I get a you, Bloody champions, Welcome to another installment of not only the You Project, but also the fucking Paul Taylor Podcast. Without the fucking at the start. It's just the Paul Taylor Podcast, which is much better than mine. Body, brain, bum toe, fucking project whatever it used to be called. I'm so glad you changed it.
I think I'm putting this done as an AX redded episode there in Creggummer.
Oh, sorry, I forgot yes so much on Sorry, I do it.
Bit, but I probably don't have six wear words in the intro. Generally, that's all right, all right.
I'll tell you what. We'll do another one, just in case.
You want no, no, no, no no, let's just roll.
Also joining us on the callers Tiffany and Cook, who has our own show, fuck it. While we're mentioning podcasts, roll with the punches, Let's give everyone a little bit of love. Tiffany and Cook over there wearing the typ hat today Production manager Editor Chief Guru Hi tiv.
It's a good hat fits well.
I'm very good.
How are you HAPs and Tyler?
I'm doing I'm doing all right, I ask Pete. I don't know he's he looks all right.
I'm doing all right.
I've got one tooth less than I had this morning, but I'm doing all right.
No, no, no, no, nothing so glamorous as that I had had an abscess and it turns out the nerve had died.
But I'll tell you what, it was pretty amazing. Went to the dentist.
She was brilliant, and she has this new three D X ray machine where it did a three D X ray of my mouth and she showed me on both sides of the of the mouth, just above the palate, that's where your sinus is. I hadn't realized your sinus is that close. And on the right hand side. My immune system had dumped all of this inflammation because the tooth infection had sort of punctured and got into the sinus. So it's amazing to see the body reacting by just
jumping a whole heap of inflammation in there. So but yeah, the tooth I had to come oute.
Are you A lot of people, like a disproportioned number of people, are terrified of dentists, which I don't really understand because I don't really hurt these days anywhere.
I actually said to the danist, I mean, I just had a tooth extraction. I was like, that was completely pain free. That's not what it was like twenty years ago.
Yeah, what about you, Cookie? Do you do you go the dentist regularly?
I do? I do.
I used to hate it when I was a kid because I remember getting a tooth, getting the drill and being told I was crying and she said, don't be a baby.
And the dentist.
You know, when the dental van used to come to your school. What a terror?
What a terror that was.
I don't think. I don't think getting a tooth out in the back of a fucking high ace is a great plan. Fucking now, sitting on a fucking egg crate with Brian, with suppliers going, You'll be right, just hold on to this, hold on to this fluffy toy. Fuck, those those days are gone.
Fuck.
That's probably still the day to day operating system in Devonport, isn't it. Shout out to all our friends in Devonport. Fuck you know we just lost both listeners.
Ye oh dear, he's on one today. We can tell.
Now, did you get a workted in this morning?
Crag?
Yeah, I'm I'm training in an hour and fifty one minutes with the crab, as is my normal sixteen hundred appointment. But I'm good. I took some creatinine before. This is not where we intended to go, but we never go where we intended to go. We'll get there. But I've started using creatine somewhat religiously in a way that I never have in my life, not stupidly. Just five grams a day, yeah, I take it about now. I literally took it ten to two. And again this is not
a recommendation anyone, but for me. I take NMN and I take another thing called trimethyl glycine, and I take that. I mix it all together my brain because and it ain't a placebo because I didn't expect anything, but my brain works better like one hunt. Not one hundred percent better, but one hundred percent. It's effective. So I reckon. I mean, it's a ridiculous guess, but I reckon. I'm twenty twenty five percent better, like my more energy, better focus.
So yeah, there is very good research now upo the briand and cognitive benefits of creating, which and I talk about it all the time my tox and I say everybody should be taking creating five grams a day, because if we think about it, we have three energy systems in the body, right, we have aeral big energy system, then we have our diacolytic energy from our anaerobic energy system, and then we have ATPPC. So ATPPC you know, as you know, graig is typically sprint fast par explosive stuff
last about ten seconds. But the PC stands for fossil creating. And it turns out that creating can actually cross the bloodbeing barrier and fuel your brain sales. And it's actually been shown to be really effective if you've had poor sleep, because we know that your cognitive performance drops off a cliff with per sleep and creating Emily, it's the decline in cognitive performance after a bad night sleep.
That's interesting. You say that because I read day. When I say I read a paper, you and I both know. When I say I read a paper, I read the fucking synopsis and the results. I read the intro. But they did a study recently which you may or may not have read exactly what you are talking about, using creating to a milia ate orgate whatever shitty sleep. But they used thirty grams a day. Wow, Yeah, thirty grams a day people, not on the Gary Glitter fucking hell.
Yeah, so that's a lot of work, right, cockney rhyming slang, Yeah yeah, yeah, I got it. Personal upset.
Yeah, so on the ship he means so, actually, you.
Know what, you can't You have to remove that from cockney rhyming slang now because Gary Glitter is a pedophyte. Yeah, well so we can't say that anymore.
Thanks for bringing that up. Thanks. Well, he's dead, isn't he.
I don't know if.
He's dead or still he might be dead. Can you google that.
I hope he's dead because he's an individual.
But anyway, he's.
An able fuck And thanks for taking that detour in our otherwise friendly, come fucking hell to me. So how do we go from creating to Gary very glitter? But anyway, so if you're wondering how much is five grams? Everyone, it's about a flat ish teaspoon depending on the slide, you know, a level teaspoon, depending on the size of the tea spurn. But yeah, it is. It's I think you would know, maybe better than I would make. I think it's the most researched supplement ever.
It is. It's the most research un safest actually, so it's just yeah, I'd say that people get on the creatine train.
How old are you now?
Fifty three?
How do you feel like? I know this is a how do you feel?
Though? I actually feel really good at the minute, despite my recent diagnosis, which I don't think I've told you about. I went to see I played soccer. Well, I've stopped playing soccer and because I entered my knee. But I was playing over thirty five and one of the guys in my team's a cardiologist. So I'd say to him, ham it what I want to get the full mot that's a British term.
What do you call it?
Here? You put your car in for a service? I got, and I just right, I want to get your food diddy right.
So we said, come and see me.
Will do the stress test, We'll do a cardiac MRI, will do your celtum score, will do all of that. And then he sat me down and said, look, fitness wise, your heart is great, but we found a congenital heart defect. You have yep. I was born with a bi cuspared aortic valve rather than a tri cuspared aortic valve. So on January the twentieth thanking them for open heart surgery.
Fucking hell, did con you? So you've got two instead of three?
I got a yeah, two leaves, And what happens?
You're supposed to have three leafs in your aortic valve, and that stills for the listeners. You're left ventricle pump the blood out up through your aorta, and that's the main artery. It takes the blood to the rest of your body. So you've got this valve that's got three leaves, and it opens and closes, and I'm born. It's about one I think it was one to two percent of the population is born with a bicuspid valve, so hopefully two parts to it.
It's deformity and it it over time.
It doesn't close properly, so then you start getting a bit of blood regurgitation. So as it pumps out, some of it leaks back in the overtime. What can happen? Then when the ventricle fills up again, there's extra blood coming leaking back in, so it starts to stretch the wall of the ventricle. And Ros said to me, he says, look, what will happen? Because I may symptomatic, right, But he says, one you'll start to get symptoms at some stage and you'll be just a bit of shortness of breath and
just going. My fitness is off, and he says, what will happen? Looks like you just train harder, problem worse, all right. So he said to me, I'm asymptomatic. There's they ent did further test. There was very mild regurgitation. So he said, look, we probably don't need to do anything for five to maybe ten years, but we need to observe it. And as soon as you find symptoms, you need to come in. And I'm like, bug at that. Let's get it done because my view on this. So
there's opposing views and cordage. Dad's a retired doctor and he's like, why would you do an operation that you don't have to do yet?
And I said, well, don I'm ex military.
When you go to war, you want to go to war on your terms, when your opponent or your adversary is at its weakest and when you're at your strongest. The longer I wait, the weaker I'm going to get. Because I'm fifty three, and the longer I wait, the stronger my opponent is going to get because it's going to start to stretch the wall a little bit, and then it's impacting upon your heart function. So I'm like, no,
let's just let's just get it done. But you know what's interesting, because I was talking about this history, I walked out of there and the words of Seneca came into my head, the stoic philosopher. He says, I pity the man who has never faced adversity, because he's never faced an opponent, and nobody, not even him, knows what he's capable of. So I went I went home and I wrote on my bathroom mirror worthy opponent.
When you were doing that, when you were telling us, I was I was thinking of San Su yes, w yeah, yeah, I mean yeah, I thought I was about to say thank you San Sue after that little bloody But I mean it actually makes sense, It actually makes sense, And I think I wouldn't have reacted the way. I wouldn't have made that decision. I would have waited. But honestly, when you explain it that way, I think that actually maybe makes more sense. And I think, so, how do you feel about that?
Like?
How are you?
I wrote a LinkedIn article about why I'm embracing my upcoming open heart surgery. I kind of walked out, you know what. So it's interesting because whatever you pay attention to, your brain commits sales to right. And because I've been reading so much stoic philosophy and in my PhD so much about heartiness, right, is that thing? Worthy opponent came And the next thing that came into my head was,
this is what I've trained for. And I remember just this little flash of a conversation with a mad of mine, reg We'll say a second n but he's ex Lieutenant Colonel Sas, Australian SAS and one of the first into the Iraq War. It was the first Aussie in there. And when Saddam viated kwie it and I remember talking to Rege and saying, how did you feel when you were going in there? And he said, pt it was a perverse sense of excitement because I knew it was risky.
But this is what I trained for. And often you hear military people say that, and that's what I thought as I got into my car. This is what I've trained for all my life, for this worthy opponent who will test and develop my skills isn't it. I mean, this is a fucking fascinating discussion because so you got some health news that would fucking terrify most people, right, and you and I had.
A brief chat, very brief. We're talking about hypochondria, or they call it illness anxiety disorder now or somatic symptom disorder, right, but us all people know it is hypochondria. But like, not only is illness a really interesting conversation for you know, the biology and the physiology and the surgery and all the practical kind of what's what's not working with your heart or what might not be working and then the
potential surgical resolution to that, of course. But what I find fascinating, because I'm the mind guy, as are you in many ways, is your fucking response, like and it just you know that it speaks to that idea that in life things happen, and then we tell a story a story about the thing. So you know, like you getting that that's just information which has no power or
meaning until you give it. Yeah, right now, if you had have gone, if you had have been like some people and you had have gone into fight or flight, you would have maybe panicked, you would have been in absolute terror, you would have started straight away to put yourself in a negative state physically, mentally and emotionally and potentially spiraled into some kind of episode. It's so interesting
when you hear that. You know you've got a defect in your heart and sooner or later you're going to need to have open heart surgery, and you choose to respond a certain way and not only and it's not you're not pretending. It's not like, oh, he's just pretending like this is literally for you something which is almost an opportunity for growth and resilience. And you know, I guess some kind of journey into self awareness and self understanding maybe, yeah, because.
It's I mean, it comes back to the stoics again about you don't get to choose your circumstances, but you get to choose how you react, right, And and Seneca.
Said, it's not what you endure, about how you endure it that's important.
But I think this comes down to because it was an automatic reaction, right, It's not bravado. It's an automatic reaction. And yes, I had the little gremlin pop up later talking about, hey, what could go wrong? And so I went and did a whole risk analysis on it, which we can come back and talk to about that. But I think this is to do with myelination in the brain, right, Because whatever you pay attention to, whatever you think about, starts your brain commits sales to it, right, and they
start to become pathways in the brain. And just like an animal going through the forest will go through the easiest path, that's what happens with information. It come into the brain, it goes down whatever pathway has been mielinated.
And just because you know, because I'm ex military, and because I've talked about resilience for the last fifteen years and hardiness for the last few years, which I'm a much bigger fan of, by the way, and part one of the hardiness concepts we talked about this previously is a challenge orientation that high hardiness people view adversity as challenge and opportunity. And I thought, well, okay, this is an opportunity for me to get in fantastic shape because
I need to. I'm going into battle. I'd like, Tiff, you know, who prepares for a boxing fight. I've done the exact same thing. You know, how are you going to prepare for a worthy opponent? So right on that on my bathroom mirror, I've written down my training program for that worthy opponent. That then is a reminder.
So the beauty of this is that I've now.
Hit the fifty challenge, the fifty to fifty to fifty to fifty challenge, which is, you're in your fifty you got to have a VO two max in your in the fifties, a resting heart rate below fifty and a heartbeat variability above fifty. And I had been flirting around the edges of it for the last couple of years, but now I just with training for the last eight weeks, I'm buying in there now right, So every client has a silver lining. But that's that's that progress check that
you know. I'm I'm I'm well on my way to meeting my worthy opponent in the in the best ship that I could be in. And the other thing as well, sorry could just to write the side is when Ross said to me, you give me the news, and he says, he said to me, how do you feel? And I said, I'm a lucky bastard. I am so lucky that I came to see you to do a check, because otherwise I wouldn't know right, and so you could you do get to choose how you respond. I could have responded,
oh woe is me? You know, conngenderal of the hard defect. You know what could happen all of that and as you say, that would send you into a negative spiral, or I could choose to respond differently. But and this is where so there's really cool research about challenging threat. So if I was to view that situation is threatening and it activates cortisol HPA axis and damages the cardiovascular system.
And that happens to all people when they view a potential stressor as threatening, but people who viewed as challenging, it activates the heat this sam axis sympathetic adrenom ajudery with fire or flight, as people will know, and has a positive impact on the cardiovascular system. So that's nature's way of getting you up for the challenge. But here's
the thing that most people don't realize the axis. The half life of adrenaline and nora adrenaline is one or two minutes, so within a couple of minutes it's out of your system. The half life of cortisol more than an R. So when people are constantly thinking about threat and loss, It drives cortisol, and it has damaging and effects on their hearts that are under whole system that can persist for ours. Language is so critical and mindset in the fears of adversity is so critical.
Isn't it weird that some people I think I'm one and your one that So you get some potentially devastating news, well for some people they would call that devastating news, right, and you go, oh, and then you double down on your training, like you now know you've got a heart defect. You double down on all of this, and you rather than backing off or rather than you know, just kind of coasting up until the surgery and looking and putting yourself in cotton wool and getting ready, not that you
should do that, of course. So now you've set all of these new fucking goals, right, and so too. And Tiff saw this. I was demonstrating. I don't know if I told you this, but about six weeks ago I was in the gym and I was teaching. I was shown Tiff how to do a single leg squat on a very high bench right, so like a one meter high box. And I demonstrated, so put left foot on and just do a single leg squat and it wasn't quite high enough, so I put this rubber matt under it. Anyway,
I fell us over tip from about twenty six feet high. Right, I fell from I don't know, my shoulder was probably eight feet off the ground onto the ground on my left shoulder right without tiff. How bad was it?
It was so bad And you're not just on the ground.
You fell onto this raised metal ledge of the squad rack.
It was so bad.
Yeah, And I was thinking about it.
I was trying to get a video of I'll send you you laughter your hours off right, most people feel sick your last did your laugh because reactions?
I actually didn't. That's how bad it was, most of it.
But yeah, no, no, no, And anyway, so I went to So I ended up in emergency, and you know, and the dude's like, how on earth you haven't got multiple broken bones? Is astounding, And he goes, what do you do? And I go, I just fucking lift shit all the time, and he goes, whatever, that's why, that's why he goes. Yeah, yeah, he goes, You've got it
like a lot of muscle for your age. He goes, whatever you do, keep doing that, and then he goes to me, but I wouldn't lift anything for about six weeks if I was you, And I'm like sure, sure, in my mind, I'm like six hours and you know, I mean, you know, of course that I was training the next day. But for the last six weeks, I've literally been It's funny because my food has been dialed in my sleep, like fucking because I don't have the level of function that I did in that shoulder. But
it's getting better. But I'm actually getting better results in the last six weeks with a fucking handicap, you know, because of tweaks, because I'm like so much more intent and serious about you know, because I don't want to go backwards. And it's funny that you know that can be the case, but I guess the opposite. And we spoke briefly about this. I want your thoughts on there. So it's hard to get really clear research and I
guess understandably. But the Journal of American Medical Association says four and a half percent of people are hypochondriacs or have illness anxiety disorder. The DSM five says one to five percent, and an article which this would be the least of my sources in terms of trustworthiness. But psychology today says five to ten percent of people. But even if we go with a DSM five, which is, let's say five percent, they say four and a half. So oh no, let's go with the journal anyway, five percent.
Like you think about that in Australia, so one percent is a quarter of a million people, so five percent is one point two five million people in the States. Yeah, so that's one point two five million people would have
anxiety illness anxiety disorder. And you think about the States with three hundred and thirty million, so that would be thirty three million, so give or take sixteen and a half million people who who who panic and create anxiety or have an anxiety response to a problem that doesn't exist, you know, and this, and then you think about like any kind of slight and not throwing anyone under the bus here, I'm just having a conversation, But you think about, then,
speaking of that cordisole response of which you spoke obi one, you think about, you don't have a problem, like you're worrying about your stressing about you're creating a cordisole response in reaction to something that isn't real. You do that often enough and then you create something that's fucking real.
Yeah, absolutely, because that chronic cord is all I mean, I'll tell you better than anybody with oscar with this Cushing's disease. Yes, chronic elevated cordisol is so damaging to the body and the brand.
And there's I think there's a number of factors at play here.
I think that modern society is creating a generation of people who are half human half mere cut.
Well, let's go on, right, what will we call this hybrid?
I don't know. We need we need to create a new for it, because it's like a new race that has come. And so everybody knows what mayor cats are I think you know, yeah, you see the Mayor cats with David.
Attenborough and that they are and they're up on their hind.
Legs looking for danger, right, always looking for or at least a few of them are always looking on the lookout for danger. And that's what society has become. And I think there's a number of factors at play here. And I've been thinking about this, not not from I hadn't heard those statistics that you were talking about. I was thinking more about mental health issues and anxiety depression. There is I think a number of factors at play.
One is too much information human The human brain has never ever meant to take in that much information that we are exposing ourselves to you, and so much of it is negative. Right, there's just negative news. You know, we are not supposed to know about millions of people's woes at one time, right, And all of this stuff. And then there's doctor Google, where people can then google stuff.
Whenever they have anything at all, they google stuff. And if they have a predisposition to being anxious at all, which we used to call a bit of a worry wart, but now it's medicalized, then they start to catastrophize.
Now I think that the stuff that then plays into this.
There was an umbrella review published about two months ago into Ultra Process for Consumption. So, just to explain for the listeners, a systematic review meta analysis is where you take lots of different studies that have been published on a topic and the researchers weed out the crap and then they pull all the data together and they get
stronger data. So an umbrella review is where there's a number of different systematic reviews and meta analys and they pull all of that data together, and that's where we start to get pretty strong evidence. And then there's this protocol you go through that can enhance the strength of observational evidence. Right, is there animal studies being done that show the same thing as their plausible biological mechanisms? Is
there a dose response all of these things? And what this Umbrella review showed that increasing ultra processed foods in the diet increased the risk of anxiety by forty eight percent and common mental health disorder by fifty three percent. Right now in the States, in the United Kingdom, and I would bet my house in Australia more than fifty percent of all foods consumed our ultra process crap. So
we're eating shit that is negatively affecting our brains. What we're also doing is not moving very much, which is negatively affecting our brains and increasing the risk of anxiety and depression. And then we have all this social media where there's all this upwards comparison, right where you're comparing yourself to the best little snapshots of people's lives that
isn't really real, but they're more handsome than you. They're richer than you, they're in better shape than you, and that creates a negativity bias in the brain, and all of these things feed into each other. So I think when you have a brain that has been then primed to be predisposed to anxiety depression, and then you combine that with access to all of this health information and stuff on the news, that's maybe just lingering in the
back of people's minds. I'm not surprised that it's five percent, and wouldn't be surprised if it if it was ten percent per psychology today. But this is my point about we are creating a generation of meerkats, and not to detract from this subject. We can circle back to this one though. But the other thing is constantly talking about feelings, and with kids constantly being asked how they're feeling and being in touch with their feelings and stuff like that
makes it fucking worse. Guess what happens if you're constantly being asked do you feel okay? Do you feel sad? Do you feel depressed?
On the fuck?
Maybe I do, right. I think it's just becoming worse. And I actually think that the mental health industry is minting clients. Yeah, yeah, just like the Central Bank mints
money every now and in it prints it. Because you talked about the DSM and Professor Mark Horowitz, who was on my podcast, has said there's been a progressive loosening of the guidelines for mental health issues in DSM and the case for antidepressants, and he said, according to the newest DSM, eighty five percent of adults in Australia meet the criteria for being on an antidepressant.
Yeah, back back.
Also, sorry, just to throw this into the eighty five percent, I believe of anti of psychiatric medication in this country is prescribed by non psychiatric doctors.
Yeah, it's it is a slippery slope. And I mean, you've got to be careful, don't you what you say? But I'm with you. It's like there are people with obviously people with real mental health issues who really need to be looked after and all of that. But you get to the point where I don't think she'd mind. I'm going to tell you a quick story. Oh, by the way, have I spoken to you about that book called Bad Therapy?
Paul, I've got it. I'm reading it. Breton.
How good is that?
Everybody needs to read that book.
Yep, so it's by I think her name is Abigail Shreyer, isn't it. Yeah, yeah, and yeah great. But essentially she's saying, for some people, talk therapy makes it worse.
Correct, And the research is clear on this right that for not quite a lot of people, talk therapy mixed stuff for us. And again I will reinforce what you said, Greg, this is this is not about judgment. We're not judging anybody here at all. We're just talking about what the science actually says.
I had a young girl that trains often with Tiff. Her name's Ash, so Ash has been on the show. She's great. She lost a seventy kilos Paul, So she went from one thirty or it might have been seventy five. I got a massive amount of weight. And this is not giving anything away. She had she didn't have lap band. She just lost it with exercise and great diet. And you know, she did an amazing job. Then she had surgery because of the skin. And now she's been training
for a while and she trains really well. But she's young and fit and strong and healthy. And the other day she was in the gym and and you know, I have this whole. I call them my merry band of misfits, all these people that I kind of help about six or seven tips in the rotation, and people just people just turn up when I go well, look like people ring me and go what time are you at the gym? And then like I don't go to the gym to train anyone. I say, this is when
I will be there. If you turn up, I'll tell.
You what to do. Right.
So she's one of them. Anyway. The other day I'm training and about three times she's like through the session, why are you so mean to me? Why are you so hard on me? Why are you so mean to me?
And I'm like, I just didn't say anything, didn't say anything. And at the end I go, come over here, champ, and she's like, oh am, I in trouble, you know, and people I go, no, I just sat it down and I go, okay here. Firstly, it ain't my job to make you feel good, and she's like, you know how, and I said, this is my job.
My job is to help you the best version of you can that you can be in the gym, to explore your physiological potential. You're like, from where you've come, you're fucking amazing. However, you are not training hard, but you think you're training hard. I go, you've got a story in your head of how hard you're training. This thing called rate of perceived exertion, right, which is your
assessment of how hard you think you're working. You think you're working at eight or nine, you're working at four. I said, I'm not telling you this to make you feel bad. I'm telling you this because I want you to have a fucking revelation and train at a level that's really going to create some kind of adaptation, which is what you want. What you want is change, what you want is improvement. And it's just sitting there and I go, I'm not I'm telling you this because you've
got more potential than you realize. But every time you go to me, ah ah ah, I go, you're fucking yourself up and it's annoying, right, and it makes me want to train you less. So anyway, she went home and then she sent me a big long message going, thank you for the talk. I realized, blah blah blah. And then I saw her maybe three or four days later. She goes, you were right. She goes, I'm so much like she's been training herself. She goes, I didn't realize
how fucking strong. Well, she didn't say, fuck how strong I am? And I go, right, I go, here's the thing, like when you are not that everyone needs to train like a maniac. But we have a story in our head about what is hard. Yes, and when you believe the story, it's hard.
I go, mane, that's I go.
You're twenty seven years old, you've got no injuries, and you've been training for years. You don't know how, you know, Like when Tiff came in, because Tiff, Tiff does have a higher threshold naturally, and she'd been boxing and punched in the face. Yes, shit like her you know, work is Yeah, her level was straight up in eight or nine. And I'm not trying to throw Ash under the bus because we love Ash. But if I'd say to Tiff,
do who you know? Like she was deadlifting over one hundred k's in weeks, in weeks of having started deadlifting, you know, I mean some people train for five years and never get close to that, you know. So yeah, but it is just that I think we've got to be aware of our stories and hit the pause button, you know, it's like your story is this is a challenge. Fuck, this is good. I'm ready, you know, And that I just think, rather than rather than being the victim of
your circumstances, just hit the pause button. And that's not to say there are no victims there. Of course, there are very real victims, and there are legitimate terrible situations. But just being able to kind of, I guess, create our own reality consciously rather than have it created for us by external forces that we think we can't control.
Yeah. Absolutely, And that story about what hard that applies not just to training but to life in general and psychologically.
And that's what I was getting at with the meerkats.
Is that and when you're constantly focused and like your bringing commits sales to whatever you pay attention to. So all of this attention on feelings and mental health I think is making stuff a lot worse. And I think the higher up you are on and this is that there's no evidence for this whatsoever. Right, it's just a hunch that I had the other day.
The higher up that we get on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, the more prone we become to becoming meerkats, right, because we don't have real problems like you talk about real.
But I mean everybody. I'm fucking sick to the back teeth of Australians talking about how hard life is. It's not frigging hard in this country, even for the people who are doing it tough. That's not hard. Right. If you're over the twenty seven you have outlived the average individual who lived in the sixteen fifties. If you have a roof over your head and running water and food security, you got a better than ninety nine point nine percent of homost appiens who have ever walked this earth. I'm
fucking sick of this. Life is so hard in this country. It's not for the vast majority of people, but it's whatever. It's to your point, it's not just about the story that we tell us, but it's about our experiences as well. So I like to talk about a catastrophe skill and there are people who talk about their anxiety or their trauma, and all it is is being done by a boyfriend or going into an exam, right, And I hate the dilution of this word trauma that is now out there.
And you know what I heard today? A moral injury? Fuck?
See it, Like, what's a moral injury, moral injury.
What about me calling you a count moral injuries?
That's a moral injury. Yes, And it's like we have just become meerkats, like completely uber sensitive to anything, like you want to see life or go and live in Sudan right now. You see last week there was there was a guy come in and killed over one hundred kids.
Go and live in Burma right now. People have no idea what's been going on in Burma for the last two years, that civil war, and there are tens of thousands of people who've been being killed over there in Somalia, like the shit that's happening there as well as I mean, everybody's aware obviously of Gaza and the atrocities that happened in Israel and nigh in Lebanon, but there's a whole heap of shit happening all around the world, and there are families all around the world who just cannot afford
to feed their kids. Right and then we've got people in Australia with forty nch TVs and fucking highphilons talking about high hide lifers. I'm over it.
Yeah. Well, and also further to that, it's like, hey, can you get up out of your chair and walk. Can you turn on a tap and get cold water? Can you push a button then the room gets cooler or warmer? Do you have a car?
Do you like?
Can you you know? I like when I meet Joel, my friend who was also in the military and is now quadriplegic. He's been on the show a couple of time. Shout out to Joel Sardi. Just you know, like it takes him three four hours every morning to get ready, just to be able to to start the day. Yeah, you know, and he's got to have any My mindy saying this is, you know, he's got to have a nurse come in and stick a suppository up his ars so he can clear his bows. And then he's got
to washed. Somebody's got to wipe his ass, wash his ass and do all. You know, Now, tell me about your trauma. Well, now tell me about how hard. And we're not, of course, you know, we know people do have real trauma. We're not discounting that, but.
It is, you know, it's like it's the difference between between capital T trauma and small T trauma. So trauma the original definition was a genuine concern for your own life, of the life of a loved one who's somebody who's close to you. Right, it was something like that, it's
not forbetum. But now it's been completely diluted, as have lots of the other criteria for mental health issues, and then people are expecting to have, you know, feelings are being medicated and medicalized ni You know, we look at when people that I know several people who are on antidepressants because a loved one died. That didn't happen thirty
or forty years ago. Right. That's and the research is really clear is that most people when a loved one dies, they really struggle for three to six months and then they slowly get better by themselves. But what's happening is these people are going to see the doctor within a week and the doctor is going, right, bomb, you have an antidepressant, and then a year later, two years later,
they're still only antidepressant. Now that brings to mind creg There's one thing I just thought I would pull up here a research paper by John Reid, who is either clinical psychologist or psychiatrist at the School of Psychology at the University of East London, and he's published a number of different papers and one of these was experiences of five hundred and eighty five people when they tried to
withdraw from anti psychotic drugs. Reported classical withdrawal symptoms including nausea, tremor's, anxiety, agitation, and headaches, and quite a few of them reported having frequent insomnia and feelings of a suicidal ideation.
Wow.
And he has also published research papers on antidepressants and the side effects from them, and they are it's a horror show, right, And I'm going off the top of my head on this one because I don't have it, have it with me right now. But it was something like sixty percent of people prescribed an antidepressant report feeling not like themselves. A chunk of them get suicidal thoughts. I think about fifty percent of them report having sexual
dysfunction that can often persist for years. Actually, here, just find something, right, So this is a research paper and
I'm I'll happy to send the link. Right. Fourteen hundred and thirty one patients from thirty one different countries right, all on antidepressants peer reviewed stuff find that sixty one percent of patients reported at least ten side effects, most common feeling emotionally numb, seventy one percent, feeling foggy or detached, seventy percent, feeling not like myself sixty six percent, sexual difficulties sixty six percent, sixty three percent drowsiness, reduction in
positive feelings sixty percent, suicidality as a result of the drugs fifty percent, withdrawal effects if you try to come off fifty nine percent, and feeling of addiction to the drugs forty percent. And a study of eighteen hundred New Zealanders find very similar results and less than five percent
of patients were told by these potential side effects. Yes, yes, this is the big issue, particularly with non psychiatric doctors precribing psychiatric medication, is that they are not a worthy is because what happened when these drugs got approved.
They only tested for a couple of different side effects.
And guess what happens if you don't test for certain side effects about them, they don't fucking exist, right. So the warnings and the labels and the stuff that the doctor's getting is these drugs are pretty safe, whereas the experiences of real people say this is far from the truth. No, what's clear, and we need to be clear on this.
If you have major depression. Psychiatric drugs can be a lifesaver, particularly in combination with psychotherapy, but for most people who are on them, they actually don't need to be on them, and if they were told about all these side effects, probably would say no, particularly when we know that exercise absolutely trump's antidepressant medication in terms of its effectiveness. Research in Iran showed that saffron is as effective as antidepressants.
Other research shows that certain bacteria are as effective as antidepressants as well, nutrition as well. And if you combine exercise, good nutrition, good sleep, hygene takes saffron and take some probiotics.
I'm sure that the sum there's a summing effect of those.
Well, I think the unis I did one last year. I think that wheeled Down. It might have been the year before last year in December, and yeah, like they exercise was one hundred and fifty percent more effective than the best antidepressant.
Yeah, you know, I was reading a research paper right now. Effect of resistance training. Resistance exercise training on depressive symptoms among young adults are randomized control trial, right, so for the listeners to understand this, Cohen's d effects size, which you'll understand creed. But point three is a small effects size, which means it's slightly better than placebo.
Point five I think it's maybe it's point two.
Sorry. Point two is a small effects size, point five is a moderate effects size, and point eight is a large effects size. Antidepressants when and this isn't me. This is research by psychiatrists who got the non published data
that the pharmaceutical industry tried to hide. When they pull all of that together, antidepressants average out at about zero point three, so marginally better than placebo and generally don't really is are reduced the clinical scores on the Hamilton I think it's the Hamilton thing enough to have a clinical effect, right, So there, But that's not saying that they don't have any effect, because placebo actually works as well.
Right.
But we know that exercise in general has a large effect size about not point Yet this study on young adults with doing resistance training, which hasn't been well studied so far, showed an effect size of one point seven.
Fuckel, what's the name of that paper, bro?
It is Effects of resistance exercise training on depressive symptoms amongst young adults. A randomized controlled trial published in Psychiatry Research, twenty twenty three.
So if you're a non academic person, which is a lot of our listeners, you can you can probably find maybe find that in thing called Google.
Google scholar, scholar you just you know what we can we can put that.
I can send you a link to it on popmed and people can just click on the link and use it. But that lowse the best antidepressants out of the water.
But the problem is doesn't make anyone. It doesn't make anyone any money. Bro.
Yeah, and it's hard. It's harder to do than than popping a pill. Right, So this comes back in the stories that we tell ourselves.
It's inconvenient, it's uncomfortable, it's not fucking quick, it's not instant. Well, it is actually pretty quick. You do get you know, you might not build muscle rapidly, but you'll definitely get symptom reduction quite quickly when you start lifting weights, usually within a few days.
Yeah. And so for me, I'd love to see it where people go to the doctor and the doctor goes and I know a couple of doctors who do something similar to this. The doctor writes her two different scripts, one script for an antidepressant and one script for exercise right, and what they should do is handle scripts over and go here's the one for the antidepressant. This is going to be less effective. And here's all the side effects.
It's a seventy one percent chance your feeling number, seventy percent chance you feel foggy, sixty six percent you won't feel like yourself, fifty percent chance you'll be suicidal, sixty percent chance you'll have a reduction and positive feelings and be drowsy, or I can prescribe you this exercise one. And the side effects are there's a small risk of injury, and there's a reasonable chance that you might get in better shape and get more rooft mcgofty.
Hoofty mcgufty. Before we wind up, how'd you play?
I stay? Go on?
What's the update? Where are you at?
Yeah, so I am.
I've analyzed.
All of the psychological data that we tested, so we've got statistically significant improvements in hardiness both of control, challenge and commitment, statistically significant improvements in mood, and significant reductions in perceived stress. What I've now got to do is get and analyze all the data around heart rate variability and cognitive function.
So fuck all, you've got not much to do. What's your what's your what's your at?
I do you reckon on completing the entire PhD?
On on handing all your shit in and if if if if.
And it's a big if IF. I think I'll get two papers out of this study. I'll get one on the baseline interactions between the psychological data, the heart rate variability and the cognitive function, and then I'll get another paper on the the intervention itself. Hopefully that will be enough to get my PhD by publication. If it's not, I have to go and do another study, which I'll probably do in the military, but that'll add another six
to eight months. So best case scenario is I finish on time in about April next year, but it may end up being next Christmas. I think you're going to beat me, you bastard. I don't know.
I might just I don't, I don't know. I've got a I'm writing three papers at the moment and a thesis, so I also a systematic literature review and you know how quick they are?
Nice?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, Paul Taylor, Tiffany and Cook tiff show is called Roll with the punches. Of course the Paul Taylor Show. Anything you want to plug mate, while you're.
Here, I should probably plug yours the you project to my listeners.
We could do that. We could do that. Yeah, we should get together and do something next year in our spare time.
Yeah, let me shore that.
We've always talked about that. But you and I should do a one day thing. Tiff can MC the day.
Yeah, and that will be all subject to me defeating my was the opponent and not the other way around.
Yeah, we'll try not.
To die, actually try not to die.
I couldn't ask most people this, and I wouldn't, but fuck at you and me are the what are the chances that it doesn't work out?
Great?
I'm sure you've looked at that.
Of course I've looked at it. It is less than one percent for that procedure. And the way I look at that is, well, that's everybody who's been through the operation, and I'll kind of back myself against others. But interesting you say that, because I did a whole risk analysis, right, So you can't just bury your head in the sand on this. So the way the way I look at risk is what's the chance of the outcome? So not my case, probably half a percent, maybe less, But what's
the impact if it does happen? And in my case massive, Right, So that's why I'm actually going back to the UK just before Christmas, see my folks and see all my metes. I'm going to have a just in case party, and I'm going to have a just in case party for my friends here in Australia, and the theme will be a heart and I think i'll dress up as the Grim Reaper.
You're a fucking idiot. Are you telling your friends and family at home that it's a justin Kaise party?
Yeah, I'll tell them when we when we kick it off, Yeah for sure.
It's Kira making a heart cake.
It is car Yes, I'm going to I'm going to get Kiara to make me a heart cake.
But in all seriousness that the one thing that I am doing is also getting my EFFURSI in order, because it would be remissive me not too write. And I think the trickiest thing is going to be I'm lucky that my kids are no interest in listening to my podcast, right, I think the hardest thing in all of this is going to be I'm going to be recording videos for my kids, for like their twenty first birthday party, for their for their weddings, for that sort of shit, and just in kiss right, I love that.
I know TIFs traumatized by that, but I love it.
Well.
Firstly, you got half traumatized and half thinking of that beautiful show, Pierce. I love you, how beautiful.
I've got no idea what that shows.
I don't got no idea what that is. Either.
We're both doing fucking PhDs. We don't watch TV, and.
We're both fucking We're both we're both bullf eds. So fucking yeah, all right, well mate, you fuck You'll be fine because we need to do some work together next year. But we appreciate you. We'll say goodbye our fair of course we'll talk. I better get invited to your fucking just in Case party, the Australian version two, by the way.
And I tell you what, you better turne up in fancy draws so you're not getting in what's is there a theme or just anything? Heart? It's a heart theme?
Hell that that's kind of I might have to jump on bloody chat GPT for some ideas.
Indeed, man good old Better's military gallious humor. You can't beat it.
Yeah, all right mate, I appreciate you, Thanks Buddy, Thanks Tiff, cheers, gotcha,