Did everyone. Welcome to conversations again. Guest today is doctor Peter Larkins. Now, Peter's a friend of the program. He's a friend of the Crows in the early days. He's one of our Crows doctors when we went to Melbourne. He's top sports medico. That's a great description. But he's highly qualified and he's very informative and he's written a new book called The Healthy Hundred one hundred Ways to a healthier, happier and longer life to get to one hundred. Peter Larkins, how are you, nie?
I'm really great, great to chat with you and we're both still here. Isn't that fantastic?
Yeah?
Well it this fantastic. So well, you're determined to reach a hundred day that I think.
One hundred and beyond was the original title, but it got shortened by the publisher. But you know, in the days when you and I are at school, if you reached one hundred and got a telegram from the Queen, that was such a huge achievement, you know, in our era growing up, and I thought, well, you know, why
are we setting the target of one hundred? And then I started looking at longevity and you know, my patients were all concerned about they were slowing down an age, and so I started to look at why we age and why we slow down, and you know, found all these populations in the world, Graham where people were living to one hundred and five one hundred and six. So one hundred isn't the target anymore. It's one hundred and
beyond provided you live healthy. So the whole content my book is not just how long you live, it's how well you live. And so you want to be living, you know, in your nineties and it may be nineties, but the point is, you know, when the life expectancy only fifty years ago was seventy something in Australia. Now it's hit at eighty one if you're a male, eighty three and a half if you're a female.
It's still well short of one hundred.
But there are plenty of people reaching one hundred and so that was the target in my book is how to look after yourself to try and offset the things the killers, because they're all documented. We know what kills as heart to these, bowel cancer, lung cancer, you know, stroke, So there's all those things in the book about hey, you identify those early and get your check ups done.
Well, what part does genetics play.
Though, it's important part, So would you say twenty percent is important? So eighty percent is lifestyle, whether you smoke, whether you're over eight, where you're a weight, where you're eating crap. But twenty percent, absolutely you need to know
your genetics. So if you've got a family history of prostate cancer, you've got a family history of heart disease, that puts you on the front foot to start checking for those things, perhaps a bit earlier than the general GP check us be cause people say when should you start having checkups? Well, you know, the medical world sort of says at age forty. But if everyone in your family had breast cancer in their forties and you're a female,
you should be having checkups in your twenties. So the genetics is only twenty maybe twenty five percent, depending on which statistics you look at, Graham. So the other eighty percent is lifestyle choices.
Right, we're going to part of the book now, We're going to come back to the book because I think your journey has been really interesting. That your age is no secret. You've turned seventy, it's weill got a full head of hair, looking good. I don't know what you do in face where you have the botox done and all that sort of stuff, But maybe it's the athletic background. But let's go back even further than that. Tell us about your early days.
Yeah, look, sport has really been fash my life the whole way through. I was very fortunate to grow up, you know, in a town called Geelong. I think people in Adelaide have heard of Gelong Graham and you know, it was a very it was a rural city at the time, but I went to a private boys college with sport was not mandatory, but it was sort of
expected that you'd play sports. So from a very early age I was into the typical sports that you play at school as well as the academic achievement being expected. So cricket, footy and athletics were a sort of three big sports that I went into.
What school was it.
It's Saint Joseph's CBC, which is a large boys only school at the time in Geelong, so it's on the top of the hill overlooking the rest of the school, so it's a big school zone, but it's still there, still going well. In fact, a real of side point, it's got the most number of AFL recruits of any school in Australia now from Saint JOWI So whether you go camer or Jimmy Bartel or Sam Walsh or Patty McCartin, the list goes on fame.
So we're a strong footy school.
I was lucky enough to captain school footy, so you know, from under tea, under twelves, under fifteen and first eighteen I had a fair run at footy. But athletics was also in the genes side to speak, not so much from my dad who wasn't He just played footy and used to nail the stops into the bottom of his work boots on.
The weekend and go then take him out to go back to work.
That's true story back but my brother was a very good runner a few years older than me, and he was a very good cross country runner and won a few trophies. So I sort of had a target to try and out do my brother and so I got into sport at a very age, which then obviously got me looking into performance. So when you look into sport, you look at what you should eat and watcher should
train and you know what should you stretch? And so the principles of getting best out of himself even as an eight or nine year old was sort of instilled in me by a very good coach that I had at a place called Landy Field, named after John Landy.
Tell us about your dad though, what did he do well?
My dad worked for the local council. He was sort of in the construction and heavy machinery driving. So I was always impressed that my dad would drive left hand cars and left hand machinery because a lot of them, assuming those days, was imported. So my dad was on the a driver for the council on construction and so he was involved in driving heavy equipment equipment, particularly left hand drive. But he also was involved at the social
club down at Geelong. He was very good friends with a bloke called Frank Costa, who people don't know.
Frank Costa.
You yeah, I know, you're smiling, Graham and Frank Costa was Mayor of Geelong. He was the head of the fruit and vegetable industry in Australia, also president of Gelong Footy Club. So the Costa family and my dad so we had a pretty good connection with the footy club and in fact my uncle Pat. When I was nine years of age, I was in the chains rooms down at Gelong Footy Club, smelling the liniment and watching ankles
be strapped. So at nine I got into the medical side of sports so to speak, by watching my uncle Pat, who was second head trainer down at the Cats. And that was in the sixties when Polly Farmer and Billy Gog and Johnny Sharick were playing. So I really had a pretty good entry into sports medicine, even though it was pretty rudimentary at the time.
Grame to get the medical degrees that you had, you must have had an innate intellect. So were you smart at school? Were you one of the ducks of the school so to speak?
Well, I was, so to speak.
These days you sort of choose a sporting career or an academic career. In those days, it wasn't the option, you know, because really it was secondary to academic. And as I said, Sin Joey's, you know, the Christian Brothers school as it was at the time, not so much now. The Christian Brothers have moved on and they're lay teachers. But yeah, academically I was always in the top one or two in my classes on the way through, and I guess I was always driven to achieve, and that
wasn't driven by my parents or I wasn't pushed. You know, you've either got an innate hunger to be successful, I think, whether in sport or careers. Graham and so luckily, you know, I had a few academic brains, and so I did okay, And I was always planning to go to university.
I really didn't.
Decide on a medical career until I was about sixteen because I always thought I'd be a scientist. But my brother was a scientist. He was a Rhodes scholar and a Churchill Fellow. So my brother was the true rocket scientist in the family and he was older than me. So I was always stepping gingerly in footsteps after my brother Frank, who's a professor twice over professor, went to Oxford College as a Rhodes scholar. So academically I was under a bit of pressure peer pressure like your boys.
I guess when they were playing footy, the oldest one you got the next one coming through. But academically, yes, I went. I luckily got into the medical degree. But so I was running, you know, in the state team at seventeen and eighteen State senior team, and then during medicine. It was really difficult because it was a really sort of those days. You know, you expected to put your head down and study, which I did.
By the age of twenty, I was sort of on the brink of the national team in athletics.
So I given up footy at seventeen when I got knocked out twice in my last game down a Codinia Park, So I decided footy wasn't for me. But you know, academically, I was trying to study medicine, but also had fortunately a nine or ten year international career right up until after I graduated in medicine.
Well come to that. Can I explore this concept of intellect? I mean I having coach Maddie Liptak, I was able to combine footy sport, but he had a natural in collected that you obviously one of the smart kids at school now and you obviously were that. Where did it come from? And did it come easily to you?
I never considered myself a smart kid. I considered myself a kid who knew you had to work hard to achieve. And I mean that seriously, Graham, So Maddie they take, of course, was in the team when I was working with you at the Crows back in the early days, and Maddie went on to be a great orthoptic surgeon. Still have contact with him from time to time as well. But so it didn't come easy. I mean, you know,
the obvious answer is was hard work. I studied so at university, just not to go too far ahead, but at school I studied and I trained, and my social life was pretty ordinary. I lived outside Gelong for a while on a property, so it wasn't easy to be socializing, isn't it.
Uni.
You know, I used to study and then train, and then I lived on campus because I wasn't from Melbourne, and so that you know that you just sort of put your head down and decided that you needed to do well. And I thought part of that was influenced by I know, my parents had worked hard off and two jobs to give my siblings an iron and education Graham, and so without feeling pressure, there was a sort of an innate obligation to want to reward them by doing
well academically. So the hard work was partly driven by wanting to achieve, but also it just meant that you worked harder than other people, the same you do when you're training in sport. Did you mum have a career, Yeah, my mum had a great career. She worked at the Geelong woolen mills and she was in charge of quality control before the woven wool went off to Italy to be woven into those expensive battalion suits that you like
to buy. Graham So Wool and Western District Wool, as you know, between Adelaide and Geelong's the Western District is called where all the great wool growing has done. So Geelong is famous for its woolen mills. So the wool would come in and there would be processed and then
woven into fabric. And my mum worked at the woolen mills for many many years, even worked at home at one stage where the big roles of wool would be delivered to our place and Mom would sit there checking them before they went on the ships out of the harbor at Gelong to go off to Europe to be made into all the beautiful woolen fabrics.
That we now pay so much money for.
And yet they were coming off the off the farms down Western District so that was her job right up until the time. You know, she retired about sixty. My dad retired at the compulsory retirement age of sixty, which is bizarre now because at sixty, you and I have passed sixty. Imagine if we were told we had to stop what we're doing at sixty.
It's just bizarre.
Mom and Dad still with us.
No, No, Mum made it to ninety three, and you know, she had a great life, and she unfortunately developed one of the nasty cancers. So we talk about cancer check us. But pancreatic cancer is a very famous one in the medical world. And my dad did die of a heart attack at a younger age, and so I'm very conscious of making sure I keep ahead of that.
So they've both passed on some time ago.
Oh that's sad. Dr Peter Larkins is my guess. He's talking to us about his book The Healthy Hundred one hundred Ways to a Healthier, Happy, and Longer Life, originally was called How to Live to one hundred and Beyond one hundred and Beyond backshortly, folks. Peter Larkins is my guest. Folks, we're doing this on the zoom. Peter where you based at the moment. Where are we speaking to you from?
Well, you're speaking from You've done the beautiful Mornington Peninsula, which is about an hour and a quarter from Melbourne down south, so it's a nice little part of the part of Melbourne. I've sort of just snuck down here for a day to do a few tidy ups at a place down here. My working life is still based in Melbourne four days a week, Graham at Epworth Hospital, which is one of the large private hospitals here, very close to the MCG so we've got a good connection
with the footy clubs. But I work in the sports and orthopedic area. So my elite athlete patients started about age fifty these days and go to age ninety, so I'm looking after all the broken down hips and knees and shoulders. But a limited association with some sport elite stuff, including the World Championships of the Hawaii iron Man, which is another story in itself. But I go over here
to the World Triathlon Championships. But my medical work four days a week is really at but just down the beautiful mornings in Pininsula today.
Okay, so let's split the athletic career from the medical career. We'll come back to the medical career. So you've got the geens to run. Obviously, you're a three thousand meter steeple chase runner. How did you morph into a into a steeple chase athlete?
Yeah, well, again, trying to make it a short story.
At school, I was an eight hundred meter runner, Graham, So that was my sort of go to event all through schoolboys state championships, national championships up until about fifteen or sixteen. At eight hundred meters, I didn't think I was capable of running further of that. But I had a fantastic coach called Rudy hop Writer who'd beat an Austrian Olympian in his day, and he was coaching me from about the age of ten, and he insisted that you do every event. You do the sprints, you do
the hurdles. You just wanted to all round, you know. So speed training was a big thing for him, even though I was training for eight hundred. So I was a good hurdler. In fact, I was glong schoolboy hurdles champion. But then one day I was watching the steeple chase and I thought that's an interesting event. There's a distance race where you've got a hurdle things I was about when I was fifteen at the time, and the junior distance was fifteen hundred meters steeplechase, whereas the Olympic and
international one is three thousand. So I had a crack over the fifteen hundred meter steeplechase just to try it out. And it just felt natural to me because I hurdled the jump. So as people will know, if you're in school hurdles, you hit the hurdle, it falls over. But if you're in a steeple chase, you hit the hurdle, you fall over because everybody sowd and so I.
Just I learned that and so with it.
At fifteen, I sort of had a crack and within my third I think it was my third race, I set a national record at the junior distance and I thought, geez, maybe I'm onto something here. So and by that stage I was getting to sort of sixteen seventeen and I was running fifteen hundred meters, so I really did more fifteen hundred meters running because the steeplechase was something that
I reserved really for big events. It was only so many per year you could do, but it was the one I was best at, so eventually became you know, national champion and then obviously in the Australian team for that by morphing through. So in my international care I ran steeplechase, but I also ran fifteen hundred meters as much as I could too, Graham, it was an easier event for me.
What time did you get for fifteen hundred meters? I mean, I love that event. It's my favorite.
I got down to three forty one back in the while, I'll be honest, in the seventies. So it was still running miles in those days occasionally too, so there was a few good milers around, blokes like John Walker and Rod Dixon from New Zealand and John Walker, I should said, and then Graham Crouds here, so I ran a few miles along the way in events when they didn't have a steeple chase on the program. But yeah, it was
then the steeple I was running. Kerry O'Brien, if you remember, from South Australia, had the work, but he also had the Australian record, so there was a record recognized which around internationally got home and I'd break Kerry O'Brien's record when I was twenty one years of age, and so I suddenly thought I was onto something then because Kerry was a bit of a he was a standout.
There.
Weren't many steeple chases internationally from Australia and Kerry was a standout. So I never met him, but he certainly was from what I looked up to.
He was a legend here. Of course Kerry O'Brien will knew him, and he was a fitness coach, fitness and conditioning coach of Port Adelaide put La Magpies in the sandfle I haven't heard from him lately, but he was quite a legend here. So you never ran against him, I guess.
Oh no, No, he was a bit older than me, so aged me that much. He was older than me, and so I had a couple of really people I looked up to. Kerry because of what he did, never met. And then a guy called Ralph de Bell, if you've ever heard of Ralph de Bell, who was my brother's best friend at university and used to come and stay at Gelong with my brother and they go training down the sand dunes doing the old Percy Srity sand Dune.
So Ralph won the gold medal in the Olympics in nineteen sixty eight at Mexico City World and set a world record. So Ralph was another great mentor in one sense, but just someone I looked up to. So Kerry and Ralph were two guys. Ralph still around, still see him at the Olympic Club that we have annually.
Obviously it was a dream to represent Australia in the Olympic Games, which you did. Tell us how that progressed.
Yeah, when you stay a dream, I know kids talk about I've dreamt about this. I never did.
I never thought I was that good Graham around the first Olympics nineteen seventy six. At nineteen seventy five, I was Australian champion. I was just off qualifying and by that stage I'd moved on from Rudy as my coach Ready hock Rider, a guy called Alan Barlow at Boux Hill Athletic Club now Box Seals are very famous athletics club in Melbourne and Allen was coaching me from the time I went to university because I couldn't get to Geelong.
So really Allen took over about nineteen seventy four, so I was two years into him, and he said to me in nineteen seventy five, I think you could make the Olympics next year.
And I just thought he was delusional. Grame, I really did, because I was.
In medical school. I was already in the hospital, working working pretty long hours. I'd moved away from the living on campus because I did the first three years, and then I was living in hospital, and I thought, but I was still trying to train around my studies. And I improved seventeen seconds between nineteen seventy five and nineteen seventy six in my time, and that was just between the age of twenty and twenty one. So it's interesting, how incredible. And it was him believing in me that
said it. And so suddenly I'm in the Olympic squad. I'm going, my god, Alan, you were right.
I mean, you know, I wasn't the thing on dreaming to be the Olympics. And then I thought, geez, what am I going to do? Now? I've got to train.
Harder, which which was silly because you shouldn't train harder, you should just do what works for you. But I suddenly then got caught up in thinking, oh, I've got to train harder and how am I going to get away because it was quite hard to balance. In fact, I took a year off and did an exercise physiology
degree in nineteen seventy six. So I went back to and did a master's degree at Melbourne UNI because I really couldn't commit to the medical program and also get away enough time to run at the Olympics.
That intrigued me. We've mentioned Maddie Leftak a few times seeing how he was able to combine his medical studies with football. But when you say you improved seventeen seconds that, how did that happen? I mean you must have. You must have had some change in your training program or some extra commitment.
Look probably a bit of extra commitment in the sense that Alan taught me. Well, it was a different training style. Ellen taught about we about recovery, and so I was recovering better. Alan was all about quality. There were two streams of thought in athletics in those days. There was the Ron Clark Rob de Costella sort of group that
was Glenn Huntley Athletic Club. That was distance distance endurance, cardio cardio, and then there was the Alan Barlow School at box Hill, which was high quality intensity, good recovery, high quality intensity. I mean my event only went for eight minutes, four minutes, three minutes forty if you talk about fifteen hundred. I didn't need to do these two hour runs that these guys were doing, So the quality
of training probably improved. I was training fifteen sessions a week, so twice a day every day, three on a Saturday, including the day's week, so we'd train in the morning and then compete in a grade in the afternoon and then.
Do a recovery run at night on a Saturday.
So the quality of the training, I mean, you know, in terms of volume, you know, I was running around one hundred and twenty one hundred and thirty k's a week was the sweet spot for me. But that you know, half of that was on the track doing high quality intervals short recovery interval short recovery. So yeah, look, the quality of the training was good. But I thought I trained hard in seventy five, but in seventy six it
quably went up a little bit. But actually, you know that's I trained harder when I made the team, so I improved that seventeen seconds. Really off the back of the work I'd done in seventy three and seventy four.
That's what I really credited with, Graham.
Can you remember the emotions of being selected to represent Australia at an Olympic Games.
Yeah?
Now, the biggest emotion was my mum and dad had their photo on the front page of the Gelong Advertiser.
Serious.
That was the greatest thrill for me because of what my folks had done. My dad drove me to training, drove me to foot he picked me up. I'd go and run the cross country in the same muddy shorts that I'd played footy on At ten o'clock. I'd be doing the cross country at one o'clock in my dad's car with that even a shower in between.
So they'd worked. Really, my dad was a timekeeper at every event that I went.
Who We waved the flags at the footy as the goal umpired And I know it sounds Gleod, but you know it was a great thrill to make it because I.
Hadn't expected it.
And my mom and dad on the front page of the paper was the biggest highlight of the year, apart from the opening ceremony and getting across to Montreal, which is again, once you're there, it's a whole different world.
We'll talk about that after the break. Dr Peter Larkins is my guest, folks. He's here to talk about his new book, The Healthy Hundred, How we Can Live to one hundred and beyond. But he's just been selected in the Australian team to represent Australia at the Montreal Olympics. Back after the break, Welcome back to conversations everybody. If you've just tuned in, we're chatting with Dr Peter Larkins, one of our foremost sports medicos. I I don't know
how else to describe you, so highly qualified. Was one of the Crows Club doctors in the early days and we went to Melbourne, Doctor Larkins would always be there. But if you just tuned in these combined his medical studies, he's decided he discovered that he can actually he's got a talent for athletics, get selected to represent Australia in the Montreal Olympics in the steeple chase event. Montreal was now finest moment as an Olympic Games, was it? Peter? But can you tell me your experience.
Yeah, what you're alluding to is we didn't win a gold medal and that was just historical for Australia given our history of sport. I'm talking about athletics, I'm talking about any sport, whether you talked about rowing, whether you talk about hockey, you talk about swimming.
Was we had some real favorites in that.
But I can tell you now, look the experience was it blurs a little bit because you know, I was twenty one years of age Graham and I was sort of it was such a new world. You know, I really hadn't been overseas and can I tell you you know, if you look at the way teams prepare these days,
they have these training camps overseas before Olympics. And just as a quick side story, so if you're in the rowing team or you're in the hockey team, you go away and you spend weeks competing for the month or two before the Olympics, and you go to the Olympics really in match condition. Imagine playing a Grand Final having not played a practice match. That's what we did in Montreal. It was eight degrees in Melbourne when we got on the chartered plane and we flew to Montreal. It was
thirty four degrees. We went straight into the village, no pre competition. So this was in about July of seventy six, So we came out of winter in Australia on a chartered flight. The swimmers, the hockey plays, everyone on the same plane. I say, next to Blake called Steve Holland, who was called the Fish, and he was supposed to be a big swimming star that was going to be there, and so it was totally the wrong preparation I think in the Olympic Committee in those days and all the sports,
it just doesn't happen those days. So we're off season because the Olympics are usually held in the Northern Hemisphere season. So we got into the village and we were the first big team to arrive. There was a few small teams. We had I think two hundred and something. We arrived in this big village and what happened was we had
so much time to hang around doing nothing. The swimmers all put on about ten kilos if you look back at the history of that, because there's twenty four hours a day buffet food and so the swimmers all got fat.
We did ten, not ten kilograms.
They would have time they put on weight.
Exactly what I'm saying is you go there, you know, supposedly lean and fit and ready to go.
Three weeks is a long time.
I remember, you know, when you arrive at the village, they raised the Australian flag and have a bit of a welcoming stumm and there was only about three flags going. Remember there's two hundred teams going to be there. There was only three flags flying, and then Australian team goes up.
So we had to train in the heat, no racing under our belts.
So for me it was you know, I really was good at peeking off the back of racing a lot, so I used to like, as I said, imagine playing the granny and not having a practice match.
So we didn't do well.
I was ranked fourth in the world, only I ran tenth when I got over there. You know, I was training okay, but I also had developed an injury back in May competing in a road relay in Australia where I developed an inflame back and I was put on some pretty high powered tablets that don't even exist anymore. But they thinned my blood down and I got a low blood count, Graham, So I was quite a mneemic
which was only discovered in the village as well. So off the back of not being as prepared as I should be, I also had a low blood count which really worked against me, and I was very disappointed in my performance, even though the experience, of course is life changing and you know, very memorable for lots.
Of other reasons.
Who won the gold medal in that event.
One of the Italians who was on the blood doping. So blood doping is when you take blood out of your arm, stow it in the fridge, and then you put it in a day or two before the event, so your blood boosting. This was the days now we're talking seventies, Graham, and so there was a lot of dodgy stuff being done.
East Germany and Russia were sort of at their peak.
You know, there was a lot going I was lucky enough to travel a lot on the international circuit behind the iron curtains, so Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, East Germany, and as a medical student, my eyes were as wide as they could be wide, I'm saying when I saw the stuff that was going on.
So there was and Montreal.
If you look back as well, there was just the rudimentary beginning of drug testing. So we were competing in the distance against people that were on EPO and on blood doping, and you know, we were just so far behind. And we still don't cheat in Australia, but the drug testing was just coming in. That was the first time ever that anabolic agents were.
Tested for it.
The Olympics was seventy six and it's fair to say there weren't many detections.
What's your long lasting a memory of being an Olympian? I mean, I think it's such a such an achievement. I mean, maybe you didn't live up to your expectations, but it's an amazing thing to have done in an event like that.
I would have thought it's hard not to dwell on the fact that you didn't perform as well as you should. I know, you've got to move on, and I have. But you know, my memory is that I was disappointed in my own performance. But when people talk about the fact that, you know, you went to the Olympics and with the people that I met, and the experience and taught me about preparation and what we learned from that and I was selected in the eighty Moscow team as well, Graham.
Four years later, I'd really put my head down to work really really hard.
I'd already graduated from medicine, so again I won the selection and I was running just the same speed four years later, four years older, four years more experienced. I'd
won every national title in between. But in eighty the Olympics again were a disaster because the government didn't fund the Olympic teams and all the Olympic teams were restricted on finance, and I was one of the athletes who was dropped out of the Olympic team through later months and so never got to a pear in Moscow even though I was and in fact it was embarrassing because I was on the front page of the Herald Sun newspaper here in Melbourne when I made my second Olympic
team getting presented with the Olympic tie by Rick Pannell, who was the CEO of Athletics Australia. So that was my second Olympic memory was being selected and not allowed to eat because Malcolm Fraser with drew all the government funding.
Are you bitter about that?
Yeah?
I am, because I committed four years mentally and emotionally, and I took a year off from MIDS and so in eighty I actually stepped aside from working because I really in seventy six I studied and I felt that that probably inhibited my performance. So in eighty i'd actually taken a year off work, so no income and was trying to prepare for the Olympics.
So beeh a bit better at the Australian government over that?
Did you get over it?
Now? Doesn't?
Well, I'm saying I was a dual Olympian by selection, but only competed in one and I've been Look, I've been to nine Olympics in total, and so my Olympic career was really started by Montfior.
That's the positive thing. You know.
I've been a contributor in the Olympic movement over a long long time, so you know, it's once you're an Olympian, you're always an Olympian, and there's no such thing as a former Olympian. So it has is open enormous pathways for me. So there's a positive side that I'm really pleased about it. And now it's just so different the way the athletes prepare in the fact that they don't try and study full time while they're training.
They really put their head down and have a crack.
That intrigues me. Do you think could you have done it? Could you have qualified today if you were under the same regiment.
Yeah, I would have qualified. Now you know whether or not I would have had the ability to do that, I don't know.
So you know I was. I was capable of improving further.
In fact, after eighty I started to really put my head down and concentrate on mits and even more. But I came back from a traveling fellowship at the end of nineteen eighty three having competed, I thought for the last time at the kom Off Games in eighty two up in Brisbane, which I don't know if you were their Graham, but it was. You know, we obviously host them in Brisbane in eighty two, and a coach at the end of eighty three when I came back from me you.
Said do you fit? And I said, oh, I'm halfway fit. He said, we've got eight weeks to the Olympic trials. Do you want to have a crack? And I said, you know, I haven't raced for a.
Year, and you know I trained hard with Ellen for six weeks. You know, I missed out on the Olympic selection by three seconds.
You know what three seconds is?
One two three, That's how much I missed out a third Olympic selection.
One two three Gray, And that's all I was.
So I was still running pretty well in my early thirties, but that stage the world had moved on. So I would have been a selection without necessarily being a threat when I got there. It's like making like being eighth in the in the in the AFL eight, You're not really a threat. You're just snuck into the finals.
You did so much. I mean, maybe we're going back a little bit. I just want to read a few things. You had degrees in medicine and exercise physiology. You were rewarded the inaugural Sir Robert Menzi's Medical Scholarship. You did postgraduate studies in sports and exercise medicine in Canada, the USA, England, and East Africa before coming back to continue your practice.
You completed medical training at Alfred Hospital. You wrote a master's thesis in exercise physiology, receiving the Hume Turnbull Research Fellowship during your fourth year of study. So I mean, I mean, or of somebody who's such a high achievement. Can I just pick a little snippet out of that? What did you doing East Africa? Was that Kenya? I guess it?
Yeah, well done?
Yeah it was because if you think back in the eighties, who were the dominant distance runners, think of those great battles, So the Kenyans, the Ethiopians and the Tanzanians. So they were the three East African countries that I was just fascinated by these these there were young kids that I was racing against them, and they were most gentle people.
And so when I had the opportunity and so that fellowship, I had to.
Spend time in commonwealth countries, one of which was a developing area of the world. And in fact that the people that gave me the scholarship wanted me to go to India to study the hockey program. And I said, I've got no interest in hockey, with all due respect to hockey players.
Yea, they said to.
Me, I said, want to go to East Africa And they said, well, is it because I'm fascinated to know the talent identification program over there? Everyone says it's because they live at altitude and I just didn't believe that, And so I went and spent nearly six months living in East Africa, watching them train, watching the kids run to and from school barefoot. Literally that they grew all the food that they ate, everything was organic, the healthiest
diet of vegetables and fruit you can imagine. But the big thing Graham was from the altitude. It was the motivation to do something with their life. They're very poor over there, and if you want a scholarship to go America as a runner, you were made for life, you know. And the road racing those days they could win good money, and that means you could buy land, because only the rich people owned land over there.
So it was an interesting thing to go across. And I wrote a sort of more of a social.
Thesis, not a medical thesis, about how the kids any of the Opia and Kenya are really motivated to follow their idols like kip Kino and Jibouti and these other guys that have run and just a very quick story.
Again.
I went to a place called Elderette up and the highlands of Kenya, and I busited Kip.
Kino, who was well known.
He ran against Ron Clark and we stood on the porch of his house, Graham, and you could see all the lights of the villages in the distance, and there were ten different villages that I could see lights from, and he told me there are eleven world record holders that had come from those villages that I could see just at night within within visuals you distance of where Kip Kino lived.
So fascinating.
Talk about genetics, well maybe you know that, but the motivation to be the next Skip Kino or the next Gilbert Baye who was the great runner from from Tanzania. So it was an interesting study side thing for me. And I've got great respect for the East African runners.
Doctor Peter Larkins lepygathlete, medico author. His book is called The Healthy Hundred. We'll talk about that in a bit more detail after the break. Acutly my guest on conversations is doctor Peter Larkins. He's an author as well as all the other great things he's done. When we went to Melbourne, he was our club doctor in the early in the early days. How did that connection come about with the Crows, Peter.
Yeah, Well, look I had a strong AFL history, if you like. With down with my dad at Geelong and my uncle Pat. But then when I first came back from overseas travels, I helped Kevin Threlfel, who was the club doctor down at Geelong.
So I had the Cats for the first six years as an assistant doctor down there.
And then of course when the Crows got their license, I was good friends with doctor Brian Sando, who of course you had a lot to do with.
Now.
Brian and I went back to our Olympic connection because he was involved in Olympic teams with the swimming and the diving, and so Brian and I had a chat and Brian when the Crows were coming in, he said, Pete, we need someone in Melbourne who knows the Melbourne scene in case a player needs an X ray or needs to stay overnight, it's got a broken rear ball. We
need a specialist in this all that area. So I sort of became on board right from game one day one as one of the Crow's medical officers, assisting out with all the Victorian program. And you and I cross paths of course when you were coaching there, and I still remember your talks about bringing.
The oxygen breathe the oxygen deep breeds steep breaths.
It was the Corns mantra at the court at time breaks gorn, So you were famous. Brian Sando unfortunately passed on, but he was a great doc in the sports world and my connection that led to the Crows.
I should have known more about your career. Mean to me, you were just another face in the background when I was worried about a footy team. No, I don't think I've paid you the respect you were worthy of those days.
Well, you know what coaching is like.
You've got your blinkers on, and I was just happy to help Brian out because I knew a fair bit about medical stuff with sport, and Brian knew that.
Brian knew a bit more about me than you did. But that's all right now, you're very polite.
Well that's good. I shudder sometimes and I think how I must have spoken to and treated some of the room stuff. You book, The Healthy hundred, it's a book I've heard you say, and I've lived it. You can pick it up and go to any page and find something that's useful in it. How did you distill it down?
Yeah, Look, it's sort of a it was a compilation.
I mean it was something that you know, a lot of advice I gived in my day to day sort of work with patients is how to sort of keep ahead of the curve of slowing down, you know, whether it's muscle wasting or whether it's their lack of energy
or looking after their joints. And so, you know, I was doing a lot of this sort of advisory work just in the day to day work that I do with people about how to live healthier and how to keep away from doctors, which is you know, and then a few years ago I got to ask to a few men's health talks, and so I was really compiling the things that men have to do with their health checkups and you know, finding out about your background, if you've got heart disease and your family history, et cetera,
and just being you know, making sure you eat well and don't be overweighted, don't smoke. And I thought, why am I just talking about men that anyone in the community should be taking that advice. So I started to
distill down all the healthy living principles. And so when you look back at my sporting career, there was a whole lot of concepts that an athlete puts together like nutrition and sleep and mental preparation and looking after their body with the niggles, And that was about high performance in sports. So I really wrote a book about high performance in life, and it was all about the things that we can do.
So again, I think COVID.
Made is really aware of our frailty and our vulnerability, certainly here in Melbourne, but in Melbourne we had a terrible time with social isolation. So the mental health and the mental stress became a thing. So in the book, I don't just talk about physical things like why we should exercise and why we should eat well. I talk about two other really key pillars in life to perform well, and that is setting mental challenges for yourself and always
looking at personal development. And I talk about social connectivity. So if you look at those aging populations around the world where people live to one hundred and five one hundred and six, they're socially connected with each other.
The generations look after each other.
And so the book was a sort of a bit of an at z because every weekend you pick up a weekend magazine and to be a story about sugar, there'd be a story about caffeine, or a story about how much sleep you should get, and I thought, I know all that, why don't I put it all together and try and make a little.
Encyclopedia of helping living principles.
I'm not an expert in any of those gram but I tried to to steal them down into everyday language that people could understand. The cornerstone being exercises, medicine, exercises the greatest drug will ever take.
I understand that. But as you get older, slow down? How do you how do you modify your I see guys running part and ladies running past my place every day, and slowly they age and slowly they stop. And I just how how important is running? I mean other more important forms of exercise.
You have to move.
The body doesn't know the difference between cycling, swimming, a rowing machine, skipping, walking, exercising on a treadmill. It's called moving, Graham, and you do slow down, but consistency is the key. So moving creates metabolic things in the body. Seriously about antioxidants. There's certain chemicals that are released that are lower your blood pressure, lower your cholesterol, so you.
Don't have to run them.
And as a runner, because there's a there's a there's a chapter in my book saying I hate to run, and it's because my pace better.
You're a runner.
You don't talking about running, I said, I'm not talking about running, I'm talking about moving. You know, if you're out an exercise bike, that's great. If you just walk around the you know, the greatest piece of exercise equipment you'll ever buy, Graham as a dog. It's not a treadmill, it's not an exercise bike. And people say, I got to take my dog for a walk. I say, no, no, your dog's taking you for a walk. That's keeping you healthy.
So those people you see going past you you're down near the beach, I think so, I think people going past your place, well they used to run five years ago. As long as they're walking past your place, then in fact they're still moving, so they're still getting the exercise component,
which includes mental health. So the importance of mental health and the dopamine and sero tone and the two famous chemicals that doctors prescribe when you go in there with anxiety and depression, they give you tablets that help stabilize.
Those two hormones.
You know, when you go for a walk today, those hormones are naturally being harmonized by your own body. So I think in the book I just talk about being responsible for your health. You will slow down, but you want to slow down slowly. The secret of life is to die young, but to do it late. And what that says in the book is want to be ninety and hour. But it doesn't mean you're running at the Olympics, or it doesn't mean you're playing footy for the crows
or the cats. It just means that you're actually looking after yourself. Just getting out the door and social connection. Having someone a buddy to walk with or to play golf with, or to go and do something with, really makes you compliance a lot better because it's very hard sometimes to get up and do it by yourself. Having a commitment to meet someone who's a big tip in the book. It's one of the one hundred tips.
So what about as you developed these afflictions, as you get older and the doctors want to put you on medication or get you to take supplements. How important are supplements and how important is to listen to a doctor's advice to take the cholesterol and if you have maybe blood thinners and things like that.
No, I think your medicine is obviously very important. And this is not a replacement. This is not a medical book, and it says that very early on, if you've got high blood pressure, then make sure you're getting that tree to a low exercise will probably lower that. Meeds you need a lower dose of the medication. You've got high cholesterol, get that true to because we know these things do
contribute to particularly to heart disease and stroke. And so doctors who are tuned in to healthy practices should be giving you the exercise advice. The greatest prescription they can give you is to buy a dog or walk around the block. But certainly the medication for inflammation. Inflammation ages our body. So we know that inflammation can be a sore knee or a sore hip. There's a new term
camp called inflammaging. So the role of inflammation in aging our body more quickly, Graham so things to reduce inflammation, which is good nutrition. So a lot of the stuff we buy today has got preservatives, colorings.
You look at the numbers on the label.
If they've got numbers, it means it's artificial, right, So healthy living like God grew up on a farm. So the amount of foods can control inflammation and slow you down. So healthy living involves healthy nutrition. But the medication absolutely, whether it's diabetes, cholesterol, blood pressure.
Make sure you get your doctor's advice. But hopefully part of his advice is to be active.
Because we're all going to slow down. I'm just trying to slow it down more slowly. So the art of aging youthfully, that's.
What we're trying to do.
Do you still run?
I rock? So there's a term called rourking.
It's half running and half wall looking and need surgery for a bit of treadware on my kneecap from all one hundred thousand k's of running that I've done. So what I do now I do five or six days a week up to an hour, and it's a mixture of walking a bit, running a bit, walking a bit. So my longest run in the last year's probably been two minutes gram so it doesn't sound like a run peat, but I run two minutes, walk two minutes, run two minutes, walk two minutes. That way I can control the load
that I'm putting on my joints. My brain still thinks I'm running. My heart rate goes up into a running zone. So I think the fitness benefits are there, but I'm careful about it.
I do it. And the other point is strength training.
So cardio is obviously running, walking, you know, the tread mills, kipping, as I said, swimming, that's the big part.
But strength training. As we get older, we lose muscle mass, and so.
Getting up out of a chair, just getting up, you know, you say I'm tired, because you get fatigued. So strength training two or three times a week for half and now it's just some home resistance bands or resistance weights.
Everyone over fifty should be working on that as well.
So I do two or three days where I do some strength work and probably five or six days where I get out and smell the roses and do that.
Rawking, I'm going to put you.
Right on the spot here. The book is called The Healthy Hundred, one hundred Ways to a healthier, happier and longer life. Just give me one, give me the most important one.
To Graham. You see, I've got one hundred. You're trying to pick one.
I know it's a combination of that, but for some people make small changes. If they could do one thing.
One of the whole hundred look, I think I'll give you three because one is to move regularly. Two is to have your health check ups with your doctor to find out medical care is so much better for prostate cancer, bowel cancer, lung cancer, melanomas, So have your check up so you can get ahead of it. And the third one is prioritize social connection. Keep up with your mates.
I'm sure you make an effort to have friends, whether it's a lunch, whether it's a warp, whether it's a game of pickleball or a golf So be socially connected, get your health checkups, and get out there and move.
Well, there's another ninety seven really in the book.
There is. It's not a hundred eight. You've got to get it. You've got to get it at dr Peterlarkins dot com.
You've got to get it at Amazon, or you've got to get at any bookstore in Adelaide.
They'll get it in for you. But doctor Peter Arkins dot com we can post it out to people.
Great to catch up, Peter, Thanks for your.
Time, appreciate it the chat. It's been fun. Thank you.
Doctor Peter Larkins is my guest. Folks. This book is called The Healthy hundred, one hundred ways to a healthier, happier and longer life. Just open it to any page and you will find something interesting. Thank you for joining us.