The Science of High Intensity Interval Training | Martin Gibala PhD

This guy is truly a world-leading expert and maverick in examining interval training. And this work has attracted immense scientific attention and worldwide media.

I absolutely loved sitting down with Dr. Gabbala. He is an amazing interview, very charismatic, and a brilliant science communicator. As always, if you like this episode of the show, please Rate it, subscribe, share it. We do our best to bring you evidence-based information with world-leading experts.

Dive in. Thank you to Byte Toothpaste for sponsoring this episode of the show. Did you know that not only when you brush your teeth, You get cleaner teeth, but you also ingest a lot of toothpaste. That's one of the reasons why I love bite. It's exactly that. It's one bite. You pop it in your mouth, you chew it up, and you start, don't swallow it, and you start.

Brushing your teeth. It is a dry toothpaste tablet with clean ingredients, sulfate-free, palm oil-free, and glycerin-free. I love this. Not only do I love it because it eliminates a ton of waste. but I am not swallowing that 5% of toothpaste every single time I brush. Cause that's how much you would swallow. That is a lot of toothpaste over a period of time. They come in refillable glass jars. And nobody likes someone who's walking around with bad breath. It is an amazing, amazing product.

Bite is offering my listeners 20% off your first order. You can go to trybethom slash drion or use the code doctorline at checkout. That's trybite.com slash drion. Byte makes plastic-free alternatives for everything on your bathroom sink. This is a great company from toothpaste to mouthwash to toothbrushes to deodorant, the whole nine yards. So check out TryBite.com.

Special thank you to Cozy Health for sponsoring this episode of the show. I have been using Cozy Health products for years now. Why Cozy Health? Cozy Health makes amazing red light therapy devices. If you do not own a red light therapy device, This is your chance. I use a large wall panel and I also travel with a small handheld. Number one, it improves my energy. It is great for skin. There's some evidence that it reduces wrinkles, also increases hair growth.

It's a really amazing, amazing product. And there's science behind photobiomodulation, which is exactly what red light is. And Cozy's red light devices have a red and a near infrared wavelength, and they're very transparent about the numbers. The other thing that I love about Cozy is it uses flicker-free power drivers. So there is uh a potential harmful effect with the flicker. It eliminates that.

It is built to be EMF free from a distance of four inches. EMF is something that people often ask about or worry about. This is an EMF-free device from the distance of four inches. Great customer service, you actually get a 60-day money-back guarantee on every purchase. You cannot beat it. Head on over to cozyhealth.com slash doctor lion and use the code Dr Lion at checkout.

And you will get ten percent off your first order. Dr. Martin Gobala, thank you so much for joining me on the Dr. Gabrielle Lion Show. It is a great privilege to talk about all things high intensity interval training.

uh before me in even in studying this from a scientific perspective. But you know, athletes have been using interval training since the turn of the century. It's actually been advanced as a means to enhance health for many, many decades. And we started getting into this research probably about 15 years ago. The classic story that I tell is I teach an undergraduate course, a senior course called The Integrative Physiology of Human Performance.

And the students are always very interested in the training regimes of elite athletes. And so I would ask them why do why does sprinting? help aerobic performance or make these you know, why do athletes practice interval training to enhance their endurance performance? And it was a way to teach them a little bit about the biochemistry. And when I first got into this,

Uh I was a busy young professor with a working spouse, two young children. And so quite ironically for a professor of exercise physiology, I I found myself with little time to exercise and train. And so that led to a a personal and professional interest that you know, last has lasted now uh almost twenty years.

Well, how do we define interval training? And in the literature, and obviously on social media, there's multiple, it it just seems as if. There's a lot of discussion, but truly there's various kinds of interval training. So I would love for you to lay the foundation of those definitions.

Intermittent walking. You know, the classic example where you're out for a walk with your spouse or partner at night or walking the dog. you just pick up the pace for a few light posts. You're not necessarily getting into the high intensity or vigorous intensity range, but that's an example to me at least of of interval training. So I think it I I I like to have this broad, um all encompassing philosophy for what constitutes interval training. Now what is

What is high intensity interval training? This is sort of front of mind because I'm actually writing a review article right now with my postdoc and a and a couple of other distinguished professors uh uh on this topic of what means

High intensity interval training, whether you're interested for health or performance. And so I I on a On a health side, you know, if we look at the WHO guidelines, the authoritative guidelines for physical activity intensity classification, the WHO basically has three light, moderate, and vigorous. And of course, you know, vigorous is uh defined by RPE or MET. Uh and so I think or I like to position or think of high intensity interval training as generally equating with vigorous

type effort. You know, if you look at the American College of Sports Medicine guidelines, they expand out the exercise categories to include very light Um, and uh near maximal to maximal type exercise, but they also have a vigorous intensity range. And so the point here is. Often people will say, well, it's around somewhere about eighty percent of your maximum heart rate or above.

We're trying to sort of reframe the messaging a little bit or propose, let's just think of it as vigorous intensity type effort, whether you define that based on heart rate, RPE, percentages of VO2 max. Vigorous intensity effort range is well defined in the public health and exercise prescription guidelines.

And that's how I would like people to think about high-intensity interval training. And then there's a more intense version called sprint interval training that would be in that near maximal to maximal type effort range. If you're an athlete, uh and you know just to finish on the athlete side, athletes talk about uh domain based training. And so there's a classic three domain model for for athletes, uh moderate, heavy, severe intensities.

And then of course many athletes want to break that down further into zone training, four, five, six, seven, eight zones. And so on the uh athlete side of things, I think you're in the severe intensity domain, which is typically defined as being above uh your second lactate threshold or critical power, critical speed. So, you know.

In sum, I think we can have this broad definition of high-intensity interval training and then contextualize it, whether you're an athlete or whether you're someone who's interested in general health and performance. And there's no single metric that's appropriate for everyone or explicitly defines it based on one marker.

uh it may be too much for them or overwhelm them. But in terms of RPE, the classic scales, there's sort of two classic scales, right? If you go back to the work of of Gunnar Borg, there's the six to twenty scale.

Um and typically uh there we'd be talking 14 out of 20 uh on that scale would be getting into the vigorous intensity range. If you use a 0 to 10 or a 1 to 10 scale, which I think makes in intuitive sense for a lot more individuals or or people can think of, okay, zero is laying in bed, you know, complete rest, and ten is sprint from danger pace or sprint to save your child from an oncoming car.

Well, if we say that uh vigorous intensity exercise is a seven on a ten scale, okay, you can start to can you know contextualize that a little bit. So in terms of the RPE, that's what we're talking about in terms of high intensity if we're gonna say that's into that vigorous intensity range.

uh even less clarity around con what constitutes that. So maybe even just back up a bit. You know, the first question is is resistance exercise exercise high intensity interval training? Maybe. You know, I I I I think this idea of high intensity functional training where we're talking, you know, functional style movements, often body weight style uh movements. That can broadly count as as interval training, but it's you know it's a different stimulus.

Than when we think of traditional high-intensity interval training, which is aerobic-based, running, cycling, things like that. So how much is is too much? I I think it depends on first of all, um, you know, w what's your goals? Wha why are you doing this type of training and what's your specific goal? What's the overall volume of work that that you're doing? You know, are you uh lifting or training six days a week? Are you also employing cardio uh with that?

Uh so when we talk about potential risk of overtraining, it it does depend on on the overall volume of uh of exercise. So, you know, regrettably I I can't give you a a a definitive answer in saying Two sessions a week. Three sessions a week is is the ideal or or perfect for most individuals. You know, you look on the internet or re read a magazine, you'll say,

You can't do more than one hit session a week if you're doing it right because you'll break down or some people say, I only do interval training and I'm fine. So it it it it really depends.

lungs, blood vessels, skeletal muscle, their ability to use the oxygen. And so absolutely we can then see an enhancement or improvement in cardiac function. Stroke volume goes up, peak cardiac output increases. Um blood volume uh can can increase. Skeletal muscle mitochondria, you know, the component of skeletal muscle that utilize oxygen to burn fuels like sugars and fats to produce energy, we can see very rapid remodeling or an increase in in mitochondrial content.

Uh literally within a couple of sessions you can see those changes again depending on on the starting point. We can have many of those same changes with traditional continuous aerobic style training. And so I like to think of it as the physiology is the same. Um but how you stimulate the physiology in order to adapt and respond, that there's different inputs there that can be effective.

Now, if you look at what elite endurance athletes do, any serious elite endurance athlete practices interval training because the evidence is very clear that they're going to optimize or further enhance. The physiology in order to optimize performance as opposed to just continuous, moderate, steady state training all the time.

Now, there's many ways that you can do that. So for example, you could do three 20-second all-out bursts of activity with a short warm-up, a short cooldown, and a little bit of recovery in between. And if we look at the heart rate response, it gets up very quickly and it stays elevated for about 10 minutes. And so, you know, that that's where the the title of my book came from, based on some of our research looking at three

20 second uh efforts. Now, that's not saying it's the optimal way to train. It's not saying that that's appropriate for everyone or or the best. You know, you could also use less intense intervals. with shorter recovery periods. So one minute on, one minute off is another example, you know, and just doing five of those sessions, again, you're gonna get into that 80% heart rate range for at least 10 minutes.

I I tend to think that's about the minimum stimulus uh that that's required. The caveat there to that is some of the work that we're starting to do now looking at what we've called exercise snacks. We're not the first to use that term, but we've defined this as one minute bursts of vigorous effort that are performed periodically throughout the day. And so the analogy there is, you know, you're uh

Heading to work in the morning, one minute, uh vigorous effort, a couple of times a day, maybe at lunch before you leave for the day. And this could be bodyweight style exercise at your desk. You can imagine me getting up right now doing a series of air squats or burpees. uh for a minute. You know, there the recovery periods are very, very long, but there's some preliminary work to say even that type of stimulus is enough.

to enhance cardiorespiratory fitness or or VO2 max. Again, it's not ideal, but it's another strategy that someone might employ. And so maybe that's cumulative adding it up over the course of the day.

Now, when we've looked at the exercise snacks approach, so basically a very similar dose of exercise, but spread over the course of the day. The improvement in fitness is smaller. You know, these are small studies, not all head-to-head comparisons, not systematic, randomized, controlled trials.

But the takeaway there is the longer the recovery period, the the less the stimulus. And you know, when you stack the stimuli close together, of course, it makes intuitive sense, but there is scientific data that would uh that would suggest that.

Uh and and many of our studies, for example, we've done that 10 by one workout. So one minute on, one minute off, repeated 10 times. Or we've used other ways where the the interval training session lasts about 20 or 25 minutes.

I guess what you'd call high intensity functional training, bodyweight style exercise, small equipment style uh exercise. So that's typically six sessions a week. Uh three of those are exactly what I just described to you as High intensity, uh cardio style interval training.

20-minute, 30-minute interval sessions on a stationary bike, uh, to much longer rides outside because I enjoy that. And uh, of course. Any inner any cycling outside almost invariably involves interval uh training un unless it's a very flat course that you're only riding. But you know, around here there's some hills and valleys and uh so it's it's uh it's natural interval training, of course.

uh, you know, subtle. We're not talking massive changes in body composition unless there's a a pronounced dietary uh component to that. And it would also depend on the type of interval training. You know, if we're talking what we've you know defined here as functional style interval training with more of a resistive element, they're gonna see greater increases in uh muscle hypertrophy potentially or strength gains and so a greater stimulus for a for a lean mass.

uh im improvement. You know, if we if we look at often people say, well, how can intervals be effective at all for weight loss or weight management? You know, because they're often very, very short. Um personal trainers talk about the afterburn effect. There's definitely something to that. So the more vigorous the preceding exercise, even if it's short.

Metabolic rate increases in recovery. Again, it's often overstated, uh, but there's definitely something to these small transient boosts in metabolic rate adding up over time and supporting weight management, body composition changes. Um again, especially over time.

Some others have shown some changes in in blood fats, again, consistent with an enhanced health profile when we look at numerous commonly measured blood markers of health.

Does exercise training elicit chronic improvements in insulin sensitivity, or is it just uh the fact that you're doing repeated acute bouts and you're seeing the the residual effect of that previous bout and as soon as you stop, it's it's going to go away? But in our studies, uh often our studies are six weeks in duration, we see measurable improvements in various markers of uh glycemic control uh glucose parameters.

you know, there's there's only so much improvement you can get when you already have good tight glycemic control to start.

correlations uh you know between risk of dying from all causes, uh risk of developing type two diabetes, cardiovascular disease. And so if you can enhance or maintain your cardiospiratory fitness, As long as you can, that's generally a good strategy. And interval training can be a very effective way.

in order uh to do that. You know, you alluded to to sarcopenia. You know, I think we could a there could be a really good debate around, you know, if you could only do one, uh do you wanna try and enhance cardiospiratory fitness or do you want to try and enhance muscle strength as as you age? Um clearly you want to do both. And that's where I think functional style high intensity interval training can be uh very effective be because you're getting the strength.

uh benefit, especially lower body strength, uh depending on the movements that you're using. And if you keep the recovery period short, high intensity functional training can lead to improvements or at least a maintenance of cardiospiratory fitness. uh as as well. And we know that there's many types. of interval training, including functional style training that have been applied uh safely and uh efficaciously in older individuals, uh in t you know, we're talking even into octogenarians. Uh so

uh like many forms of exercise, we can appropriately tailor it to the uh to the individual. And so, you know, to just say that every everyone can do interval training or no one can do interval training, those those blanket start statements just aren't appropriate.

And so that style of exercise uh in individuals uh like that can can also be effectively applied. So my short answer to your question is no, we have not seen a situation where You know, people are unable unable to sufficiently activate their skeletal muscles to get a cardiovascular training stimulus.

Thank you to First Form for sponsoring this episode of the show. I would love to highlight OptiGreens50. It is a greens superfood with phytonutrients, digestive enzymes, and probiotics in it. It comes in a pack. with 30 servings. So they're individual serving packs, which make it very easy to travel with. One of the reasons I love OptiGreens 50 is that it is low temperature processed, meaning it maintains its nutrient value. There is no artificial colors, flavors.

Sweeteners or preservatives. It is 100% non-GMO and gluten-free. There is a whole host of things in it. including barley grass, organic spirulina, wheatgrass, oak grass, all the grasses, kale, rice bran, cranberry, wildberry, all wild sorry, wild bilberry. That is just a sliver of the extensive amount of phytonutrient containing compounds in it. I think that it is a wonderful product and most importantly,

It tastes really great. Head on over to firstform dot com slash doctor lion. Check out OptiGreens fifty. You can read over There are 15,000 reviews on this product. It is one of their most successful products. That is how much people love it. Go to firstform.com slash doctor lion and get yours today.

This show is brought to you by Inside Tracker. As you know, I believe blood work is very important. And especially on the topic of high-intensity interval training over a period of time, you will see your blood markers. improve. Inside Tracker allows you to examine what is going on in your own body. Inside Tracker has made a great number of strides this past year in adding new biomarkers.

For example, APOB, which is a critical marker for heart health, as well as three hormone markers that are especially important for addressing symptoms related to aging and overall well-being. Inside Tracker has recently added insulin, which is a key biomarker for sustained energy and an early warning sign for several chronic diseases, especially

uh light to moderate alternating pattern of activity can be extremely effective. And so ideally I think we would always suggest that people start with moderate sort of preconditioning before they start to push themselves. You know, that being said, uh high intensity interval training has been uh applied to many different uh in individuals. Um, you know, again, I'm I'm not a medical doctor, I'm not a cardiologist, but there are explicit conditions.

Unstable angina, for example, where this might be absolutely contraindicated, but it's more, I would say, the exception than the rule for as a general statement, can uh most people perform interval type exercise?

But of course, you can work well above that up to what coaches and athletes refer to maximal sprint speed. And that difference between maximal aerobic work rate and maximal sprint rate is sometimes called your anaerobic speed reserve. But the bottom line is working above VO two max work rate pace constitutes

sprint interval type training in a performance setting where they're we're usually often aware of what peak workloads uh are, peak work rates are. On the the health on the health side, uh again, I would go back to this. uh the the ACSM definition of near maximal to maximal uh exercise and there we're talking uh you know above about 91% of VO2 max above 95% of heart rate max 17 out of 20 on an RPE scale. So again, those are contextualized reasonable values, if you will, or thresholds.

For what distinguishes this particularly intense variant, sprint interval training, from other forms of lower intensity, high-intensity interval training?

Will try to sometimes position interval training as only sprint-type interval training or these all-out wing-gate-type efforts and say, Well, no one's gonna do that. And of course many people are unwilling or unable to do that style of training, but there's a there's a huge range there, I think, when it comes to high intensity uh interpretation.

As it relates to sex differences, men and women, do you see that some individuals respond better? than others w how can we think about that?

But these studies tend to be relatively small. And it's hard to say, is this a true biological sex difference, or is this just inter-individual differences in training responsiveness? And I I'm more I think I think the best answer could be I think there's much greater inter individual differences in training responsiveness regardless.

of if you identify as a man or a woman or you're a biological male or biological female, that's not to say there's no sex-based differences uh at all. But I think in a lot of things they tend to be relatively subtle. They may be real. Um, but we really need some very large scale studies to to pull this out and tease this out. You know, to be clear.

Males and females can both respond robustly to interval style training. There might be some subtle differences there that may be related to biological sex.

aging, protecting themselves against sarcopenia, which we know that there are fiber type changes. What are some of the fiber type changes that you've seen in high intensity interval training? And also again, some of those other um m adaptations like mitochondria.

You know, after a few days or weeks or months, uh, we see measurable increases in mitochondrial protein content. So we'll pick. Specific proteins that we know are integral to mitochondria, and we'll measure those in different ways, either the maximum activity or the content of those, and we see that they're increased.

You can also measure something called mitochondrial respiration, which is a measure of sort of how functional the mitochondria are. Literally, how much oxygen is that unit of mitochondria using? So there's various metrics. that we've used and shown that all of them can be increased to varying uh degrees. We all these are hard studies to do, but in collaboration uh with some colleagues down uh in Australia, we have done some fiber type specific responses, both acutely and

and after a period of training. And we can see stimulation of both of those things, acute biomarkers as well as training markers in both fiber types, type one, type two muscle fibers. There's not a massive hypertrophy response. So you can basically, with traditional aerobic style interval training, if we'll use that broad term, you see. An improvement in the metabolic profile of the fibers, an enhanced mitochondrial content, which should suggest greater ability to burn fat and sugars.

but we don't see marked hypertrophy growth of those muscle fibers. So sprint and hit are not really a massive hypertrophic stimulus. but they do target the fibers to make them more metabolically healthy, if you will.

um you you tend to have a greater capacity to utilize both sugars and fats, muscle glycogen, triglyceride, uh, you know, bloodborne fats, bloodborne uh sugars. Um and and so In my view, many types of exercise training will enhance mitochondrial content, mitochondrial function, mitochondrial health, and that in turn translates into greater metabolic flexibility and the ability to use.

sugars or fats depending on when the need arises. And so what we'll often see is in resting conditions, the ability to utilize lipid at rest or burn fat at rest is enhanced. And it's also enhanced during exercise. And then when you really have to drop the hammer and perform hard, you can oxidize or burn through sugar, glycogen, at a higher rate as well. So it's sort of like the overall capacity increases.

And then in a at a given situation, rest, moderate exercise, high intensity exercise, you can shift the type of fuel that you're using in those various states.

And we know that sprint interval is its own beast. I am very hesitant to even lump those nutritional aspects together. So I will let you take it away and decide if um they should be lumped together or not.

Very, very subtle effects. We've had people train in the fed or fasted uh state, for example. Uh other work that's looked at carbohydrate restriction or carbohydrate supplementation. Again, maybe on the restriction side, you can see some uh there's some suggestions of maybe some enhancements in.

in in in mitochondria. Um, you know, th that's a really loaded issue and it doesn't mean that people should, you know, train glycogen depleted or anything like that, or certainly not race glycogen uh depleted. But suffice to say Nutrition can subtly modify some of these responses that we see to hit and sit, but it tends to be small and subtle. And the the main stimulus is is the exercise stimulus.

you know, they tend to be relatively small in terms of number of participants and they tend to be relatively short term. You know, a three month training study, if you do it well, it's hard to do and and you know that's a relatively short period of time. There certainly aren't large scale randomized clinical studies looking at the effect of the interactive effect.

of nutrition and interval training. There are now some very long duration high-intensity interval training studies. For example, the Generation 100 study followed older individuals over five years. of interval or moderate uh uh moderate continuous uh style training. So there are some longer duration studies now, but they're still the uh they're more the exception than the rule.

a the body would experience, say, a stress different than an individual who is going to do maybe deadlifts or squats. Does timing matter? So you're not allowed to say only as long as you get it in that day. Is there some benefit to uh doing it earlier on in the day from um perhaps asleep or some kind of recovery uh or metabolic benefit or cortisol benefit versus if an individual is doing a sprint interval training at eight o'clock at night.

you're more likely to get it in. Right. I have colleagues who will talk about your you got so much battery life through the day, right? Stuart Phillips definitely talks about this and my exercise behavior colleagues talk about the battery. And over the course of the day, the battery drains down. And so You could argue that while the battery's nice and high at the start of the day, you get it in and maybe you you're gonna give a little more effort or something like that.

for doing interval training in the morning, but I yeah, uh you said I can't say it, so That's the best evidence that I could give you.

the role of hormones other than clearly, you know, you have massive catecholamine responses when you do this type of of training. Uh but we also know that they spike and then they come back down. So I I don't um Uh, you know, I I know there's six some suggestions out there that you have chronic increases in cortisol and that could lead to you know some deleterious effects, but I I I don't see a lot of evidence for that when I look at the literature.

supplement with creatine, for example, and would that potentiate responses? I think you can make a really good theoretical argument for that. I would say the evidence right now for that is is limited. Um Yeah. Again, there's there's good theoretical rationale, or caffeine would be another example, right? Because we know with either creatine or caffeine, if you do repeated sprints.

you can see an increase, a slight boost in power. And so presumably then the cumulative stress over time may facilitate some greater adaptations or responses. And there's no doubt that you if you look at acute situations, you can see that. There's just not great data right now in my mind to suggest that any particular supplement is going to absolutely Potentiate responses. You know, can selected supplements be used quite effectively by athletes?

Absolutely. Right. I'm I'm a big fan of the Australian Institute of Sport Pyramid. You've probably seen it in various versions where, you know, you have to get the base right in terms of Fundamental nutrition, fundamental sleep, fundamental training, if all of those things are right.

then right at the top of the pyramid, you know, you can potentiate uh some selected responses. But for the vast majority of us, we don't have the pyramid right, or there's so much variability in the pyramid. And that's where I think any slight benefit that you might get from supplementation is going to be washed out by all this variability of I didn't sleep very last well very night or, you know, my diet hasn't been consistently well or I missed those training sets.

Molecular signals and it you know, it's too simplistic to say we're we're gonna identify the exercise gene or the sprint gene or the hit gene or something like that. You know, if people have it or they don't, we know they should train in that manner. But I know there's very robust work that's happening right now, um, you know, with these in incredible bioinformetrics and and these amazing research platforms. that are trying to look at, you know, these clusters of proteins

that you see are only these protein signals are only activated or go up with this particular uh type of training. And so that's where then you might be able to get to, well, if we know an athlete has this sort of molecular signature, maybe they might respond more to this type of training or that type of training. You know, there's a field of metabolomics.

But I think that's just a fascinating area of research. where there will be advances, you know, the pace of which are are hard to to say. But, you know, like we see examples of that in medicine, you know, oncology and cancer biology would be a very clear example of that.

I don't think we're that far away from starting to identify, you know, people who have this metabolic signature or profile, uh, you know, uh particularly if they have these few explicit proteins uh lumped together, we know that they respond very robustly to uh heavy uh resistance training.

Um, you know, I I don't know yet that we're gonna do much about that. You know, we're certainly not talking about gene manipulation or anything like that, but it just might help people, especi you know, the hard gainers or, you know, whatever type of exercise. you find you're not responsive to that, it may just help explain that for you.

specific uh proteins or markers, uh and then can we tie those to neurogenesis or brain health or other specific metabolic health outcomes? Yes, I think there's going to be advances in that area, absolutely.

And perhaps it's that they're just not doing the activity necessary or the activity that is necessary for their body to produce the myokines or the gene expression that we need. And if if we could really target that, you know, from a a muscle centric medicine perspective. we could change the trajectory of health. And as a researcher, you're probably cringing because I'm talking in an absolute here, but, you know, um muscle health and that input of exercise is everything.

But you know, what explains that? Right? What explains those people or the very few people who might go down in their VO2 max? Now, you know, we call them non-responders. Doesn't mean they're non responders to everything. They might still have an improved blood pressure profile or or glucose control prof profile. But it would be um profound, I think, to start to be able to explain. W why does that happen? And could we identify those individuals in advance and say like,

this type of traditional approach to exercise or diet is is not ideal for you. And there is some evidence to say that well, if you tweak it or you train in this way or you take this particular supplement, that might help potentiate responsiveness in you.

So definitely one aspect of my lab is moving towards Larger randomized controlled trials, right? And so we have two studies ongoing right now with my uh primary collaborator, uh Dr. John Little at the University of British Columbia, looking at Exercise snack interventions, what we call technologically enabled. So we're working with an industry partner, and so people will get a prompt on their phone, a message that says, Hey, it's time for your exercise snack.

And then they can choose what snack they want to do. It shows them a video to do the snack hard, you know. It's right there in front of you. You just got to follow along and do the exercise snack. And we're comparing that. So those snacks are vigorous in nature. And there's another group who's also getting a snack, but it's lower intensity in nature. And obviously our hypothesis is the groups that do the more vigorous exercise snacks.

over a couple of months of that type of training are gonna see a greater improvement in their cardiospiratory fitness, greater blood profile. And so that work is ongoing right now. We're just about to start a very similar study in individuals with type 2 diabetes. Uh you know clearly.

Lack of time is an excuse for many people. It's not the primary barrier. It's an often-cited barrier for why people are not active. But the reality is that many people are looking for time-efficient options, or they will say, I see the guidelines, but how little do I really have to do? How little can I get away with?

And so we think that work will make a contribution by saying, you know what? If you do three exercise snacks a day, a few times a week for 12 weeks, you can see improvements in your blood sugar profile. Um so that work is ongoing. I was very privileged to be part of a very large study uh that was published at the end of last year.

That was mining UK biobank data. So you may be aware of the UK Biobank, it's a very big collection of data uh in the United Kingdom. And so you it enables you to follow large groups of individuals over time. And that work showed that as little as three to four minutes a day of vigorous intermittent physical activity, not even structured exercise, three to four minutes a day.

of vigorous intermittent lifestyle, physical activity, was associated with about a twenty five percent lower mortality compared to people who did none of that. So that work to me is quite compelling. And so we're clearly I'm a proponent of vigorous intensity exercise, low dose vigorous intensity exercise for those Who are unwilling to engage in large volumes of exercise. And we're trying to now look at that on several fronts. Certainly the small, basic mechanistic work.

controlled randomized trials and collaborating with s with some other experts on these larger databases. And to me, they're all sort of suggesting the same thing. And that's that refigurous exercise or physical activity can be extremely beneficial to your health.

uh to uh to the general public. Uh but we consider we touch on many of the things that we uh spoke about uh today. And so uh I appreciate that plug and I appreciate your interest in our work and I I hope some of this conversation is of interest. Uh to your listeners.

The content of this podcast is not intended to substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical condition they may have and should seek the assistance. Of their healthcare professional for any such conditions. This is purely for entertainment and educational purposes only.