You’re NOT Just Getting Old! — These Daily Habits Are Destroying Your Body After 40 | Vonda Wright

1. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee0:00

   When you look around across society, what are some of the common things people are doing that are perhaps resulting in them neglecting their bodies-

2. VWDr. Vonda Wright0:12

   Mm

3. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee0:12

   ... and therefore increasing the speed at which they age?

4. VWDr. Vonda Wright0:15

   I think there are a couple factors that may be surprising, and then several that are obviously not. But I think the first reason people begin to decline, without even realizing it, is this bias or this myth we believe that aging is an inevitable decline, and that there's something abnormal about it. But I say quite frequently that aging alone is the most natural thing we do from the minute of our conception to the moment of our death, and it's how we handle the passage of time that matters. But if you believe that there's absolutely nothing you can do about the future, then you're gonna resign yourself to the first time you feel an ache or a pain, or the first time you come up against a no, as, "Well, that's just getting old, I guess I'll just accept it." And what I find people doing is giving things up one at a time until they don't recognize it. I'll give you some examples. So believing the myth that it's inevitable is, I think, a primary motivator. The second motivator I see is that sometimes people don't believe they're worth the effort. Maybe everybody else is worth the effort, particularly for women, like, the, the neglect, the self-neglect comes because we're not neglecting others, we're investing all of our energy externally and not redirecting anything internally. And so those being primary drivers I see in the stepwise allowing decline.

5. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:52

   Hmm. It's interesting, this idea about mindset or beliefs.

6. VWDr. Vonda Wright1:59

   Mm.

7. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee1:59

   You know, if we believe, if we get the message from the world around us that getting older means frailty-

8. VWDr. Vonda Wright2:07

   Mm-hmm

9. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:07

   ... means weakness-

10. VWDr. Vonda Wright2:08

    Mm-hmm

11. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:08

    ... means you have to give up the things that you don't wanna give up necessarily-

12. VWDr. Vonda Wright2:13

    Mm-hmm

13. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:13

    ... then of course your behaviors are going to follow-

14. VWDr. Vonda Wright2:17

    That's right

15. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:18

    ... your beliefs.

16. VWDr. Vonda Wright2:19

    Mm-hmm.

17. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:19

    And there's so many things about your new book, Unbreakable, that I really, really enjoy.

18. VWDr. Vonda Wright2:24

    Yeah.

19. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:24

    I think it's beautifully written. And in the introduction you actually say, "I contend that although we certainly undergo some life stage changes-

20. VWDr. Vonda Wright2:33

    Mm-hmm

21. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee2:34

    ... what we call normal aging is actually normal aging for stressed out, undernourished people who are not intentionally building muscle, not attending to their hormonal health, and not prioritizing mobility."

22. VWDr. Vonda Wright2:51

    Exactly. And what I mean by that is if you go back to the medical literature, there was a study, and there are many studies like this. Uh, there was a study called the Health ABC in the United States funded by our National Institutes of Health, that took a cohort of 70-year-olds and just watched them age over a decade. These were people straight out of the population. Well, what do we know about people in the world and in the United States in particular, is that more than 70% of them do not invest any energy any day in mobility or health habits. So if we're watching a population of people to see how they age, and they're truly just a random sample of the population, then you are sampling sedentary people who make very little effort to age in a different way. So I, I state that so clearly is because I contend, and why we formed the research group at the University of Pittsburgh called PRIMA, the Performance and Research Initiative for Masters Athletes, is because I wanted to see what we were capable of if we took the variable of sedentary living out of the way.

23. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee4:07

    Mm-hmm.

24. VWDr. Vonda Wright4:08

    So we began studying active people, not professional masters age athletes, but people over 40 who were consistently active. Many of them were podium-type, uh, age group athletes-

25. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee4:21

    Mm

26. VWDr. Vonda Wright4:21

    ... meaning, you know, winning the 50-year-old, uh, podium. So they were invested, but not pros, and what we found was very different than we find in the population. We found over 15 years we can retain muscle mass and bone density and brain function. Um, and so when I say that we don't really truly know the state of healthy, active ageing, it's based on facts, not fiction.

27. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee4:50

    Yeah. So in terms of what people can do then as they get older, we're gonna get into all the detail-

28. VWDr. Vonda Wright4:57

    Yeah

29. RCDr. Rangan Chatterjee4:57

    ... but top line-

30. VWDr. Vonda Wright4:59

    Mm-hmm

Episode duration: 2:05:58