. You can follow Dr. O on Twitter at @IFixHearts and you can contact him at OvadiaHeartHealth.com. Until next time...