4 Minute Fridays: How To Reduce The Age Of Your Heart By 20 Years, A Special Juice That Promotes Faster Recovery & The Best Posture For Sitting
Apr 26, 2024Read time: 3.8 minutes
Welcome to 4 Minute Fridays, my weekly newsletter where I reveal cutting-edge tips to help you get lean, boost energy, and live longer.
What's In Store For Today:
- How to reduce the age of your heart by 20 years
- A special juice that helps you recover faster
- The best posture for sitting based on science
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I was having a conversation with someone at dinner who I had just met.
As I was talking to him, he was espousing to me about how I should change my business to this and that and how I should pivot to make more money blah blah blah.
Mind you, I never asked for advice.
While his advice was good for his motives, which was to make as much money as possible, it wasn't optimized for what I was after, which is impact.
The funny thing about this whole situation reminds me that advice is that it reminds me that most advice is cheap. Especially when it's unsolicited.
Most importantly, many people talk from the perspective as if we want what they want when this is not always the case.
In life, you'll have many people who want you to optimize for their goals.
When the reality is you should be choosing a goal that speaks to your heart otherwise you'll find yourself climbing up the wrong ladder.
No offense to him but I smiled and nodded and found a way to extricate myself from that conversation lol.
That being said...
Here Is Your 4 Minute Friday:
1. How To Reduce The Age Of Your Heart By 20 Years
When people think about living longer​ they usually think of their "biological age" when the reality is they should be focused on the ages of their most important organs.
The most important one is the heart.
Researchers at UT Southwestern did a study (1) where they were able to help participants reduce the age of their heart by an average of 20 years.
Here's how they did it:
- One session was a 30-minute HIIT workout called the 4x4 (4 minutes of high-intensity cardio followed by 3 minutes of low-intensity).
- Another session of moderate intensity doing a fun activity (tennis, aerobic dancing, walking, or biking.)
- One to two sessions of moderate intensity aka. zone 2 cardio.
- One to two weekly strength training sessions using weights or machines.
They did this protocol and those who had exercised showed an 18 percent improvement in their maximum oxygen intake and more than 25 percent improvement in elasticity, of the left ventricular muscle of the heart.
According to the researchers, the exercise regimen should begin by late middle age (before age 65), when the heart retains some plasticity and ability to remodel itself.
One thing to note is that the participants built up to those levels, beginning with three, 30-minute, moderate exercise sessions for the first 3 months and peaked at 10 months when two high-intensity aerobic intervals were added.
2. A Special Juice That Promotes Muscle Recovery
One of the most important factors of a healthy body is not just the workout but how fast you're able to recover.
Recovery is just as important as exercise when it comes to boosting performance​.
Scientists have found a juice that might help boost your ability to recover after a workout.
Flavonoids represent a large class of antioxidants and have been shown to reduce inflammation, remove toxins, and decrease cellular damage in the body.
Studies (2) show that Pomegranate juice can help the body recover faster, especially after high-endurance types of exercises
Pomegranate juice is a rich source of quercetin shown to help with muscle recovery and improved exercise performance.
Next time you're feeling extra sore from a workout try drinking a cup of pomegranate juice. You might be surprised at how much better your body feels.
3. The Best Posture For Sitting Based On Science
A lot of what you see on the internet is about having "good posture". While I have my own thoughts on what "good posture" means​ studies are showing us ideas that are counter to what we think.
This is especially true when talking about sitting posture.
You'll have many people tell you to sit with your head on a string, shoulder blades back, and all sorts of other rules.
But the best posture in sitting is the one that makes you most comfortable and then the next one after that (3).
Instead of thinking of sitting posture as this static thing we need to think differently.
What studies are showing us is that it's not about sitting like a statue but about shifting into different types of postures that make us feel comfortable.
Once you feel discomfort in that position you shift to another one that makes you feel comfortable.
The best posture is the next one and there is no one-size-fits-all.
I will say this with the caveat that you can set up your desk in a way that promotes a "taller" posture. Here's a quick thread on how to do that:
How to set up your desk to avoid pain & improve posture (3 simple steps): pic.twitter.com/9wCoKk2zWB
— Dan Go (@FitFounder) October 31, 2023
Client Of The Week - Brandon, Entrepreneur
Brandon is an entrepreneur who was on blood pressure medication and needed to drop 30 lbs off his body.
In 12 weeks, we dropped 36 pounds, lost 7 inches from his waistline, and got him off of his blood pressure meds!
We focused on using metabolic circuits to maintain muscle and cut his time in the gym while changing his eating habits from fast foods to a whole nutrient-dense diet. We set simple habits around his sleep like wearing blue light blockers and having a hard stop to eating 5 hours before bed.
Here's how we did it:
- We did 30-minute full-body strength circuits to maintain muscle while cutting his time at the gym.
- We wore blue light blockers at night. This helped him feel tired when it was time to go to bed and stay asleep when he did.
- We changed his diet from one that ate UberEats every day to setting up a meal prep service to get healthy nutritious food into his possession on automatic.
The most important change was replacing his stress eating with walking. I'm proud of the work we've done and stoked about him entering the next phase of his life as a healthy man.
One Quote to Finish Your Week Strong
“The secret of change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old but on building the new.” - Socrates
The more you fixate on the past the more you focus on something you cannot change.
Learn from the past, forgive whoever needs forgiveness, and put the focus on building a new you.
Have a great weekend!
- Dan
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References:
- ​https://www.utsouthwestern.edu/newsroom/articles/year-2018/exercise-aging-heart.html​
- Ammar A, Bailey SJ, Chtourou H, Trabelsi K, Turki M, Hökelmann A, Souissi N. Effects of pomegranate supplementation on exercise performance and post-exercise recovery in healthy adults: a systematic review. Br J Nutr. 2018 Dec;120(11):1201-1216. doi: 10.1017/S0007114518002696. Epub 2018 Oct 23. PMID: 30350760.
- Chen YL, Chan YC, Zhang LP. Postural Variabilities Associated with the Most Comfortable Sitting Postures: A Preliminary Study. Healthcare (Basel). 2021 Dec 6;9(12):1685. doi: 10.3390/healthcare9121685. PMID: 34946411; PMCID: PMC8701092.