Okay. Hello, everyone. This is your host, Susan Rosen. My guest today is Dr. Anthony Balduzzi. I think I got that right. You did. Good. He has some interesting background and also is a naturopathic doctor. I think I got that right, too. I'm going to let... I think I can just call you Anthony, right? We didn't even talk about that. I'm going to ask Anthony to introduce himself, tell us a little bit more about himself and what he's doing and what he wants to tell all of us about.
Sure. I'm happy to be here. As you said, my name is Anthony Balduzzi. I am a board-certified naturopathic doctor in the state of Arizona, where I live. I'm a father, I have a young daughter, and I'm not yet 50, but I've truly dedicated my life to helping people, particularly busy parents in their 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond, get into healthy routines, achieve a body that they love, that looks and feels great, have longevity, and live a quality life.
I got started in this basically because in my childhood, I watched my own father and my own family suffer tremendously from poor health. Like many men, my dad basically busted his butt to provide for our family and neglected his health. I saw him slowly deteriorate. He ended up getting a cancer diagnosis, and he died when he was 42 years old. So that was my childhood, watching the man I love most in my life basically wither and die.
I was nine years old at the time when that happened, and as you can imagine, it's a huge experience to happen as a child to lose a parent if you haven't experienced that yourself. It ripped me open to so much pain and invited in the opportunity for a lot of healing. But it also taught me some fundamental lessons that most people don't learn until later in life. And that's that our health is the foundation of our lives and what we love.
When we don't take care of our health and we neglect it, we lose all these things that we actually care about, our ability to be with our families, to pursue our passions and hobbies, to feel aligned mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. And so my process of healing came through exercise. A couple of months after my dad passed, my mom gave me a pair of dumbbells, and I started to exercise. And I found that as I started to train and do these little exercises, I was healing.
Oh, I bet. Yeah. And it was changing my body, my neurochemistry. And I really, I guess you could say the exercise and fitness bug bit me. I'm like, this is magic. I'm getting stronger, my heart doesn't hurt as much, and I started to build myself up. And so that was the beginning process of me getting very interested in health. I think my 10th birthday was the last time I had birthday cake because in my young mind, that was unhealthy food.
And I wanted to eat healthy because I wanted to be stronger than cancer. I wanted to become strong. And that propelled me first and through fitness and personal training and then into medicine later on. And I decided to go the naturopathic medical route because I looked at the conventional system and I actually saw what my dad went through with the cancer, the chemotherapy, and a lot of the stuff that was very clearly due to lifestyle that was just not being addressed at the root cause.
I mean, it's not that we have a problem with people lacking pills. That's not the reason people have heart disease, diabetes, obesity, this huge epidemic of not being well. It's because we don't know how to manage our lifestyles. We don't know how to eat healthy, to move consistently, to do that in the context of a busy family in an aging body. So I set out to help fix that and figure that out. And I started the Fit Father Project 10 years ago in memory of my dad.
And on that side, we've had over 60,000 dads in over 100 countries go through our programs and transform. So it's been a beautiful journey. And that's why I say, although I'm not 50, I've had a lot of experience helping people on their fifth and sixth and seventh onwards decades of life get healthy again. And we also have the Fit Mother Project, too. We started several years later, and we've had, similarly, tens of thousands of ladies go through that as well.
So I'm here to share everything that you want to ask and extract about what it takes to live a long, healthy life and make it sustainable. Okay. I like that. That's a good place to start. That's a good place to start. So talking about starting, how do you start people? Is there somewhere you have them come in and you do some evaluation on where they are, what they're doing, what they're not doing, and all that stuff?
Is that- Well, so the cool thing about our programs is that they are all on facilitated online experiences. So people join from wherever they want, and then they come into our programs and our community. Myself and our coaches are in there. So we're not doing actual in-person assessment, which is beneficial because I wouldn't be able to have impacted as many lives as I could if I was in an office and everyone needs to come in the doors. That being said, where you start is a great question.
I think there are certain pillars that we need to maintain as we age. We need the proper approach to nutrition, one that's personalized and sustainable. We need to move our bodies in a way that's joint friendly, age appropriate, and helps us build the muscle and improve the hormones that change tremendously in the fifth and sixth and seventh decades of life. But I think more importantly than that, it's not just the information. A lot of us know what to do.
It's the deeper levels of the psychology, the motivation, the mindset that needs to be the base layer. So where we actually start with our clients is we help them get very, very clear on basically their mission and their why statement of why they're actually undertaking their health journey. And we have them write it. We have them get super clear on what their core values are. We have them connect those core values. How does your health relate to your ability to be a great parent or grandparent?
How does your health relate to your ability to experience financial abundance, spiritual alignment, to be a good member of your community? We help people build new neuroassociations and create a written statement for why their health is important. Because what we'll find, and I know you've definitely experienced this in your life, we're all human, is that your motivations change decade to decade. Oh my God, yeah. You need to always be in touch with the right reason to be motivated.
It's It's really not as motivating for us when we get older and have families to have a six-pack of abs, but it is motivating to not have pain and be able to move and bend down and to have energy and sharp cognitive function. If we can really start to create those neuroassociations and why our health is so important, it gives us more power to enter into these healthy habits and sustain them long term.
If you miss that psychological component, you're just following a logical set-out plan without the emotion behind it. And humans do best when we have a clear plan and backed with emotion, with an environment that's supportive for that change. Oh, yeah. No, I would agree. I think the emotional connection is probably the most important. Me too. Because if you don't do that, people will just move on. They'll do it for a little while, and then they'll just move on to whatever's next. Yeah, exactly.
So do you do these things over Zoom or something similar? Well, A mix of over Zoom. We do live calls over Zoom. We also have everything inside of, you can call it an app, but it's on the web and mobile where all of our coaches and our team are inside the app. And there's a lot of prerecorded videos and a full process you go through, like step one, two, three, four. You just go through the mission statement. Step two is getting into the meal plan.
Step three is starting to do the daily walking, the exercise program. And then step four is getting into the deeper layer of the accountability and the ongoing support. We start off people with a focused 30-day plan because we believe that there's power in having a short-term focus period to get up and go and get the gears turning.
Obviously, it's geared towards long-term sustainability, but just like how a rocket ship needs to store up all that fuel and blast off to get through the gravitation, so is our lives. When we're making a health change, we need that stored up energy in a focused period. And yeah, that's more or less a high level of our approach. I'd love to, in any way you want to take this, get into philosophies on New Nutrition, what works after 50, exercise after 50, longevity, general stuff.
Wherever you want to go, I'm happy to go there. All of that sounds good. I'm actually torn between the eating part and the exercise part, because I think that a lot of people don't realize that they need to change their eating habits as they get older, both what they're eating and how much they're eating. But I also think that exercise as you get older is so important, but But a lot of us did a lot of exercise when we were younger. Maybe we're still doing that. Maybe that's too much now.
I think those two things, to me, are like red flags for people when they're moving from their 40s into their 50s and into their 60s. Well, maybe we start with nutrition, and we'll get to exercise, too. Okay. What I think is so powerful is nutrition after 50 is more important than exercise because you can't out exercise for nutrition.
And nutrition is the thing that either truly gives you health through the right kinds of nutrients, through reducing inflammation, Or it can literally be poisonous for your body.
When you're eating the wrong kinds of foods, a lot of processed foods, too much sugar, the root of most chronic disease that we've had, and this is a buzzword sentence, but I'll say it because it's true, is based in blood sugar dysregulation, meaning your blood sugars are all over the place, and you have a lot of inflammation as a result of just eating foods that are inflammatory. Cancer is related to that. Dementia and cognitive decline is related to that.
Diabetes, higher blood pressure, plaque that's laid down in our arteries, hormonal disturbances. So I think the primacy of nutrition is massive, and it's also something that we're going to eat every day anyways. We're not necessarily going to exercise. I hope so. Unless you're doing some fasting, which I think there is benefits to that from a longevity standpoint. That's a whole different issue. It is a whole different issue.
But if we can just upgrade that baseline routine a little bit, that's something that will continue to add into your routine every day. And so my nutrition philosophy philosophy is more or less that I'm not a fan of overly restrictive diets at all. There's a lot of people who go on super low carbohydrate diets or super high carbohydrate diets. Our approach is more balanced and generalized. We believe after 50, you do not need as many carbohydrates as you once needed.
So we are a lower carbohydrate approach to nutrition. But this still means that you can have healthy fruits that work for your body, quinoa, sweet potatoes, oats if that works some organic, sprouted bread. I mean, we do need to find the foods that are unique for us, but having carbohydrates in your diet, despite what the popular influencers on keto have to say, are fine and appropriate in the right quantities at the right times.
Now, if you still do feel like you enjoy a very, very low carbohydrate plan, I think that's fine. It just typically is not as sustainable over the long haul as having something that is a little more balanced.
What I would suggest, what a day might look like in the life of nutrition on our programs and our approach is, you wake up in the morning, first thing you do is you rehydrate 20 to 32 ounces of water, ideally, some great filtered water, not your city tap water, and adding in some trace minerals back into the water. That morning hydration is so important because aging is a process of dehydration. Our skin loses fluid and elasticity, and we see that as wrinkles.
Our spine and the disks in our spine lose hydration, and we shrink a little bit, and there's more nerve compression issues. And so we need to really prioritize fluid dynamics and hydration. And every morning, that's exactly what your body needs. And so that's a good affirmation. You can drink your water. It's an affirmation that today I'm choosing health. I'm getting that good water in.
And then for your first meal, whenever you have that, whether it's an early breakfast and that works for you or you wait a little bit and you do a little morning fasting is fine. We like to have simple, standardized, pretty consistent breakfasts. I don't think it's meal where you should be doing crazy stuff, always variety, always different, because it's the time of the morning where it's all about being consistent. The sun rises all the time. The birds chirp in the same way.
Have the same damn breakfast. But I mean, the kinds of foods that are good, I believe, are high-quality eggs, fruits, smoothies if you want, not too high in the sugar, but you can throw a lot of good superfoods stuff in here. You can have some overnight oatmeal if you like to be plant-based and things. But just dial in what your first go-to breakfast is. And I'll ask you as a little pause here, Susan, do you have a go-to breakfast that you really enjoy?
I eat the same thing every morning. There you go. Okay, what is it? Lay it on us. Okay, let's see. Instead of a tuna salad, I make a salmon salad, canned salmon. And then it lasts me for a week or more because I only take about that much. And it has avocado mayonnaise. And it has some hard-boiled egg. Nice. One hard-boiled egg, one can of salmon, and And there's something that's called hache, which I buy. And we do everything organic. Perfect. So I have that.
I have usually somewhere between about a quarter of an avocado. And then I have a scoop of guacamole, all organic. And then I have a piece of Gluten-free buckwheat bread. Okay, that's what I'm talking about. With butter. It's the ghee butter. And local honey that I buy at the farmer's market. And, excuse me, usually almond butter on top of that. That sounds delicious. And I think in my perspective- One cup, one bigger cup than this is my second cup of coffee, and usually a cup of coffee.
Nice. I mean, what works about that, in my opinion, from a nutritional standpoint, is you're getting proteins, healthy fats, a little bit of carbohydrate, but it's balanced out with all these great healthy fats. It's delicious. I mean, I know you get the sweet flavor from the almond and the honey on the buck wheat toast, the savory from the salmon mix. You're getting a lot of vitamins, vitamin D, A, D, E, K, all these are in there with some minerals. And you probably feel Fantastic.
And so awesome. I think people can do similar, get a high-quality piece of some sprouted organic bread. It could be gluten-free, or if you can tolerate wheat fine, maybe an organic sourdough or organic eincorn bread. But something like that with some eggs and some avocado. I love the salmon salad. But get a simple breakfast because I think the power of that is like, that's like one-third of your meals potentially are now standardized and healthy. That's massive.
It's like just getting that in the mix is great. Yeah. And it's enough to last me until usually early or mid-afternoon. Yeah. And do you have a... Yeah. So you can do the... And then I think comes down to you can do the breakfast, lunch, dinner thing, which is wonderful. You can do a breakfast, lighter afternoon snack and dinner. One thing that I have found is I think it is better for people as we get older to eat a little bit earlier at night.
And I think there's a lot of benefits to this is from a circadian from a day and rhythm perspective, we have a little more digestive fire when the sun is not down, and we can process our foods, and we sleep a little better at night without having all that food in our system. So I like the earlier dinner, and that might be a five o'clock, maybe even four o'clock, and then begin a fasting period, because when it comes to nutrition, high quality food is great.
But one of the things we know is really helpful for longevity is allowing the body, as long as you're getting enough protein and nutrients throughout the day, is to get into a fasted period. This breaks down a lot of those old damaged immune cells, helps us regenerate and repair, and that same metabolism doesn't happen when we're in a constantly fed state. So I am a fan of people having a fasted period during the day, and that might be like 12 hours. It 14 hours, whatever that is. Yeah.
No, and I know that's... I mean, we don't typically eat breakfast until 10:30, 11:00. Yeah. When's your last meal? When's dinner? I usually try and eat by nine o'clock, finish eating by nine o'clock. Pm? Yeah. But most of the time, it's a little earlier. You're still getting about 12 hours of the fasting? Yeah. Typically, what we do is we get up. Sometimes I record a podcast while my husband's still sleeping. And usually, there are off days, like today was an off day, where we'll go for a walk.
Yes. And then we come back and eat breakfast. So in that case, we're actually eating 11:00, 11:30. Yeah, that's a wonderful routine, the morning exercise before having the food. And I guess I'll say that is like to... Now we're parsing out this routine, and we'll certainly get to exercise. A big part of living well and having a long, happy, healthy life, nutrition is a part of it, but your overall circadian rhythm is massive. And that doesn't just mean sleep. It It means morning sunshine, too.
It's so cool how our systems are designed. Our eyes, being the literal extension of our brain, respond to the morning sunlight. And they do so in such a way that we get sunshine on our skin and our eyes in the morning between the hours of sunrise and around 10:00 AM, it causes our brains to release serotonin, which is that neurotransmitter that makes us feel great. It smooths out that morning cortisol spike, and cortisol is a stress hormone that naturally spikes in the morning.
And that serotonin, later in the day, is converted melatonin. And melatonin, we've all heard of through the forms of sleep supplements and stuff like that. But there is new research showing that melatonin may be the number one longevity hormone that we know of. It is the cellular trigger. Every night when the sun goes down, our eyes perceive the lower light. We produce melatonin. Pretty much all of our white blood cells have melatonin receptors.
Melatonin triggers the brain to clean itself through this whole glymphatic system where the brain cleans out metabolic debris from the day that keeps our cognition sharp. It actually works in the digestive tract to improve gut health and reduce inflammation and helps with the probiotics in the GI tract. Our immune cells that become senescent as we get older and become aged and damaged, melatonin helps reset them. And so it's not surprising that this is like the Yin cycle of the Yin and the Yang.
Yang being the active, Yin being the recover. As we get older, if we're not really managing that night time restoration cycle, we're taxing our life. And it's a huge huge part of not being well. Wow, that's pretty neat. I know a lot of people, and I think I used to take melatonin tablets or something, whatever. But what kinds of food have more melatonin or is it just for the sun being outside? There are foods, believe it or not, dark cherries have melatonin in them.
But the purpose is not actually to get it. You make plenty from the natural darkness at night, your brain and your digestive tract It makes plenty. The key thing is when the sun goes down and it's dark outside, you keep your house and your ambient environment darker, too. This means less overhead blasting kitchen lights at night, less bathroom blasting lights at night. It means using lamps, lighter, some of those warmer tones, those more orange and warmer tones.
Replace your bedroom with all those warmer lights because those are the natural light frequencies that are more synonymous with that evening time, and they don't disrupt the melatonium production as much. And then the truth is, if you want to get to the next level, wearing any of those glasses or protectors that block blue light. Yes, I used to have some of those. I would urge you to make that a non-negotiable, truly.
If you understand the primacy and the importance of melatonin, and you do watch TV or screens or anything late at night or you're working on your computer. Screens, but not TV. You're right. You're blasting your eyes with that non-native light. The light is a primary input into the body. And for a longevity, I put it up there with equal importance to food and exercise. So that's perhaps a revelation for some people listening to this. Yeah. Interesting. We have some of those.
I don't have it handy. I know in the bathroom that we stick in the orange light. Yeah, that's better. Orange light. Good. And then the other thing with light is, so light itself and the influence of melatonin, it's also the sunshine and its impact on vitamin D. We also know that your immune cells, all those white blood cells that you want to keep healthy as you age, they have vitamin D receptors as well. That is not by accident.
Vitamin D is one thing that people should optimize and check on their yearly blood work as much as anything else. It is a hormone of longevity, vitamin D is. It keeps your immune system strong, keeps your bones sharp. And we knew from the COVID and all this stuff, the people who fared the worst had low vitamin D status. They were overweight and typically had higher baseline inflammation levels. And so everything you can do to optimize vitamin D is great. And guess where? We make it from the sun.
And what's interesting is you only make vitamin D from the UV radiation that we've been told is super bad for us. And the UV- That we're blocking with all of our creams. Sunscreens and creams. Yes, your body only makes vitamin D from the UV, and we pretty much only get the UV when the sun is overhead and high in the sky. In the morning and the evening time, we don't get as much UV penetration. So there's a seasonal aspect to this, depending on where you live.
If you're in the wintertime, I do recommend vitamin D supplementation. It's been shown to be very safe, even at doses substantially higher than the government currently recommends. And I think their guidelines are just old and outdated in terms of what they should. They say, if you need, they say, 800 IUs, you can safely take 2000 to 5000 IUs every single day long term and be of great health.
So I I say the light and the vitamin D and the melatonin, it's a constellation of things that are very important signals for longevity. Okay, well, that's good. Yeah. Well, we get sun when we go out for a walk. That's wonderful. And we take vitamin D as well. That's good. And I would say a whole body sun exposure, seasonally permitting. You want that sun to hit your shoulders, your arms, not just cover it up.
But if you can get it in your eyes, it's also good, too, to glance up and allow that input to come into your system. That's like more sun is good for the human system. Oh, wow. Interesting. And there's a couple of times to walk. Morning walk is great. And also walking after dinner is great, too, because it helps. Walking after any meal, really, it stabilizes your blood sugar. Yes. Interesting. Yeah, we've been getting a little bit of rain lately, so it's interrupted our schedule a little bit.
Yeah. And that's why there's a season to everything, right? You have to have a health routine. And that can adapt to the weather, adapt to the season. So maybe what you do in the summertime is not the same routine in the wintertime. And I think the people that struggle don't have the adaptability or don't create a new plan that works. It's just like, Oh, I can't go out and walk. It's too cold or it's too dark. So they go ahead and do nothing. And that's a big mistake, right?
Adapting and creating a new plan that works. So maybe in the wintertime, you get one of those seasonal lights that you can buy online, and you get that in the morning, and maybe you do a little indoor exercise. You'll have to be able to flow with that because that's what our lives are, a series of years with seasons. And longevity is the act of doing that well with every successive progression in your turn. And so you need to have a plan that works in all instances. Yeah. No, absolutely.
And I know my husband still goes to the gym, but I dropped out a little bit because I had some arm problems. But yeah, that's always That's always good, too. For sure. And maybe that's a segue into exercise. Yeah, I was going to suggest.
If there's one thing that we know is a fountain of youth in terms of activating your body's longevity genes, producing the hormones of youth, it is exercise, and it is particularly strength training, which I would posit is more important for people over 50 than it even is for people in their 20s. I mean, sure, people in their 20s want to be athletic and look good to attract a partner and all that. But when you're over 50, this is when you need to protect your bones.
This is when the amount of muscle mass that you carry into old age is going to basically determine how good your metabolism is, how well your metabolism functions, because the muscles soak up so many carbohydrates and keep your blood sugar stable. So strength training is key. But before you get there, I think I like to draw the distinction conceptually for people that there's a difference between daily activity and formal exercise. There are different things.
And the human body needs daily activity. Exercise is good for longevity, but we need daily activity. If you look at the pockets of longevity around the world, the centenarian pockets, where people live to 100 plus consistently in communities, they're not doing P90X or step aerobics, but they are gardening, they're outside, they're moving, they're bending down, they're in communities, they have more active lives.
And so I think, especially when we get busy and we're over 50, a lot of people say, Oh, I just don't have the time for exercise, so they do nothing. But we all have the time for daily activity, walking more, moving more, parking the car farther away, taking the stairs instead of the escalator. You know what I mean? All of these things add up, and it's so, so important. And I want people to understand it's all about checking that movement box in some way every day. Yeah. No, absolutely.
I totally agree. Yeah, that's where we always try and at least go for a walk or we got stairs in the house and going up and down. That was quite often during the day. That's awesome. Yeah. And like I said, go to the gym. And at the moment, I have my little two pound weights. I've been trying to build my arms back up. That's good. And that's the thing I think of over 52 is injuries happen, right? Our connective tissue is not as durable.
I know, as I mentioned, I'm not quite there age-wise yet, but I've had a tremendous amount of injuries through my own causing. But I've had six surgeries to reconstruct my right leg. I've broken my arm five times. Oh my God. I've had stem cell procedures. You're worse than I am. For sure. Well, maybe. I'm grateful to know that you haven't gone through that amount of pain. No, it's still. But I guess it is a part of a life. Well, I fall. I fall. I don't pick up my feet.
That's what I've been working on doing exercises, to pick up my feet. Well, that's good. We'll chat about that. I think I want to talk about strength training, and then I want to talk about balance and coordination as we get older because both are important aspects. The use it or lose it is that adage that we've all heard, and it's basically how it works with our muscles.
If we don't work our muscles as we age, we lose them, and it impacts us tremendously with your heart health, with your brain health, with your metabolism. And the good news is you don't need to be strength training every single day. Once or twice a week is sufficient of a stimulus to tell your body, Oh, we got to work on preserving and building some muscle.
You pair that with that good higher protein diet in a couple of strength training sessions per week that don't need to take more than 30 minutes, but they can go longer if you enjoy it. That's enough to get your body going. I really couldn't think of a better investment in longevity than spending Two 30-minute sessions per week of doing some strength training. If we really understood how important it was for all of these facets, it would become a non-negotiable.
Now, figuring out what to do, that's going to be a little confusing, right? I mean, that's where getting help is good so you don't have to figure it out on your own. This is what I do professionally and why we've had so many men and women come to our programs to get help and the exact clarity on this is what you do step by step, because otherwise, that's where a lot of people get hung up. Oh, I think I know I should exercise, but do I just go to the gym
and use the machines? Or I don't want to go to the gym. What do I do if I only have some weights at home? So having a clear plan is important. And the exercises that you do can be modified in a way that they feel good on joints, shoulders, knees, back, and things that... There's safer ways to exercise as we get older. But strength training itself conceptually, if it's not in your routine right now, and that's the one change you make in this upcoming year, your health will benefit phenomenally.
So I want to urge that for sure. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And I think it's better now for younger women, but women were never, at least when I was growing up, women were never not pushed. I don't mean it that way. Yeah, for sure. It culturally a thing. No, no, no. I mean, I used to go to the gym. Even my mom used to go to the gym. I was... You know. But not to the same degree. Women Girls didn't play in very many sports, and so there wasn't that outlet. Yeah, I'm glad that's changed.
Yeah. Especially, I would say of every combination of age in women, men, population that should be strength training, it's women over 50, is probably the ones that could use it the most, especially when estrogen levels are declining so tremendously and you want to try to balance your hormones, and then you lose the protective effect of that estrogen on your bones and your heart. Your metabolism gets wacky, your sleep gets dysregulated. Like, strength training helps fix that.
It taps into your body's hormone and vitality capacity, and it builds your strength back up. So it's really cool. And it doesn't need to be super intense. It can be things It's like holding some weights and doing some squats, doing some curves, doing some shoulder presses, some rows. Just like we have these bodies, they move in these different planes in space. We just need to be able to do those things with some resistance. And that's the cool thing. And I'll also say the balance, too.
The balance is, as you've noticed, you have this tendency to drag your feet. I think a lot of people can probably relate to that. That's going to be really tied to our mental health and well-being as we age. Because that's just an expression of something Having a function of the body that is called proprioception. Where basically in our awareness, we know where our limbs are in space. And so really good athletes have the best proprioception.
That's how they can catch a football with one hand by reaching up, and they don't even need to look at it. It's a phenomenal proprioception. As we age, we start to lose that, so we need to work on it. And this is why exercises that train balance are very, very good. Doing things where you're doing single leg exercises.
I think even taking your shoes off, too, more and getting your feet on the ground so you actually reconnect proprioceptively with your feet is going to be really good for building up your feet muscles and your glutes and just being in space. Because a lot of us wear these super padded, disconnected shoes, and it actually makes our brains a little bit weaker because we're not getting that proprioceptively up to feedback as we get older. So just some things to think about balance.
And the way we do it is we incorporate the balance into the strength training. So it's all one thing. And it's nice. 30 minutes workout, you get all this a couple of times a week. Wow. Okay. Okay. And is it something that people can do at home? Or do they need to... All you need is a pair of dumbbells. We even have bodyweight versions and band versions. But yes. So yes, we always give versions of our workouts that are completely done at home.
But we also have some gym versions as well with more equipment. But the key thing is to find what works for you and what you can stick to. And then I'll say, too, it's just the more time you can spend outside seasonally permitting is very good for longevity because Because we tend to be more relaxed when we're outside. Blood pressure levels go down, stress levels go down, obviously the sunshine, the fresh air, the light, and all of that.
But to beat the animals and the humans that live the longest, they maintain a relaxed parasympathetic tone. The stressed sympathetic tone of the nervous system is actually what shortens our life. It's what raises our blood pressure. It's what raises our cortisol, it raises our blood sugar levels. We're responding to stress. And when we're responding to stress, our body actually suppresses our immune strength because it's not thinking about long term immune protection and repair.
It's thinking about, I have a short term issue to deal with. And if we have this chronic stress scenario, you're basically taxing your lifeline. And I think getting back and reconnected to the outside in nature and to our families, anything that reconnects us is going to be a key to longevity. No, that makes a lot of sense. That definitely makes a lot of sense because otherwise, one-off, things never work for anything, not for diet, not exercise. It's not the way humans are built.
Yes. And what you just said is so true, not the way we were built. So my premise is this, and I think you've discovered this in your own life, too, is we are healthy when we live in accordance to the way we were built, which I will call natural law, which means we're meant to drink a lot of water. Our bodies are 70% water. Very poetically, this planet is around 70% water. We're meant to eat natural non-processed foods. We're meant to have sunshine and great social connections.
We're meant to move our bodies daily and intermittently move our bodies very hard with activity. We're meant to have great connections with one another and not be glued to technology, but to use technologies as tools for us. That's the high level. Then the art of it is how we each individually apply this into our families. That's where the rubber meets the road and making it sustainable. Part of that is mindset and understanding why this is important and the motivational aspect.
Part of this is just having a really good daily routine that you can stick to long term. No, and that makes sense. The other thing that came to mind when you were just saying that is to change things up a little bit every once in a while, though, because otherwise it does become too routine. Yes, for sure. People are like, Do I have to do Oh, no. I agree with you. Change up your meals every once in a while. Leverage the seasons of where you live. It's warmer outside.
Go use those hiking trails that are around there or get outside. Or it's colder outside, okay, maybe you do exercise on an indoor bike or you do some strength training workouts that you found from Fit Father or Fit Mother Project. It's good. There's always a variety, as they say, as the spice of life. We have the opportunity to continuously do that.
Then I guess Yes. The other aspect is I think there are certain supplements that are legitimately good after 50 to improve health, and they're not fancy supplements. They're the basics. It is good to get omega-3s into your diet. And obviously, your breakfast is phenomenal. You don't even need to supplement with omega-3s because you get that. I do anyway. Okay, that's good. But yes, you want the omega-3s. They're so good for your heart health and your brain health.
But it is the research does show even getting 2-3 servings of that cold water fatty fish, the or the sardines is enough to give you great benefits, but supplement omega-3s are very good. The vitamin D, I think, is massively important. I think that there is a good benefit to taking a natural anti-inflammatory compound. Omega-3s are, but I think some turmeric or curcumin is a very good natural compound. Turmeric is the spice that we all see that we cook with in a lot of Indian foods.
It has active compounds in them called curcuminoids, and these are amazing. They reduce inflammation. They help with brain health. They help with gut health. They help with joint pain. So getting these at least one good natural anti-inflammatory into your life is good because after 50, a lot of people turn to Advil or any non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs to manage pain and achiness. And that will long term deteriorate your health. And it's not what you want to do.
There are more natural solutions for that. Start to eat more ginger. Cook with more ginger. It is a wonderful anti-inflammatory compound. Yeah. And then I guess everything you can do to improve your digestive health and function is going to be very beneficial as you age. This means getting some probiotics into your diet. And this may be through fermented foods. Sauerkraut is one that I tend to eat quite a bit. But you can also get prebiotic fiber from your fruits and vegetables.
It feeds your good gut bacteria, so that's wonderful. And probiotic supplements could helpful. I don't think there's something you need to take long term. There's something you can take to be very corrective and get your... If you know you have some digestive issues, they can be very corrective. And once you establish a good routine, your ecosystem can survive with good healthy foods.
But if you're someone who is eating non-organic wheat or you know you have any sensitivity to wheat and dairy, corn or soy, and you're eating those on a regular basis, it's going to be hurting your digestive health. And ultimately, that's a big factor in your health. Absolutely. I'll just throw out there that from my own personal experience, but that typically, especially if you're not eating organic wheat, most people can't digest it very well.
For sure. So find something else or mix it together. If you're going to have wheat, mix it with some oats or some whatever, corn, whatever it happens to be, and don't eat so much of the wheat. I'll speak to that. I mean, maybe some of the specifics of that. Wheat is a food that many of us grew up on, but wheat today, the modern wheat, is not the same thing. And it's unfortunately can be quite unhealthy.
It's been hybridized and genetically modified in the sense that we're trying to make a stronger, shorter, faster growing plant with higher yields. And in the process, we changed the genetics of the wheat, and it got a lot more complicated. There is so much more genetic information, chromosomes in the modern wheat, and that actually changes how the gluten and the glutinein proteins are. They're just not nearly as digestible.
So the most ancient wheat that we know of is called einkorn, E-I-N-K-O-R-N. It's so different from the modern wheat that people who literally have a severe allergy to wheat, like a celiac disease, can often eat einkorn wheat. It is that different. I'll have to try it. It's not as readily available, but it's there. I mean, there's also, like you said, buck wheat is something that you've had, and there's other ancient grains and ancient wheat that could be beneficial.
The other problem with non-organic wheat is this whole idea of the pesticide glyphosate, which is sprayed on that wheat. And it's also sprayed on a lot of other foods, even even Oats, because it's a drying agent that is used for basically drying out crop yields. But the problem with that is it literally destroys your health on multiple levels. It really harms your gut microbiome. It can cause leakiness in your digestive tract, which leads to inflammation.
It can harm your blood vessels in those precious arteries, which your body lays down plaques to help repair. So glyphosate is some nasty stuff, and it is pretty much ubiquitous with modern wheat. So the genetics are a problem, as well as the pesticides. So organic ancient wheat can be a part.
And this is why I really think a lot of people find freedom inside our fit father and fit mother approach is because we tell them to buy something like organic Ezequiel bread, which is a commercially available, much healthier bread. My husband needs that. Yes, right? Okay, so you toast that thing up, you can make a sandwich on that, and It's a thousand times better. I think there's another level, Eincorn, and something that would be even better, in my opinion.
But Ezekiel bread is commercially available. It's probably in your local store. Upgrade your bread. You're going to feel so much better. Yes, yes, absolutely, absolutely. Absolutely. You can still have a sandwich. You can still have an egg on a sandwich. You can still have salmon on a sandwich. You still can have all these things. Ham sandwich. Whatever sandwich floats your boat, even an organic peanut butter sandwich. There you go.
That's very freeing once you know you have these upgraded staples in your life. Oh, my God. Yeah, it's so much easier. I know when I had to go off of all this stuff. None of these things were available. Yeah. We have a lot of resources now versus when you experience your incollerances. I had to go to the Asian part of town and go to the Japanese and Chinese stores. They get rice noodles, Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, absolutely. We couldn't find it. Well, Whole Foods wasn't even in existence.
Another nutritional thing that could be helpful is getting more broths and stews into your life as you get older. Collagen proteins are what make up our connective tissue, and there's many different types. And we basically lose collagen as we age, and that can result in wrinkles and joint pain and feeling stiffness and dehydrated.
And collagen is one of these main proteins that works with water to create the proper fluid dynamics and mobility in our bodies and gives us the function and appearance of more youth. And so we can get these through supplements, but you can also get these through bone broth. So If you can make some beef bone broth or get some chicken feet and make a bone broth.
And I don't know if anyone's interested in that, but I'm telling you this is some deeply good nutrition for you and very longevity-focused nutrition. Bioavailable. You put a pot on big pot, stew pot on the stove, throw in a bunch of chicken feet, throw in some broth or water. If you want to throw any veggies in there, too, and just let that sucker simmer. And you do that, you're going to be getting this wonderful nutrition that you wouldn't get anywhere else but through the connective tissue and
the collagen proteins. And it will help your life for sure. Yeah. Interesting. And very interesting. Okay, well, I will ask you more about that after we get done. Sounds good. I think we're almost at the hour over. Not over, but at the hour. Why don't you tell everybody, and I will also put it in the show notes, not that that many people We'll look at show notes these days, but tell everybody where they can find your products, isn't the right word, but programs.
Sure. So first off, I enjoy our time today, and I hope if someone is still listening, they found this valuable. We have everything that I discussed distilled down into the most simple to follow away. Here's the meal plan, here's the exercise, step by step walk you through. And that's what we have inside of our Fit Father Project and Fit Mother programs. The websites where you can learn more about those programs and sign up and become a member is fitfatherproject.
Com or fitmotherproject. Com. So all those exactly as they sound. And if you're someone also, so I recommend you go to the websites. And at the very least, we have some free meal plans and free workouts. If you join our email list, we'll send those to you. So that's a good place to get started. But our programs are world-class. And I'm happy to say, and I can legitimately say this, we have the most success stories of any program for people over 50 on.
So That's impressive. We have a good program that works. And then our YouTube channels, too, are good resources. If you like watching videos, we have a bunch of really great videos, and you can search Fit Father Project or Fit Mother Project on YouTube. Okay. It's project. Okay.. Com. It wouldn't be. Com. Is it. Com? Yeah, fitfatherproject. Com or fitmotherproject. Com. If you're on YouTube, you can just type in Fit Father Project, Fit Mother Project. Okay. Sounds good.
Well, I can always listen to this again and write it down. Okay. Well, let me thank you so much for being on. It's been great. Likewise. Lots of good information for me, lots of good validation. Good. With that, I will say that neither of us are doctors, even though you are a doctor, but we're not allowed to give out advice on Zoom. But if you're interested, definitely go and see the Fit Father and Fit Mother sites and YouTube. With that, I will say that I will see everybody next week.
Thank you, Susan.