Mark: [00:00:00] 83% of people, according to the American Podiatric Associates complain of foot pain in their lives like that makes the 17% of us who don't have foot pain. We spend a lifetime in these restrictive, [00:00:10] cushioned, narrow, raised up shoes thinking we're protecting our arches and we're protecting our feet.
There's a reason that we put something on the bottoms of our [00:00:20] feet, but it doesn't have to be that thick. Even though you might be running 80 miles a week, the intrinsic muscles of your feet have atrophied. They don't know
Dave: what to do. Imagine a baby wore mittens
Mark: all the time, how [00:00:30] dysfunctional their hands would be, and for 2 million years we were barefoot.
And then for the last 4,000 years, we had minimalist footwear. It's only in the 16 hundreds the notion of fashion footwear came in. What are the best foot [00:00:40] strengthening exercises
Dave: that I could do? You are listening to the Human Upgrade with Dave Asprey.
Mark, you're [00:00:50] one of the OGs in the nutrition field. We've known each other since I think the very start of Bulletproof. And you started out with a yogurt shop in [00:01:00] 1982, back when frozen yogurt was a health trend and you've been just pushing the boundaries for how many years? That eighties, nineties? Yeah.
Yeah. It's all 40 years, 43 years,
Mark: whatever.
Dave: Yeah. [00:01:10] Thanks for coming back on the show, my friends.
Mark: No, great to be here, Dave. Yeah, no, it's interesting because the frozen yogurt business was nascent in those days. Yeah. And I had a business partner, I'd been a painting contractor [00:01:20] for the prior 10 years and put myself through school and painting houses and, and, and whatnot.
Was that student painters? No, it was No, but similar. Okay. Similar to the same. Yeah. But [00:01:30] I, I, you know, I, I wanted to, you know, I was an entrepreneur and I was into health and I was into you know, trying to figure out a way to, to, uh, leverage my time because as a house painter, you, you know, you, [00:01:40] you can only, you know, put in 40 hours a week of painting and getting X amount of for it.
So, so my partner and I decided we would get into the frozen yogurt business. We built a, we bought a we bought [00:01:50] a, uh, a barbershop in, in Palo Alto on, on, uh, Amerson, right off of University. Mm-hmm. And we paid the proprietor, um, I think we paid him [00:02:00] $17,000 for his entire business. And they took over the lease and then gutted it.
And because we were, we were also contractors, I mean mm-hmm. We knew building at the time. We built out this amazing [00:02:10] frozen yogurt emporium on Emerson. I used to live in Palo Alto. I remember it. Wow. Yeah, it's called Cool Licks. Was the name of it. And, uh, it did really well. We, we did $375,000 in business the first [00:02:20] year, which in 81 or 82 was, was incredible.
So, prebi dollars, that was worth a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. you know, and we had, and it was, and it was healthy, you know, sort of, I mean, it was, that [00:02:30] was the trend. And I didn't know then what I know now about what is healthy and what isn't, but Right. The assumption was that frozen yogurt was a healthy form of ice cream.
Mm-hmm. So, I mean, you could say that was kind of ground zero of [00:02:40] my entrepreneurial ride through the health world.
Dave: Wow. If you go back to when you first started and give yourself a piece of advice, what would it be?
Mark: I keep doing what you're [00:02:50] doing. I mean, really the, I I have no regrets of any choices I made in my career.
You know, I, I, my whole word, my word is pivot. I mean, I, I [00:03:00] pivoted a lot. Yeah, you did. In what I was doing. And, uh, you know, I, we talked before we started recording about my We Vitamin business and my. I had started out [00:03:10] as a making supplements for athletes to help them improve their performance and their recovery.
Music: Mm-hmm.
Mark: I couldn't sell to athletes. They were just not buying in those days. [00:03:20] So I pivoted and I went on a Christian health talk show called Know the Cause with our mutual friend Doug Kaufman. Mm-hmm. Lo and behold, I've got little old ladies who are sitting in their homes [00:03:30] watching television at 11 o'clock in the morning who are reading the Anti-Aging, you know, life Extension magazines and, and trying to figure out ways to, you know, improve their health.
[00:03:40] And they were the ones buying these high potency multivitamins for me. So that was, that was an early pivot, you know, and then years later I started Mark's Daily Apple to figure out a way to [00:03:50] create a platform to sell those same supplements. Mm-hmm. Over the years, I built Mark's Daily Apple into a huge.
Oh yeah. Very popular site, but nobody was buying vitamins, so I had to [00:04:00] pivot and started making sauces and dressings and toppings. And that became the genesis of primal Kitchen.
Dave: And you're one of the very few food entrepreneurs who had a [00:04:10] successful exit a few years ago. Congratulations. Thank you. And, um, you guys can go see Primal Kitchen, stain Whole Foods and Sprouts and all the places, right?
Pretty much everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. [00:04:20] That's, that's gotta feel good. It is. So for, if you're listening to this and you're a young entrepreneur or maybe a middle aged entrepreneur, didn't come immediately,
Mark: did it? Dude. I was 61 when [00:04:30] I started Primal Kitchen, so That's awesome. You know, at people say, because we started in 2015 and I sold it by the end of 2018.
It was a pretty quick ride. And people [00:04:40] think of it as an overnight success story, but it's like a 40 year in the Making overnight success story. At the very least, it, it was successful because of the years I spent building Marks Daily [00:04:50] Apple. Right. Which started in 2006.
Dave: Wow. Yeah. So you were one of the very, very first, very successful health bloggers back then.
I didn't start [00:05:00] blogging about health. Seriously. Right. My first posts were in 99, but they weren't on Bulletproof. And then I really started Bulletproof in 2011. Yeah. With a posting. So you're five years ahead of that. Yeah. That's, [00:05:10] that's incredible.
Mark: I was just thinking on the, on the drive over here that I'm coming up on the 20th anniversary of my first blog post, which was a post I wrote for Art Devaney.
Oh, no kidding. Yeah. So I wrote a guest [00:05:20] post in 2005 called A Case Against Cardio. And that, and that initial seminal blog post launched my career in the sort of [00:05:30] alternative you know, space of rethinking what we thought we knew about health and fitness. Mm-hmm. Because everyone at the time assumed that cardio was great, and the more you did, the better it was for you.[00:05:40]
And so my original case against Cardio was written in 2005, and then now I've got this book called Born to Walk, which, you know, just further takes us down that path of like [00:05:50] chronic cardio is probably one of the worst things you can I. Elect to take on
Dave: and, and you're a triathlete.
Mark: Yeah. Right. I was a, I was a marathoner first.
Got injured from that [00:06:00] largely from the shoes that I was wearing.
Music: Yeah.
Mark: And, uh, and so I switched over to triathlon because I had that, I had that Jones. I had to, I had to like mm-hmm. Beat myself up doing something [00:06:10] every day. And when I got injured running and I couldn't run a hundred miles a week anymore, I had to, I, I took on cycling and then swimming and did a stint as a triathlete, but eventually [00:06:20] saw the folly of my ways.
Dave: Yeah. Man. I, as a teenager, I was obese and I tried running, but I had arthritis since I was 14. So I took up [00:06:30] cycling, did all kinds of cycling. Same thing. I never lost weight on that stuff. Yeah. And you were the first big voice I'm aware of. And I'm pretty well researched to just say, this is dumb. Yeah. And so [00:06:40] thank you for that.
'cause that's a big societal shift to say, you know, something everyone believes is wrong and provably wrong, and just hold your guns against all the. Whatever, [00:06:50] like, like unhealthy doctors saying that it doesn't work and all that.
Mark: So yeah, I mean, that's been the nature of my you know, my, my hue and cry and my, you know, the banner I've carried for a long time is the anticon conventional wisdom [00:07:00] thing.
Mm-hmm. Whether it's, uh, you know, statins and heart disease and cholesterol and saturated fat, or whether it's, you know, too much exercise or staying out of the sun. I mean, all these things that we thought [00:07:10] we had to do to be, you know, healthy and fit right. And we'll find out now were the, almost the exact wrong advice.
I mean, high carbohydrate diet, you know, that was the, that [00:07:20] was what I grew up on. I mean, as an athlete, right? In the, in the seventies and eighties, it was all about could use slam down 700 grams of carbs a day minimum, to go out and [00:07:30] run yourself ragged and then, and then, you know, carbo load that night so you could do it again the next day.
Dave: I remember my first 75 mile ride, it was a race, it was [00:07:40] called the Turquoise Trail in New Mexico, and it is the most brutal, hilly thing at a higher altitude and. Carbs were the thing. Yeah. So I went [00:07:50] to Dunkin Donuts and had like three muffins because I knew that would fuel me. And I hurled after three miles and then I bonked and I, it, it was the most horrible experience ever.
I'm like, I must not eat [00:08:00] enough carbs. 'cause we just believed it so
Mark: much. Yeah. That's funny. I didn't eat enough carbs. Right. Rights. Right. You boxed. Yeah. You know, so again, back to another the conventional wisdom [00:08:10] was about carbs and then. You know, Finney and Volt come along and they start doing all this work on ketogenic diets and how ketones are, you know, the brain operates very well on ketones and how the body [00:08:20] can adapt to burning fat.
Mm-hmm. At very high rates of output. Like, if you're an ultra-marathoner, you could probably derive 90 to 95% of all your energy requirements from your own stored [00:08:30] body fat and from the fat that you take in as fuel. This was even, even as recently as like 10 or 15 years ago, that was unheard of. Mm-hmm. So now we're, we get, we continue to, to kind of [00:08:40] push the envelope there on what human performance is capable of, given the right inputs.
Dave: Right. It's all about the inputs. Yeah. And we're gonna talk about other environmental factors like how you [00:08:50] connect to the earth. And you guys might have noticed I'm wearing some cool shoes here that are a new kind of of shoes that are, I'm used to seeing me wear some [00:09:00] rum five fingers a long time ago.
This is different. This is Mark's new thing. But first we gotta talk about inputs before we get to environmental inputs and, uh. Mark, I have a, a grass fed bone to pick with you. [00:09:10] Uhoh. I saw a post recently. Yeah. Where you were saying that you were choosing some grain fed rib eye. Yeah. 'cause you like the taste better and you don't think there's a difference in fatty acids.
What's up with that? [00:09:20]
Mark: Yeah. So, for the longest time you know, I think again, the, the, the community that I was involved with, going back to paleo and going back to Lord Cordain and Rob Wolf and myself and you, and [00:09:30] you know, was grass fed has to be the ideal form of grass fed and grass finished.
And we, we need to be clear that it's this, that distinction, right? Because all, all [00:09:40] beef is grass fed at some point, and then mm-hmm. Much of it is grain finished. But there was, for the longest time it was like, oh, only eat grass finished. That's the only way to go. That's the animal's [00:09:50] native diet. And if they don't, if they're, if not raised on grass, then you have to give them antibiotics and all sorts of other, you know, hormones to counteract the negative effects of this [00:10:00] atypical diet that you're feeding them to fatten them up.
Much of that is true, but when I buy my steaks, I'm looking for taste number one. Mm-hmm. I'm looking for [00:10:10] sustainability. I'm looking for animal welfare standards. And if all of those are met, then the idea that a, that a cow would be raised on grass and then finished for a couple of weeks [00:10:20] on grain is not antithetical to my way of thinking.
Because if what you're talking about is the fatty acid profile, the fats [00:10:30] in that meat mm-hmm. You don't buy beef for its Omega-3 content. It's ridiculous. You can't get enough Omega-3, even from a grass finished animal, you can't [00:10:40] get a lot of Omega-3. So, you know, now we're just arguing over minutia. It's like you, I don't know, it's like trying to get eat oranges for the iron content or something like that.[00:10:50]
Dave: I, I do think you get higher steric acid, which is important when it's grass finished. But I, I guess my big concern is glyphosates. You feed 'em corn and soy and all [00:11:00] that stuff. Yeah. That's a big contaminant. And that goes into the collagen that's in the meat primarily.
Mark: Yeah. I, again, I'm, so, I be, I've become more uh, what's the word relaxed on [00:11:10] some of these things over the years because I'm, I'm not sweating the minutia, right?
Mm-hmm. I've, I have bigger fish to fry, which is probably the wrong analogy. We're talking about fried [00:11:20] in tall. About fried in tall, yeah. Yeah. So at the end of the day, I'm not again, if I, if I'm looking at animal welfare standards primarily, and, and, and by the way, included in that [00:11:30] is how the animal's raised.
Yeah. Has a, has an not just like, oh, I want to be like woo woo, and I hope the animal has a wonderful life. I hope they do, but not stressed out too much and [00:11:40] not, creating a, uh, an environment where that meat becomes Okay. You know, uh, tainted if you will, or at least biased by the, by the hormonal [00:11:50] changes in the ano the cortisol and things like that.
Yeah. So you're not advocating
Dave: industrial feedlot beef? No. No. Gosh, no. Okay. So you're saying if it's organic but not grass finish, you just don't care? Correct. Okay. [00:12:00] I can respect that. I'll interview. We cleared that up, Dave. You know, I still pals my inner child is feeling happier now. My grassfed inner child.
Yeah. And, and I'm when I'm on the road, [00:12:10] I do my best. Right. And I don't, a great example
Mark: by the way, when you're on the road, you're on the road a lot. Way too much. You know, how, how difficult is it to find a place where you can eat with somebody else? He [00:12:20] said, well, we can't eat there 'cause Dave has to have grass finished.
Music: Yeah. You
Mark: know, I used to make a joke that, you know, when I got a ribeye steak, I'd eat all the fat and throw lean parts to my dog. Mm-hmm. I don't do that anymore. [00:12:30] No. I'm, I'm cutting back on the amount of saturated fat because I've, I've adapted, I've evolved in my own way of thinking mm-hmm. That maybe there is a point at which too much saturated [00:12:40] fat.
Oh wow. Is, is not a good thing. Mm-hmm. Now I can get away with it, but the fact that I can get away with it doesn't mean it's a good thing.
Dave: I, I [00:12:50] look at each type of saturated fat as having a different effect, and I look at my Omega six to Omega-3 ratios and mine dropped two lows. So I'm, I, I use [00:13:00] olive oil.
Yeah. I just don't use only olive oil, because I think that's the same as using only saturated fat. Correct. Yeah. You, I think you gotta mix your fats up.
Music: Yeah.
Dave: I, I've been recommending at least half of your fat [00:13:10] calories come from saturated, but the other half probably not. Soybean oil. Yeah, right. Definitely not soybean
Mark: oil.
Yeah.
Dave: And you're, you're totally down with avocados. I mean, that's what you use in Primal, in Primal Kitchen, [00:13:20] right? Yeah. So I, I think that middle of the road approach makes sense. You know, it's, but,
Mark: but, and, and all these things, oils exist on a spectrum. Yeah. They're not black and white, good or [00:13:30] bad. Mm-hmm.
Horrible. Wonderful. There's a spectrum and you kind of get to, you know, choose if you know enough about them. You get to choose where you wanna play. At the high end of the spectrum, you might [00:13:40] find. You literally might find algae oil as the number one high in monounsaturates, lowest in saturated. But then you drop down to avocado oil pretty close.
Music: [00:13:50] Mm-hmm.
Mark: But from there you maybe extra virgin olive oil. But high oleic sunflower oil is not a horrible oil. It's not, yeah. It's not on the same category as say, canola [00:14:00] or soybean at the other end, or corn oil.
Dave: Mm-hmm. So, and if it's organics which have all the residue from spray in it, it's not the end of the world, especially if it's not deep fried for a long time.
[00:14:10] Correct. Yeah. And I remember like you, uh, were at the airport in Austin, stuck on a flight. You gave 'em some peeling nuts a while ago and they're almost a hundred percent monounsaturated, but try and find peeling nut [00:14:20] oil. Yeah. I don't know. But you can eat 'em. Yeah, right.
Mark: Yeah. So I dunno why that is. I, it's just a rare, a rare nut in my friend.
Yeah. Darren o Ian was trying to build a business outta that.
Dave: Yeah. I think he'd just [00:14:30] given you some and you gave to me. Yeah. And there was, 'cause the flight was delayed. I ate them. I was like, these are pretty good. Pretty damn good. Yeah. Yeah. And so it's, it's one of those things where being relaxed, you do seem more relaxed over the [00:14:40] years.
Just as you, you just, okay, I'm gonna do what works and it doesn't have to be perfect. And perfectionism in nutrition is super toxic. Yeah. It's like being afraid of a bad sleep [00:14:50] score is worse than having a bad sleep score. Mm-hmm. Right. Okay. That's why I don't wear sleep devices. Oh, no
Mark: kidding. Oh, I haven't wor I don't wear do wearables at all.
Daytime. No kidding. Yeah. Yeah. [00:15:00] I would rather, my, my line is no data is worse than bad data. Ooh. So, um, you know, I'm, I just, my whole thing is how do you feel? [00:15:10] Well, that's the most important thing. Yeah. At the end of the day, you can have all the right, the right scores and all of the right blood work. And if you feel like crap, I.
Dave: Mm-hmm.
Mark: None
Dave: of it matters. Right. [00:15:20] How you feel is critically important. And for me, because I had chronic fatigue in my early twenties, I started realizing, okay, if [00:15:30] there's a 10% difference how I feel, I can feel it. 'cause I'm just so bottomed out. And then I started saying, well, how do I know whether the things I'm testing are really helping me move little [00:15:40] steps in the right direction?
Yeah. It's been helpful for me, but I don't look at my sleep score every morning unless I'm experimenting with something.
Mark: We have a sleep number bed and you know, my wife is on one side [00:15:50] and I'm on the other end. She tracks it and I, I have to ask her, how did I sleep last night? You know, I, I, I'm gonna guess, you know, I got a 92.
She said, no, you got a 72. I'm like, no, that's not [00:16:00] right. That's not accurate. I, I, I'm sure I slept better than that. And you know your body better than most people for Yeah, yeah, yeah. That, that's part of it. That's I think wisdom over time. No, no, that's, I mean, that's maybe the main skill I've [00:16:10] taught over the last 25 or 30 years is this intuitive ability to understand.
Your own body and how it works and yes. So you don't need to wear a CGM for [00:16:20] two months to figure out that maybe rice at the end of a, you know, and a, and a glass of orange juice is probably not a good way to start the day. Sure. You know, so. Mm-hmm. it's all, it's just [00:16:30] intuitive. It's, it's knowing when it's time to stop eating because you're no longer hungry.
Not because you're full, but because you're just no longer hungry for the next bite. You know, it's knowing [00:16:40] in a, in a high intensity workout when the last interval happens, so you don't hurt yourself on the next one. Because damnit my workout schedule set, I had to do eight today. Right. [00:16:50] And I've only done six.
Right. You know, so it's, I I try to really teach that. How do you feel, be in touch, be in tune with your body be sensitive to you know, how much sleep [00:17:00] you did get, but not with using devices and numbers and tracking and HRV and all the other stuff, but just, you know, be intuitive and, and as if you feel in the middle of a workout like it's not happening.[00:17:10]
Be okay with stopping. Yeah. If you feel like, you know, today's the day I'm gonna hit that hard. Go ahead and hit it hard. I was, I was out just walking around the lake with, uh, my co-author Brad Kears today, and we're [00:17:20] talking about you know, that that sort of that's kind of the new thing with elite athletes in the endurance world is a hundred percent healthy, 80% fit.
Music: Mm-hmm. Think
Mark: [00:17:30] about that. That's how you go into a race. Yeah. A hundred percent healthy, 80% fit. Because if you're more than 80% fit, you might be pushing, you might be redlining too much in your training and you want [00:17:40] the event, you want the race. You want that to be the time where you put out a hundred percent.
Dave: Yes. And you want the next event after that, because if you're at 95%, you're gonna go [00:17:50] over it. Yeah. And then you're not gonna recover. You'll get sick. Yeah. And it's just not a good thing. Yeah. One of the things about your work, in addition to all the nutritional stuff that you've, you've shared over the years, was [00:18:00] your focus on, uh, on functional movement, especially functional feed.
And, and it's kind of personal for me because I was born duck footed flat feet. So I used to [00:18:10] walk like and I had Asperger's syndrome, and I did, I would say, benefit greatly from using tech because I didn't, I needed a way to know what state my body was in so I could [00:18:20] say, oh, that feeling equals this.
'cause I, I didn't have the wiring below the neck, so to speak. And even lately, I've been doing a lot of work on functional movement, and you [00:18:30] are one of the guys, like, probably the primary guy who inspired me to start wearing toe shoes and really focus on, you know, what's it like to be barefoot and to grow the flexibility and health of my feet.
[00:18:40] Right. And my feet are in better shape than they've ever been. And so Thank you.
Mark: You're welcome. And you know, this is one of the great, I think it's the lowest hanging fruit in the [00:18:50] longevity space is foot health.
Music: Mm-hmm.
Mark: You know, we, we have the devices, we have the, you know, first of all we, we need to, um, I.
If we need to eat, right? [00:19:00] Yeah. That's, you gotta dial that and you gotta dial in your, your, your, your, your workout schedule, your eating schedule and how you eat and, and how much you eat. Your sleep, your play, your stress. But people [00:19:10] overlook foot health and our feet are our connection with the environment.
They're our connection with the universe. This is how we, this is the contact that we have mm-hmm. Throughout the day [00:19:20] that allows the rest of our body to perform whatever tasks we need to perform. The assumption has been, well, feet are feet. And I was born duck footed, and so that's [00:19:30] my genetics and I have flatfooted and no, you were born with perfect feet.
You were born with a perfect kinetic chain. That, that, what that means is it doesn't mean it's the same as [00:19:40] everyone and your feet may have been splayed, outed a little bit. Mm-hmm. You may, your, your arches may not have a perfect ar curvature to them, but the musculature, the joints, the ligaments, everything works perfectly.
[00:19:50] Provided you have the input from the bottoms of your feet. Yes. And that's what gives the brain the information it needs to organize your. Perfect kinetic chain. [00:20:00] Now, kids growing up barefoot and spending time barefoot, they, they learn how to squat, you know, as to heels, they learn how to do all these perfect movements.
They [00:20:10] run perfectly because they're, and when they're barefoot, I, I got a three, 3-year-old mm-hmm. Uh, at that grandchild that, uh, I'm, you know, visiting in, in, uh, Tennessee on a frequent basis. He's running [00:20:20] on the pavement in the concrete all the time. Barefoot just light on his feet. Yeah. Because the brain is getting exactly the signals its needs on the on.
Precisely how much to curl the toes, how [00:20:30] much the arch. Mm-hmm. The bend, the arch, how much to roll the ankle outward, a little bit to, to supinate or pronate to accommodate the te, the texture of the [00:20:40] ground or the tilt of the ground he's running on. How deeply to bend the knees to offset the forces that are generated from that run or that jump without that information.
If you're wearing [00:20:50] thick, padded, cushioned shoes, the brain has to guess on exactly how to do this. And so you people, we spend a lifetime in these restrictive, [00:21:00] cushioned, narrow, raised up shoes thinking we're protecting our arches and we're protecting our feet. And we're, and that somehow, [00:21:10] assuming that everything starts from the ankle up through the neck, when in fact it has to start with the bottom of the feet.
Wow.[00:21:20]
So barefoot is a way to go. We're born barefoot, obviously we're born barefoot, but you know, we don't, we don't clad our hands in, in devices all day long. [00:21:30] And then try to play the piano or try to, you know, work a keyboard. Could you imagine a baby wore mittens all the time? How dysfunctional their hands would be, and that's exactly what happens with the feet.
So, you know, it's a societal thing. It's [00:21:40] a look. We've created this envi environment where you have concrete and pavement and hardwood floors and marble floors and, and nails and glass and all kind of rocks and stuff. So there's a, [00:21:50] a reason that we put something on the bottoms of our feet, but it doesn't have to be that thick.
It's, it so, so my. My take on this for the last 40 years has been, first of all, I hate [00:22:00] shoes. I hated the running shoes that I had to train in. I got injured from the cushioning aspects of them and the, and the raised heels. Um, my kinetic chain didn't adjust the way it [00:22:10] should have. And when the first thing started to go to go wrong, when my, when my ankles and knees started to hurt, I was a miracle cure with orthotics.
Right. I was one of the [00:22:20] 1976 Steven Nik and hey podiatrist gave me a set of rigid orthotics that, that took away my knee pain. And I ran for the next two years, like, like crazy. Then I got [00:22:30] hip pain because all it did was it bypassed. Yes. The one. Weak point and fix that, but it kept going without, without fixing the, the origin of the problem, which was my [00:22:40] foot's contact with the ground, my foot's ability to sense the ground and to pronate or supinate according to the, the dictates of the texture.
Mm-hmm. Tilt to the ground and my, [00:22:50] my, the input that my brain gets. The second I wait my forward foot, the brain has all the information it needs on exactly how to do this. So, so I, you know, I kept, I kept. [00:23:00] Wedging putting in wedges and all kinds of shims. Yeah. You know, all the way up to the kinetic chain until finally my hips gave out.
I just had a, by the way, I just had a hip replaced Oh, wow. In [00:23:10] December. A lot of marathoners end up that way, don't they? Yeah. And, you know, for good reason, it's just, it's, the body is not designed to do that much running, and especially not [00:23:20] to do that much running in thick, padded cushion shoes because you, you assume when you put on these HOAs or these thick, you know, bouncy shoes, oh my god, it's, it feels so good.
Some crocs. Yeah. So all that's doing is [00:23:30] taking about 10% of the, of the shock absorption, which to your feet makes it feel like, oh my God, this is amazing. And just running it up the kinetic chain, up through the other joints, up through the knees, up through the hips. [00:23:40] And so the, the, the irony here is that in the 50 years of the running boom and marathoning and this, this marketing [00:23:50] machine that has told everybody that you gotta go out there and just do it and run and, and, and, and run like you're on a cloud, the number of of injuries has not decreased one single iota.
Wow. [00:24:00] 50% of all runners get injured every year. 50% of all people who claim to be runners get injured at any one point in time. 25% of all people who claim to be runners are injured. Right now, it's [00:24:10] like worse than the NFL, and this is because we are overlooking the most important critical component of movement of gait, which is.
Ground [00:24:20] feel contact with the ground toe splay the abilities of toes to splay outwardly and articulate individually. Mm-hmm. Like your big toe is the most important [00:24:30] aspect of your gait. So you're walking, you plant the heel, roll off the toe, plant the heel, roll off the toe. You can't do that if the toes squished over against the rest of the, uh, metatarsals [00:24:40] in, in the, in the, in a shoe.
No matter how wide the shoe is at its widest point, it still comes to a, you know, take a course to the front. Yeah. So people, you know, people [00:24:50] can get away with it for a while and not get injured, but most people complain of, you know, 83% of people according to the American Podiatric Associates complain of foot pain in their lives like that makes the [00:25:00] 17% of us who don't have foot pain, the outliers.
It's crazy. That's so, so that was sort of the impetus for writing a book, which is, you don't need to [00:25:10] run running is, is antithetical to health for most people. The only people who should be running Dave are runners. Now, when I say that, it's like I'm talking about ectomorph, [00:25:20] skinny, big lungs, big, great capacity for pain tolerance, and those are the only people that should be running.
Everybody else should be walking sprinting for [00:25:30] sure, once in a while. But sprinting. Sprinting is different from metronomic running at eight minute miles or 10 minute miles or whatever it is. Walking a lot, sprinting a little bit, and lifting weights, lifting heavy things, and lifting over the [00:25:40] course of, you know, maybe if you've got your diet dialed in and now your body composition is, is a, you're trending toward your ideal body composition [00:25:50] as a result of your food choices.
Mm-hmm. And you're burning fat whether you're at rest or at work. Then the irony here is you don't need to work out that much to be toned and [00:26:00] fit. 20 minutes a
Dave: week is, is where I'm right now. Yeah. No. So I'm using ai, I'm kind of cheating, but like I'm, I'm doing all right.
Mark: Yeah. Yeah. So that's what I'm saying.
So that's gonna get you to 80, [00:26:10] 80, or 85% of your genetic max potential. Now, if you say, Hey, mark, I wanna go, do you know MMA fighting or, or BJJ, or I want to compete in a triathlon. Okay, now we're gonna have [00:26:20] to make some compromises. You're gonna compromise your health in pursuit of this. Now we can amp your performance up, but it's gonna take, you know, three x or five x the amount of time [00:26:30] you're doing right now mm-hmm.
To achieve, you know, a great looking, healthy body that unless you're competing, why would you want to keep going [00:26:40] harder and harder? You know, like my, like I'm the minimum effective dose guy from day one. Amen. What's the least amount of pain, suffering, sacrifice, discipline. Calorie counting portion control that I can [00:26:50] undertake to get the body that I want.
Not what's the most, but what's the least amount of this shit that I, that I have to do
Dave: it. It's so good because you're investing not dollars, you're investing [00:27:00] discipline Yeah. In everything you do. And if it takes less discipline to do something that gets results, that means you have more discipline for something else.
Bingo.
Mark: Yeah. More, just more time, more energy. Yeah. I mean, so many [00:27:10] people, uh, as we talk about in the book, you know, the sort of obligate runner who has to run 30 or 40 miles a week and doesn't feel like the day is worth anything, if they haven't gotten their run in, in fact beat [00:27:20] themselves up on, on days that they you know, that they don't run, those are the people who also maybe should be going to the gym, but don't have the energy because the run was so [00:27:30] hard and it was so valuable.
And I, and I, and I, I, I struggled and I suffered and I sweated. I'm gonna sit and rest now, and I can't go play with my kids for a while because I just gotta, daddy's just gotta, or mommy's just [00:27:40] gotta, you know, re regroup after that hard run I did. And the irony is years and years of doing this, and they don't get any faster.
Mm-hmm. Their 10 k time doesn't come down. Their mar marathon time doesn't come down [00:27:50] because they're not training smart and they're not training, you know, in that, in that they're not training the different systems. They're not teasing out the aerobic system and saying, okay, 85% of my work should be done at [00:28:00] max at a, at a, at a heart rate of fat max or lower zone two.
Mm-hmm. Zone one. Right. And then only a small amount of amount of my work should be done at high intensity [00:28:10] brief bouts of high intensity. You know,
Dave: you said that zone zero is the new zone two. I kind of think zone two takes a lot of time compared to the results. Yeah. Yeah. Talk to me about that.
Mark: Well, zone zone [00:28:20] one is like the new zone two, I'd say.
That's the main, okay. Yeah. Zone one is like, a, a walking pace for most people. Okay. And what I tell people is the more you walk, the better off. Yeah. The better off you'll [00:28:30] be. People say, well, I, you know, I don't have, I. An hour a day that I can allocate to walking. I'm like, oh, can you find six times throughout the day where you can walk for 10 minutes?
[00:28:40] Mm-hmm. Whether it's, you know, dropping the kids off early to school and, and you know, walking or walking them to school 'cause you parked a half mile away. Or you know, is it walking to work? Is it walking while you're on the [00:28:50] phone, on a phone call at work? Is it taking a lunch break with your, with your coworkers and, you know, 'cause it takes 20 minutes to eat lunch and then take 40 minutes to 40 minutes to walk.
Is walking at [00:29:00] the end of the day is walking the dog in the morning. And if you can find six, 10 minute segments throughout the day to walk, it's actually more valuable than one 60 minute segment. Mm-hmm. Here's why [00:29:10] the body wants to move throughout the day. We are designed to move, we're, we're upright bipedal.
We're not designed to sit all day on a sofa, sit at a desk. We're, we're specifically [00:29:20] genetically evolved or designed, however you want to allocate that. Wisdom. Yeah. We are. Evolved to be upright on two [00:29:30] feet. Name four other animals that are, that are bipedal, that don't have a preens, a, a tail or a wings, right?
So we have, we're, we sort of like, have to move just so we don't [00:29:40] fall over like a segue parked at a, you know, at a stop sign. So we have to move all day long and walking is the quintessential human movement. We populated the face of the [00:29:50] earth by walking. We, our ancestors got, you know, four to 5,000 maybe to 15,000 steps a day.
So walking is, is the best thing you can do for [00:30:00] longevity. And it's also the greatest marker for longevity in that once you stop. Walking, you literally start dying. Wow. Think about that. I mean, when you [00:30:10] stop moving, when you stop walking, you start dying. Because that's the beginning of, of this atrophy, like, I'm not strong enough to walk.
Music: Mm-hmm.
Mark: So I can't even get my ass to the gym to [00:30:20] do you know, some resistance training, right. To build muscle strength or to build bone density or to improve glucose clearance and all the things that we know that weight training [00:30:30] does. So that's why in some of the, you know, Dan Butner is a, my next door neighbor, he's a very good friend of mine, he's my downstairs neighbor.
He, he's a great guy. He's a great guy. He lives like couple floors down and we hang out all the [00:30:40] time. And, you know, we differ on. Beans. Yeah. Which is beef. But, uh, so we really only differ on two letters. The A of bean and the EF You can go
Dave: out to eat, he eats your side dishes, you eat his [00:30:50] main course.
Mark: Yeah, it's pretty funny.
I always, I always eat at steak when I'm with Dan. I have to order the biggest red steak I can get. But, um, but he'll, he'll say that, you know, walking and gardening, you [00:31:00] know, moving, yeah, moving are probably, if you distilled everything down within the blue zones, it's that mm-hmm. It's, it's not the diets as much as it's the community and the walking [00:31:10] and the activity and the low calories.
Right. They're, they're, they're walking a lot and they don't consume a lot of calories, but it's the, it's the movement. Because again, once you stop moving and you start [00:31:20] sitting atrophy sets in so quickly, it's a very slippery slope, a very steep downhill decline from there. Have you seen the research out of Japan on interval walking train?
[00:31:30] That's amazing. I love that. I've, I've been talking about this for a long time. I mean, not in the same context, but, but you know, I, I tell people when you walk 'cause because the research is like, you know, [00:31:40] walk three minutes at a normal pace. And then walk a minute as if you're late for an appointment. I love the way they, they, yeah.
They put that out there. And, you know, do that over time. That's sort of a, a walking [00:31:50] interval thing.
Dave: And you, a half hour of that produces way more results than 10,000 steps a day. Exactly. In terms of reduction of risks. So now you're down to like a half hour. Yeah, I think,
Mark: yeah. So if you're [00:32:00] somebody who, who is time compressed and, and you know, for, for whom you can't think, you don't think you can carve out a half an hour, that's the most important half hour of your day.
Yeah. I mean, I tell people over the age of 40, your [00:32:10] job number one is to stay healthy. Mm-hmm. If you're not healthy and you can't take of your care of your family or your kids or yourself or whatever, you're gonna drag everyone down with you. So job number one. Mm. Find in your [00:32:20] list of priorities. Make, make that job number one to get something and walking is easy.
You can do it anywhere in the world. You don't have to have a gym to do it. It, it's free it, but
Dave: you do have to have shoes. Yes. [00:32:30] And, and so we, we've gotta talk about this. Yeah. I have an absolute hatred of shoes. I've got size 16 feet. I have a very wide toe box, and I just [00:32:40] thought it was supposed to hurt when you walk all the time.
Yeah. And I got orthotics when I was in. Eighth grade, the first hard ones and the same thing. My, I get arthritis in my knees and knee [00:32:50] surgery, uh, when I'm in my early twenties. And I, they just always hurt. Yeah. And when I finally said I, I'm gonna wear some toe shoes, I mean, I would just go barefoot based [00:33:00] in part, 'cause you were talking about all the time, like, okay, I'm finally feeling like my toes work.
I did yoga. I can spread my toes, I can curl. I've done all that stuff and I've spent hundreds of hours just [00:33:10] learning subtle neurological control of my toes. And it means you cannot pay me to wear shoes that are pretty but uncomfortable. I, I've gone on stages wearing toe shoes [00:33:20] with a suit.
Music: Mm-hmm.
Dave: And I'm like, this is how I'm gonna do it.
And you're the only guy I know who does it, but you have leather toe shoes and they don't make 'em in my size. Yeah. So you were kind enough to make some of your new [00:33:30] PVA
Mark: shoes? Yeah. Those are the, those are the strand trainers. Those the workout shoe. But they, a lot of people, they're coming, I mean, I, I made those to walk 10 or 15 miles on pavement without getting a bone bruise.
Mm-hmm. You remember the old [00:33:40] days of. The vibrant five fingers. Oh yeah. They were so thin. Uhhuh, I, Mr. Barefoot, you know, foot guy couldn't walk more than two or three miles without hurting the metatarsal area that mm-hmm. [00:33:50] Metatarsal area of my feet because of the thinness of the shoes. So we had to throw in a little bit of extra cushion, three extra millimeters of soft EVA foam, which [00:34:00] is tiny, tiny amount.
Yeah. I mean, our, our stack height is still less than one centimeter in that shoe. Mm-hmm. And it's, there are zero drops. The heel is not raised up, but it's enough to feel like you're [00:34:10] walking barefoot on a putting surface, on a putting
Dave: green. Yeah. I can feel the, the surface under me. It's not the same as being barefoot, but like you said, you know, if you're gonna go hiking and there's [00:34:20] a little bit of scrabble, being barefoot hurts.
Yeah. You don't wanna do that. Yeah.
Mark: No. And, and so we've, you know, and we have a lot of other styles. We have a hiking shoe, the a TR, which is specifically for off-road. I've [00:34:30] got guys who are big into Rucking mm-hmm. Who are wearing that and loving it because the, the thing here is we tell people don't run in these shoes now.
They're the best running shoe you'll ever [00:34:40] put on if you know how to run. But if you don't know how to run, if you're not a mid midfoot striker mm-hmm. Who's trained barefoot or trained in minimalist footwear for a long time, you'll, you'll trash [00:34:50] your Achilles, you'll trash your calf. You'll hurt yourself.
So, so we say, you know, if you're not trained, don't but walk, walk, walk, walk, walk as much as you can in these shoes, because every step you take, you're relaxing. Mm-hmm. You're [00:35:00] realigning and you're strengthening your feet and you're doing it without the dynamic, ballistic, stressful impact of running.
Mm-hmm. Uh, so you're training your feet with every [00:35:10] footfall. It's a passive way to train your feet to become stronger and more resilient. And we're seeing this. Across the board with women who have, who have bunions, who can't walk and are now walking eight miles a day in PVAs [00:35:20] on, on wow pavement. And I have a 15 or 20 women in Miami Beach where I live, who are just raving about the results they're getting.
Again, I've got weightlifters in the gym who normally would like to go [00:35:30] barefoot when they're doing heavy leg days because, you know, in the gym they say great toe. The big toe is called a great toe. Mm-hmm. Great toe. Great ass. Your glutes, your glutes are wired directly [00:35:40] to your big toe. By the way, your brain is too.
So they're, they're crosswired, right? Yeah. Like your left glute goes to the right toe, right? So, so when you can abduct, pull away the big toe and [00:35:50] press it into the ground when you're doing squats. Or deadlifts. Or lunges, you will engage the glutes far greater than if you're wearing shoes that are compressing your feet together.
That's [00:36:00] why so many of these serious bodybuilders do their leg days barefoot, right? Mm-hmm. Well, most gyms don't allow that. So now we have, again, we have this five toed shoe that lets [00:36:10] your toes articulate individually according to the top topography that you're walking on. So if you step in a divot or a pothole on, you want your toes to accommodate differently, and they spill to flex
Dave: [00:36:20] back, right?
Mark: Flex backward to be able to scrunch over a rock. If you step on a big rock, you want to be able to actually grab the rock with your feet. Yes. Um, I get a lot of surfers. And [00:36:30] skateboarders who say, you know, they can, they can feel themselves grabbing the board, which you do. Yeah. I mean, I'm a, as a, as a, um, I'm not a surfer, but I'm a standup paddler, and I wa I rode a a [00:36:40] foil, an electric foil for a while, and, uh, you really wanna grab the board?
I thought you and Laird were into surfing for a while, weren't you? Well, le I'm laird's into surfing. No, Laird's a buddy. I, I don't [00:36:50] surf with Laird. Okay. Nobody surfs with Laird Laird surfs by himself or with, you know, one or two other, you know, big wave surfers. Got it. But he's out there doing his, doing his thing.
You know, I [00:37:00] paddle with him and I'll, and I'll do the easy stuff with him, but Got it. Laird's Laird, he's hardcore, right? Yeah, he's hardcore. Okay. But Laird is a huge fan of Palas too, and he, and he wears, so LA's an example of a guy who wants to go [00:37:10] barefoot all the time and will all the time. And when he doesn't, he's got a full compliment of Palas in his house.
He, yeah, he wore these ones that I'm wearing right now on mm-hmm. Uh, I think one like Entertainment Tonight [00:37:20] or one of the shows that he was Oh, cool. So. Yeah. And then so, so we've got Rutgers hikers UTMB guys, off trail runners who are training in Palas [00:37:30] because they're doing mostly hiking and walking.
Gym rats. Women who are just, you know, doing their regular workouts throughout the day. I mean, if you go to my gym in Miami Beach, there'll be 15 people [00:37:40] wearing PVAs. One on any one day trainers are forcing the, the women to wear the shoes because when you're doing any sort of balance work, you want your feet display outward.
Mm-hmm. If you, if you're wearing a [00:37:50] thick, padded cushion shoe with a elevated heel, you're, you're giving up half the gains you're gonna get from whatever work you're doing on a, on a leg day, because [00:38:00] it feels like you're standing on a bosu ball. Right. And now your knees are tweaking side to side as opposed to being fully involved in this connect chain activity where the brain tells your, your [00:38:10] entire kinetic chain from the bottom of your feet up to your brain exactly how to orchestrate for your perfect kinetic chain.
Dave: Hmm. It, it makes, it makes so much [00:38:20] sense. What do you say when people say those shoes aren't sexy?
Mark: Yeah. This is the, the, I think the biggest hurdle we have is [00:38:30] the. Can you make them without five toes or you can you make them with you where you don't show the toes? You, I think, mark my words, in the next couple of years, you'll see [00:38:40] millions of people wearing these shoes because it takes some time to overcome.
Yeah, the initial and, but it's not even an nick factor. It's like most of the women who [00:38:50] try the shoes on and wear them for a couple of days think I look cute in these shoes. Not like, oh, I can get away with wearing these while in the gym. But they're wearing, you know, dropping the kids off at school when they're shopping in, in, uh, [00:39:00] you know, whole Foods or wherever they are running around town.
Guys are wearing them to work. We make a leather, a Napa leather lace up shoe for the workplace. Nice. You know, we make the desert Boot for travel. [00:39:10] We make slippers and loafers and all, you know, we have shoes for all occasions because we think that once you wear these shoes, it's gonna be really difficult.
To go back to [00:39:20] wearing regular footwear again.
Dave: I can't imagine wearing like cowboy boots. I, I live in Austin. I have a, you know, $800 pair of ostrich leather. They [00:39:30] look cool, but I would stand in them for a photo shoot, but I will not walk across the stage in 'em. 'cause they're dumb.
Mark: Yeah, no, they're, they're literally dumb.
And, and if you think what you're doing to your [00:39:40] feet, these, these really important impends, they're more than appendages. They're organs. They're like, they're like, they are your contact with the universe. Yeah. They are what connects you to the world. [00:39:50] And now you're negating it by binding it and raising it and, and you know, constricting it and squishing all the toes together.
I see so many horrible [00:40:00] feet because of the business that I'm in now. Mm-hmm. You know, bunions is one thing. I see a lot of plantar fasciitis. I see a lot of achilles problems. I see overlapping toes, a [00:40:10] lot overlapping toes where one toe is now overlapping the other and you can't get it back.
So, yeah, like millions of people are, are, are buying toe spacers now 'cause they mm-hmm. They recognize [00:40:20] how this is a problem. Women in particular who are wearing high heels and don't stop wearing your high heels, they look fabulous. But, but but while you're not wearing your high heels, a lot of women are [00:40:30] wearing toe spacers, but they wear 'em for, you know, 30 minutes or an hour while they're watching tv.
Yeah. This is a toe spacer you can wear all day. Mm-hmm. And. Work your toes back into some [00:40:40] strength and, and realignment while you're doing
Dave: it. I slept with toe spacers for two years because my feet did that. I had an overlap toe on each side, and for me to go [00:40:50] trek through the Himalayas and the Andes the way I did every morning, I had to wake up, wrap medical tape around three of my toes, cover 'em in Vaseline, the way endurance [00:41:00] athletes do, and put on socks just to walk.
Yeah, just to walk. Yeah. I don't know any of that anymore. How crazy is that?
Mark: Yeah. And that was, you know, that's not genetics. That's not, that [00:41:10] is not all that is is your footwear choice over a lifetime.
Music: Mm-hmm.
Mark: It's not even diet, it's genetics. I mean, it's, it's footwear. It's not genetics. It's not diet. It's just.
It's just your footwear choice. [00:41:20] And to think that, that we still clinging to this notion that you know, shoes are for fashion, footwear is for fashion. I have to tell you, I've some big [00:41:30] names in our industry, some big names in orthopedics and, and podiatry, who, oh my god, mark, I love what you're doing. I am I'm a hundred percent behind it.
[00:41:40] I understand all of the dynamics in the bio connects. But I'm a shoe girl. I just can't do it. Yeah. I'm like, are you kidding me? Like, are you serious now? Our good friend, for example, JJ Virgin. Oh my God, I [00:41:50] was gonna bring her up. Yeah. JJ loves the shoes. JJ iss wearing 'em. No. Yes, jj, when we got jj, we, you know that, that's the tipping point, right?
Dave: You'd think so. So JJ and I have [00:42:00] been friends, dear friends for a long time, and she used to give me so much crap about my toe shoes that I actually went into Photoshop and online I found a, I found it [00:42:10] like a five finger high heel. Yeah. And, and I cut it out. So I'm getting you some of these for Christmas.
Yeah. And she's like, ah, so, and you converted her
Mark: jj. So J so jj she'll [00:42:20] we're. Very old friend. We go back to 1987. Wow. I mean, she was basically a teenager when I met her. And I, it's Sports Club LA in, in, in Los Angeles. [00:42:30] And so I've known her for a long time and when I first started doing this, she was like, you now Mark?
Nope. Nope. We're not doing it. Not having it. I'll do anything. And then I got her trying to pair [00:42:40] and now she's all about them. Now she loves them.
Dave: You know, she said the same thing about going to Burning Man, but I got her to do that. So, yeah. So. Alright. If you got JJ who's absolutely shoe girl, [00:42:50] here's the next question.
So let's say that you're into high heels. Yeah. Right? And you, you're gonna go out on a hot date or whatever you're gonna wear high heels for, for three or four hours. Yeah. [00:43:00] How long does it take for the foot to recover from that? Well, just at,
Mark: at some point. I, you know, here's the example I'd use. You've cleaned up your diet, you've gotten rid of gluten.
[00:43:10] You're, you're, you're, you don't have any gut issues. You're living life. You're not in pain. You're thankful for all the changes you've made. And now you go out one night and you have [00:43:20] bread and pasta and pizza. And all of a sudden you're back to where you were. So you wake up the next morning, you go, Jesus, I'm, I like, I can't do that.
I, I mean, I, I, yeah, it, [00:43:30] when I used to eat bread and pasta and everything, it didn't hurt as much
Music: mm-hmm.
Mark: As it did this morning after one night because I cleaned up my act. So now think about feet. Now you've, [00:43:40] now you've re relaxed and realigned and strengthened and made your feet more mobile. And now you put on those, those old shoes again.
It's really gonna, you're really gonna notice it, right? Okay. So [00:43:50] are your feet gonna come back? Yeah, they're gonna come back after three hours, but you're, you're maybe not want, gonna wanna wear them for three hours. So we have a lot of people who like people in [00:44:00] Manhattan who walk to work in their palas 'cause they fit in the, in the, in the purse.
Get to work, put on their heels as they have to walk home. With their [00:44:10] palas on. So there are ways to do this. And
Dave: one of the things I, I do appreciate, I've got a size 16 feet and that means that if I was to take a pair of cowboy boots or normal [00:44:20] shoes, that's half my suitcase. I, I'm not even kidding. If it's a carry-on, I can't do it.
But the palas I'm wearing, they they mash up. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you could do whatever you want to 'em. And they're very [00:44:30] small. Yeah. So then I can have comfortable shoes. Like I wear 'em in the airports anyway. Yeah. I'm, uh, I'm just not going back to regular shoes. I, I traveled
Mark: light to get here 'cause I'm here for three days, so I only brought six pair of [00:44:40] PVAs.
Dave: Yeah, but you're a fashion maven. No,
Mark: no, no. But I'm telling you, I got, I got one for every, I got one for the stage when I'm speaking at HOS this weekend. Mm-hmm. I got slippers for the, for the hotel room. [00:44:50] I got ones to work out in the gym. I got these that I'm wearing today. 'cause they go with jeans. I got black leather lace up for the, I, you know, and, and I got.
You know, 15 other [00:45:00] ones at home that I rotate because I only wear these. Mm-hmm. I, look, I started this company for me. Oh, I know. Yeah. I'm like, just like Primal Kitchen. Yeah. I, I like, like, how, [00:45:10] how come nobody's making a condiment that I can mm-hmm. Put on my food with reckless abandon and eat as much as I want, not feel bad about myself.
How come? Nobody's making a shoe? That's the most comfortable [00:45:20] shoe you'll ever wear. And I guarantee that's one of our guarantees. This is the most comfortable shoe you'll ever wear. I mean, give it two or three days if you're not used to this. Yeah. But you'll, you'll quickly see, oh my God, I see what he's talking about.
This will strengthen your [00:45:30] feet. This will rebuild the resilience and the strength in your feet. And, you know, and, and then you'll go okay. I don't wanna put on [00:45:40] the narrow pointed shoes. My, we had a. An issue. My wife and I went to a wedding in, uh, France, south of France three years ago, and she said, you know, this is really a big [00:45:50] deal and this, and you're gonna get a Tom Ford suit.
You're gonna wear Tom Ford shoes. And I, I'm like, okay. And we buy these fricking Tom Ford shoes and, and they were so stiff and [00:46:00] so uncomfortable that I literally walked away from after the wedding, like after the ceremony was over, I walked barefoot down to the car, carrying the [00:46:10] shoes with bloody feet from the heels and all this mm-hmm.
Digging in and all that stuff. So, you know, you cannot get me into regular shoes ever again. And so this is my, [00:46:20] my goal is for, for this to be a thing. You say, what's the, what's the biggest hur The hurdle is the fashion aspect of it. And yet when people see. My [00:46:30] daughter in the gym at Lifetime Fitness yesterday in a all black outfit with, with our mesh sport mesh shoes on training people go, oh my God, that like, that is cute and hot and you [00:46:40] know, whatever.
When they see my wife training in the gym, when they, it's, it's gonna be just, it's a matter of getting past the five toed nature of it. Do you know Shalene [00:46:50] Johnson? Of course, yeah. Okay, so Chalene's a convert. So Shalene nice and she is. A total girly girl. I mean, you got JJ Virgin, who's a girl, girl. Mm-hmm.
Shalene and Shalene is [00:47:00] as she, she describes herself in a podcast we did. She says, well, I'm, my style is like housewife Hooker and Dolly Parton. And uh, I love that. And she's, but she loves they [00:47:10] heels and she looks great and she dresses up, she walks in PaaS and she's a big fan of p mm-hmm. I, I
Dave: think the shift is very few women are wearing [00:47:20] strappy, sexy lingerie with garter belts and all that stuff on a daily basis.
'cause it's not that comfortable. But you put it on for a special occasion. Yeah. And then you take it off [00:47:30] quickly. Yeah. High heels are more of a lingerie item. Yeah. Well put. Right. And, and just looking at it that way, saying I want to. Live for a very, very long time, which means [00:47:40] walking for a long time. Yeah.
And being comfortable and happy. So wear some cute shoes that allow your toes to spread. And this is a great way to do it with the pva. So I, I'm as, [00:47:50] as you know, I, I remember maybe 10 years ago I ran to you in San Francisco, just randomly. We were walking. I'm like, what? And you were wearing some leather, five fingers and you said, I bought five [00:48:00] pairs of these because they're running out.
Yeah. They, they stopped making them. And, and I was jealous 'cause they didn't make 'em in my size. Yeah. And you know, here we are years later, like, I'm just gonna do it for me. The, the best companies [00:48:10] ever. Like, same thing when, when I started my old coffee company. Yeah. So I couldn't buy coffee. They didn't make me tweak.
Music: Yeah.
Dave: So you did this, but I think you're, you're becoming successful at starting a movement of [00:48:20] normalizing comfortable footwear.
Mark: Yeah. What I wanna do is normalize foot health. I want foot health to be. Right up there with like, I want, I want people in the gym [00:48:30] go to that work out in the gym to go. Yeah, Tuesdays is, uh, chest and tries, and Wednesdays is back and bys and Friday's foot day.
You know, I really wanna see [00:48:40] something, some, some homage paid to the, to the sanctity of Foot Health. It's, it's the new sleep. It's really the overlooked, it's the lowest hanging fruit on the longevity tree. And you know, Courtney [00:48:50] Conley, who's a chiropractor, she'll say that big toe strength is a better indicator of, of, uh, risk for dying than grip strength or VO two max.
Like [00:49:00] wow. Peter ATT would say, yeah, don't tell Peter
Dave: att Yeah, he, he won't listen anyway. He's doing too much zone two to have time. Yeah. So let's, Hey guys, I'm breaking in here on my own podcast. Well, we weren't planning on [00:49:10] doing any kind of a discount, wait till the end and Mark decided in the, actually the end of the episode, he's giving you a gift.
So stay tuned. Now, what are the best a foot [00:49:20] strengthening exercises that I could do?
Mark: So here's the thing. Walking. Barefoot or in, or in minimalist footwear. Inva. Mm-hmm. Is, is the single best foot strengthening thing you [00:49:30] can do. Walking on's. Un
Dave: poor form though,
Mark: right? What? Yes. Well, so don't have poor form.
And by the way, if you walk the way, no. If you walk mm-hmm. If you walk in palas mm-hmm. You'll, [00:49:40] you'll have, you'll automatically have better form. Now we tell people, walk on uneven surfaces, like walk on rocks, walk on cobblestones, you know, walk on this, uh, [00:49:50] we, we look for uneven surfaces when I take people off on their first outing with, with visum.
Okay, now dig. What's happening to your feet? Your feet are accommodating the [00:50:00] shift in the tilt, right? Mm-hmm. And you're stepping on the outside of this rock. But it's okay. Your, your ankle's rolling enough and it knows when to stop rolling. Mm-hmm. Rather than if you're wearing a stiff hiking [00:50:10] boot and you stepped on this the wrong way, your ankle wouldn't roll at all, but you'd tweak your knee.
Because that was the next point of you know, the, the next weak link in the kinetic chain that was not getting information [00:50:20] from the bottoms of your feet. Okay? Like if you walk barefoot on, on boulders, if you're bouldering with bare feet, every footfall is different. Every foot. It doesn't matter. You, you're accommodating it.
Your, [00:50:30] you kinetic chain is organizing itself. You do enough of this and you rebuild healthy foot function. So I can give you all the foot circles you can do, I can give you all of the walking [00:50:40] backwards on a treadmill, you know, uphill Allah you know Ben Patrick mm-hmm. Knees over toes guy. I can give you the, you know, the, all of the, the stretches you can [00:50:50] do with the different devices.
Standing on a bosu ball and rolling. Just walk barefoot as much as you can. Or if you can't go barefoot, walk with PVAs on [00:51:00] and you'll strengthen your feet. There is, there is no. Way around that you'll regain without compromising, you know, without twisting an ankle or, or all of the things that [00:51:10] might happen if you were like going to the track and doing you know, drills for sprinting or something like that, which are foot strengthening, but, but have a little bit of a [00:51:20] ballistic dynamic nature to them that that is not without risk.
I was,
Dave: does that make sense? It, it makes a lot of sense and I'm, I'm just envisioning what is the [00:51:30] best uneven surface to walk on and it has to be the rubble of the pharmaceutical industry. That's funny. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have, [00:51:40] in my own foot recovery journey, I did a lot of functional movement work because I found out.
My brain wasn't addressing my toes. [00:51:50] They, they were fold over. 'cause I didn't know how to, how to straighten. I, I, so I had a, a, a friend up on Vancouver Island. She would tap on my toes until, somehow I reconnected it until [00:52:00] I could finally spread them. And then my toes were always kind of like jacked up and now I have straight toes and I can spread them.
And then I did have to go through almost like infant learning to learn how to [00:52:10] flex cru a
Mark: towel and yeah, grab a towel with your toes, things like that. Like
Dave: flex both sides of the foot to Yeah. You know, lift my toes. Can you spread 'em out
Mark: wide? Can you, can you,
Dave: can it, yeah, that's, yeah. My decent, my toes, my legs are crossed [00:52:20] when they're not crossed.
Yeah. There you go. It's spreading pretty. That's pretty well yes. Not bad. Not
Mark: bad. For
Dave: a guy who had
Mark: crossed over
Dave: toes and, oh yeah. Yeah. And uh, my, I think my other one spreads better in part 'cause I just did a [00:52:30] bunch. But feet are supposed to be
Mark: wide.
For 2 million years we were barefoot. Mm-hmm. And then for the last 4,000 years, we had [00:52:40] minimalist footwear. So we were wearing, you know, sandals made of skins or of reeds or whatever, you know, cobbled together. And it's only in the last, like in the 16 hundreds, the, [00:52:50] the, um, notion of fashion footwear came in and the royalty and the nobility would wear these tight shoes that compressed their feet but had [00:53:00] pointy pointy toes.
And they looked good almost to signify that they were not the working class. And then the working class at these wide. Wide toe box shoes that [00:53:10] accommodated a wide foot and were, you know, able to toil in the soil and do all, all the things that they had to do. That's, and then for the next several hundred years, fashion footwear became this thing and pointy toes [00:53:20] and to the point of stiletto heels.
And then in the late middle 1970s, the, the athletic shoe market started with this mm-hmm. Thick cushioned [00:53:30] shoe, which that just began a whole you know, a whole gener, several generations of injured runners as a result of, of that. So, minimalist footwear's only been around for a handful of [00:53:40] years.
Mm-hmm. Recently, but it's been around for 2 million years because we were minimalist footwear for the first, of course, for the first 2000 years. And then for 4,000 years up to about, you know, the 17th [00:53:50] century. And then we started wearing shoes. So most of our time has been spent with minimalist or barefoot.
Mm-hmm. And now we're just reintroducing this. So now there's a whole resurgence of minimalist footwear. There's [00:54:00] several companies making wide toe box shoes, you know, wide thin, flat, flexible shoes. Yeah. Our argument is if you've screwed your feet up so [00:54:10] badly over the decades wearing regular shoes, and then you buy a pair of minimalist footwear that has a single open toe wide toe box, your feet don't automatically seek [00:54:20] some beautiful natural splay out.
Yeah. They c they retain their dysfunctional misformed shape to train them within. So you have to train them. And how you do that [00:54:30] now you can wear toast, spreaders in a, in a wide toe box, regular shoe, or get a pair of palas and start to train your feet that way.
Dave: Got it. I will admit, I'm, I'm a fan of [00:54:40] both when I went to the royal wedding in Norway recently.
I didn't think I could quite get away with my tux, uh, walking down the red carpet. Not, not yet. Not yet, yeah. Yet. So, but I [00:54:50] did wear some leather wide toe box shoes and online people roasted me for that saying, oh my God, you look so good, but your shoes are ugly. And I just responded and, and said, they're my male [00:55:00] birthday.
So we have these in black. You could have, you could've worn these. I could've worn these with leather. These are sweet. Yeah. Yeah. So that's a, that's a workplace shoe. I do, I do not own a leather pair of these. They're, because
Mark: they don't make 'em in, in your size yet. [00:55:10] Ah, but I mean, that's a, that's a workplace shoe.
Uh, this is, you know, I would wear that. Yeah. No, and we, and in the black, it looks really good with a, with a, with a tux. I mean, I've worn it many times. I wedding weddings and [00:55:20] funerals. Mm-hmm. You know, whatever. So again, a, a, a, a shoe for all occasions is what we were after here.
Dave: Okay. Well, I, I just appreciate it so much because [00:55:30] there was really nothing before this that would be for all occasions it was extreme workout stuff and that was it.
Ballet slippers for MMA fighters. Yeah. Like bright yellow [00:55:40] stuff and, yeah. What about special forces and military people? Are they adopting pva?
Mark: Not yet, but that's mostly because it's a, you know, there's a lot of white [00:55:50] space out there for us, and we haven't even begun to approach that yet, but I,
Dave: I imagine there's some guys who already want to, yeah,
Mark: yeah.
No, we'll find them or they'll find us, but right now we're, we're just. You know, we're, [00:56:00] we're swimming as fast as we can, kind of upstream trying to let the world know that we have this amazing shoe that is perfect for everyone. I mean, look, there are 340 [00:56:10] million people in this country. Everybody needs shoes.
Mm-hmm. Not everyone's gonna be right for PVA in terms of their, their aesthetics, but, you know, a lot of people will and, and already [00:56:20] have. Looked at this shoe and go, oh my God. Like, why didn't somebody think of this earlier? Wow. Do you know the
Dave: history of
Mark: Crocs? Only, only tangentially. Do you know [00:56:30] it?
Are you gonna tell me or I just gonna say it's hilarious. Yeah. I think Crocs great example too, by the way of, of, of, uh, consumer acceptance eventually. Mm-hmm.
Music: Well,
Dave: consumer acceptance of shoes that are [00:56:40] not good for your feet though, right? Yeah. They're formless and squishy. Yeah. They say they don't encourage good foot posture and they're full of plasticizers and things.
Music: Yeah.
Dave: There's a great [00:56:50] documentary called Idiocracy. You've probably seen it. Ah, it's one of my favorite movies. I tell everyone to watch it. We're there, we're there, babe. We're we're totally there. Yeah. Look at the shoes. The producers were trying to [00:57:00] find the most ridiculous shoes that only stupid people would wear in the future.
Yeah. And they bought all of Croc's inventory for the movie, and that was what made Crocs take off. Yeah. [00:57:10] So. And, you know, my, my kids, when they first got Crux, I was like, oh my God, don't do this. But, you know, it didn't have agreement in the house about that. So I watched 'em wear it and watched their gate go the wrong [00:57:20] direction and, you know, you do what you
Mark: can.
No, you do what you can. And again, there's so that when I say there's no accounting for, for people's aesthetics, that's an example of a billion dollar [00:57:30] company. Yeah. That, you know, I'm, I'm not wild about the aesthetics. Yeah. Cornflakes I got, I got a friend who has 300 pair 'cause he collects 'em. So
Dave: Yeah, there you go.
Yeah. I think cornflakes, you know, it's also a [00:57:40] massive company. I mean, it's good for you. Yeah. Right. So I, uh, there's a, and do you know about the excavation of the Tim River with shoes? No. Oh my gosh. You'll want to know about this [00:57:50] because it, it, uh, it helps to explain how we got to where we are. So there's this place where people would throw their shoes in for, I don't know, unrequited love or something.
I don't remember what, but because [00:58:00] layers of sediment preserved things without spoiling, they excavated it and they basically got the, the evolution of footwear over time, which is like. The nerdiest thing [00:58:10] ever. Sure. But what they found was that she's got longer and pointier and that it was correlated with wealth because if you had like a two foot long clown shoe that curled up in [00:58:20] front Yeah, yeah.
And they, they excavated those. Yeah. That meant you were so rich that you had servants to do everything. Yeah. And the less, less poignant, less short, then the more you were a physical labor. Yeah. That's I'm saying. Yeah. Right.
Music: Yeah.
Dave: [00:58:30] And, and so they have this whole like graph of the shaping of footwear over time from an archeological dig.
I have to check it out in, in Britain and I, there's probably room on, on your [00:58:40] website somewhere to be like, this is a stupidity that got us here. It was just arrogance. Crazy. Right. It drives me nuts. Yeah. Okay. Talk to me about the cognitive benefits of walking.
Mark: [00:58:50] A lot of people will say I. Mark. I don't wanna give up running because it's my meditation.
Yeah. I'm a masochist. Right. It's, it's, uh, you know, it's my, yeah. It's, [00:59:00] uh, you know, it's my time mm-hmm. Where I'm alone and most of those people are, are, are playing heavy metal headbanging music to, to overcome the, the, um, [00:59:10] monotony of the running or whatever. They're not really, it's not really to any of those people, I would say.
And by the way, I, I was, I was a runner for a long time. Mm-hmm. And I would go off, I never wore headphones when I ran, ever, ever, ever. I've never [00:59:20] worn any headphones working out. It just, it's antithetical to the experience of working out, particularly if you're out in the nature cycling or, or if you're in the gym to block out whatever they're playing is correct.
Yes. [00:59:30] I guess. Sure, that's fine. Yeah. so what's the you know, what's the benefit of. Running for me. I wrote a lot of good pieces on the run [00:59:40] out in the, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. In the hills behind Santa Monica. But walking's better. I mean, walking is not as, because it's not as difficult as running.
Music: Mm-hmm.
Mark: When you're [00:59:50] walking, you can get in that meditative state a lot easier. It's so, so the benefits of walking, the meditative benefits of walking, the cognitive benefits of [01:00:00] walking, which are just, you know, the circulation being out in nature breathing the air. The fact that, again, if you do it with minimalist footwear, particularly pales or barefoot, the fact [01:00:10] that the big toe, in addition to being wired to the glute, the big toe is wired directly to the brain.
Music: Mm-hmm.
Mark: And I'm, I talked, I just had a conversation this morning, an email conversation with somebody this morning [01:00:20] about putting together a study on cognitive decline. And barefoot and minimalist footwear. Mm-hmm. The fact that people who are experiencing cognitive [01:00:30] decline may benefit from having toes splayed outward and engaging the big toe, in a walking, in a, yeah.
In a walking with a, with a perfect gate [01:00:40] that is with a gate that is, plant the heel, roll off the big toe, plant the heel, roll off the big toe versus plant the heel. And then over pronate because your feet are all squished together [01:00:50] because you're duck footed. Because, because you've, you've adapted your gait that way because of the shoes you're wearing.
So it'll be interesting to see. I feel like there's gonna be a strong correlation. I get, I [01:01:00] get a regular foot massage once a week, I get a reflexologist coming. Mm-hmm. And she's amazing. And she is really huge fan of pza. That's all she wears. And, and, uh, she teaches [01:01:10] reflexology to other Wow. Massage therapists and reflexologists.
And she's always, you know, she's always working on my, on my big, big toe, great toe. And, you know, it's the, it's that brain connection. [01:01:20] So even in Chinese medicine going back thousands of years, there's this connection between the brain and the big toe. Mm-hmm. So, the, the fact that you could, through walking, you can [01:01:30] ignite that, you can engage that connection passively without thinking about it.
I, I think there's a lot of promise here. We'll see. I mean, it, you know, it's just one of those things I'm looking at doing that, uh. [01:01:40] Among many other experiments that I wanna, studies that I wanna engage in.
Dave: Well, you're, you're a constantly a curious guy and, and there's, there's patterns you can [01:01:50] predict outcomes and what we do know with things like Alzheimer's and dementia, having cataract surgery so that you can see with more.
[01:02:00] Neurological information reduces Alzheimer's getting a hearing aid so you can hear with more fidelity reduces Alzheimer's. It would stand to reason, and we, we can prove it, [01:02:10] but I would bet on the results of this, that having more neurological input through the third most nerve dense part of the body the first being hands [01:02:20] reproduction and then feed, actually lips might be up there too, but, okay.
If you get a lot more bandwidth coming in, the brain will adapt to it. And if, in fact, there's also a study [01:02:30] that shows overusing noise canceling headphones, especially when it's not noisy, also can lead to cognitive declines. So it only makes sense that having sensory input through your feet is [01:02:40] going to work and being able to bend your toes independently is sensory input.
Mark: Yeah. So I, I would do it. And just the ground field part, just the fact that, that I tell people when you put on PVAs you can feel everything you walk on. And that's a good [01:02:50] thing, right? So you feel every stone, every stick, every hole, every divot, every crack. Every dimple on a me a metal grate. Mm-hmm. Um, I joke that I can read the manufacturer of a, a [01:03:00] manhole cover.
Mm-hmm. Uh, from my bottoms of my feet, but no, not really, but you know, but you feel, and it feels good. That's the thing I want to, like, I really need to impress upon people. Is it feeling [01:03:10] stuff underneath your feet?
Music: Mm-hmm.
Mark: Without, you know, sharp puncture, whatever is a good thing. It's what you're, you're, you're, you crave it.
And to your point, the more [01:03:20] amount of that sort of ground feel, input you can give to your brain, it's gotta be better for you.
Dave: I've felt the neurological changes and, you know, I run a neuroscience company. I've, [01:03:30] I've measured everything and, and just learned how to feel it when I switched to things, tissues that let me spread my toes and had very little padding.
Less than these, but probably too little. [01:03:40] Yes, I would get bruises on my feet from stumps, but, or from roots, usually on Vancouver Island. But I did feel cognitive shifts because of when I would go for a walk. [01:03:50] I felt like I was connected. And there is something to that.
Mark: Well, I mean, the best example is, is pretty simple.
Anybody who walks outside with shoes on and then goes over to a grassy field, takes their shoes off [01:04:00] and stands barefoot in the grass, you can't help but have a smile on your face. Mm-hmm. It's an automatic mood elevator. Right. There's something going on there. And part of that is the, the ground field.
Part of that is grounding. [01:04:10] Part of that mm-hmm. Is the, is the negative ion transfer? There's a lot of stuff going on there, but the bottom line is the feet want to be naked against. Right. The ground.
Dave: [01:04:20] Let's talk about Earthing for a minute. Clint Ober, uh, was just over here. Who's the, the grandfather, founder of the Earthing movement.
Yeah. And over the years, I've had a couple [01:04:30] different companies send me earthing sandals or something with a big copper nut in the middle of way. Do it. It bruise me. It's
Mark: the only, it's So people have asked us, this's a great question and I've talked to Clint [01:04:40] about this. Yeah. Because Clint's got some patents that he's, he's working on.
Mm-hmm. I'm, I'm familiar. Yeah. Our number one thing is ground feel toe articulation. [01:04:50] Mm-hmm. And comfort. If we can get to the point where we can provide grounding as well, we'll do that. But you think about what you just said, a metal plug in the middle of the shoe [01:05:00] that can feel good, which doesn't feel good, and is only in that part of the foot, you really want the entire foot to be mm-hmm.
It's, it's not like you just want one little wire stuck into your foot that's [01:05:10] gonna ground the entire body. So there, we, we talked about infusing the the sole with copper wire. Right. And a mesh, a copper mesh. Mm-hmm. But now you wear it down [01:05:20] and you, you have the copper has to be exposed to the ground in order for it to conduct, and then you wear it down.
Now you go shred your carpet when you walk into your house or you scratch your hardwood floor. So the, the [01:05:30] practical implications, you can't just, you can't just create you sort of give up one for the other. Yeah. So, you know, best grounding shoes are the leather, the leather moccasins that you [01:05:40] can find.
Yeah. That are. The most minimal shoe you could ever I think you could ever wear. And they don't last very long, and they don't last very long for the very reason that they're what makes them good grounding shoes also makes 'em [01:05:50] horrible for wear resistance. Mm-hmm. So, you know, you might get 600 miles or seven oh miles on a pair of palas.
If you're walking, you might get 40 miles on a pair of those. Grounding moccasins.
Dave: Yep. It's a, [01:06:00] it's a conundrum and maybe there'll be some materials engineering thing where we can have a, a long lasting, flexible, slightly padded and conductive material. But right now, yeah, I haven't found it. Yeah. [01:06:10] Okay. That, thanks for answering that.
And I've thought about this for years. I think Clint's other technology may be the solution, but, we'll, he's already talked about it on the show. Yeah. So he actually gave me one of his [01:06:20] new devices and it fell outta my sock. I'm still sad. So, mark, we've talked about all kinds of stuff. Exercise, timing, walking versus running.
We've just talked a lot about [01:06:30] footwear and spreading toes where you and I are so aligned on this. You also follow all the research on protein and nutrition and it's a 40 year lifelong. [01:06:40] Yeah. Say obsession for you. New research on protein, timing and amount. What's your take?
Mark: God, I just get so flustered at, at what, what they call [01:06:50] new research.
Yeah. Because new research means one more study that. Looked at a granular aspect of you know, some whether it was, um, [01:07:00] digestibility or absorption or utilization or marked protein uptake or whatever it is. But the latest seems to be, and what the, what the, [01:07:10] what our world is, is touting is one gram per pound of body weight.
Mm-hmm. In terms of protein as a minimum. Probably depends on what kind of protein though, right? I, I hope it does, but, [01:07:20] but you know, that's, that's, for me, even that's too much protein. I weigh, I weigh 1 72. I don't, I never get 172 grams of protein in a day. I, I, I, I've tried [01:07:30] and it makes me uncomfortable and I'm the guy, we, as we said earlier, I, I look at what's the minimum effective dose, right?
Of anything that I need. What's the minimum effective dose of exercise I [01:07:40] need to be strong and fit and lean and not get sick. Mm-hmm. What's the minimum effective dose of food I need, and I've talked about this in the past because most people. Look at the [01:07:50] opposite. They will, they will say, what's the most amount of food I can eat?
Music: Mm-hmm.
Mark: And, you know, cram down my pie hole and not feel like a glutton and not gain weight and not, you know, feel you know, [01:08:00] distended or whatever. The opposite of that is, what's the least amount of food I can eat, have all the energy I want, maintain or build lean muscle mass, never get sick. And most importantly, not be hungry.
[01:08:10] Hunger. Yeah. Hunger destroys everything. So, so hunger you, so you gotta overcome that. But what is the least amount of that food? And in my case, you know, the latest, my latest is with regard to [01:08:20] protein I think 120 grams per day for a man on average, plus or minus 20. Based on body weight? No. Just based on being a man.
Because if you, [01:08:30] other than massive bodybuilders
Dave: like a Peruvian five foot tall guy versus a six foot four Norwegian, this is gonna be a pretty big difference,
Mark: right? Yeah. But not that. But still not, [01:08:40] but not gonna be twice. It's not even gonna be twice the muscle mass and, and the active, you know, thermic effect and everything else.
So with regard to [01:08:50] that generic mm-hmm. 120 plus or minus. So that gets me to 100 for the Peruvian guy and one 40 for the Okay. Norwegian guy. But if you do the DEXA [01:09:00] scan on, on Americans in general, forget, let's forget other countries and other Okay. Other, you know, cultures in the US if you've got the average [01:09:10] guy being between, you know, 5, 6, 5 7, and 6 2, 6 3 mm-hmm.
You don't get twice the body mass of, of actual lean tissue.
Dave: Yeah. So you wouldn't eat [01:09:20] twice the protein, so you wouldn't eat twice
Mark: the protein. So now protein also is, it's, you know, because we don't combust protein, we're not supposed to. One of my early [01:09:30] posts, 2008, I wrote, people talk about it all the time now, but I wrote a post called the Context of Calories in which I said, why are we even assigning.
A caloric value to protein.
Dave: Yes. 'cause it [01:09:40] takes so much just to burn it.
Mark: And, and the first 40 or 50 grams of protein goes to construction. You're not gonna combust it.
Music: Yeah.
Mark: You're gonna, you're gonna, you're gonna use it the way it was [01:09:50] intended as a, as a construction material. You're gonna burn fat, you're gonna burn carbohydrate, you're gonna burn ketones as a result of the fat.
You might burn the protein, but only in a, in a, in a scenario where you're starving. [01:10:00] So why do we even assign a, a caloric value to protein given that, and given the fact that we have these protein sinks that, you know, mus muscle [01:10:10] is a protein sink. Mm-hmm. It stores protein. We have protein re some of the liver.
So we don't need to be getting 30 grams every meal, four meals a day, you know, every [01:10:20] day. And if we miss a meal, we're gonna go into cannibal mode and cannibalize our tissue. No. We have this reserve that. I look back and I go, if on average [01:10:30] over the past four days I've consumed a hundred, 220 grams of protein on a, on a daily basis, I'm good.
If one day was 80 and one day was [01:10:40] one 40 and one day was 100, and it, it doesn't matter because the body is so adept at adjusting to the, the, the, the minute to [01:10:50] minute, hour to hour requirements that it has, if you had to adjust for that by titering your intake of protein based on your activity levels or your sickness or [01:11:00] whatever it is, you'd go crazy just trying to keep up with yourself.
And if it really had an effect, then you'd, you'd either wither away or you'd blow up like, uh, you know, like, like a balloon. [01:11:10] Okay. So. Long-winded answer to your question, but I don't think a gram per pound of body weight for a 200 pound man, probably too [01:11:20] much for 150 pound woman trying to lose weight.
Dave: Probably too much. Oh, most definitely there because what I've seen is at your ideal body weight, it's that [01:11:30] number of grams. So I, I did a lot of research on this and when I wrote my longevity book, there's a. A sweet spot around 0.6 grams and some good longevity studies [01:11:40] on that. Per body weight or per intent or ideal body weight.
Per ideal body weight. Okay. Yeah. Right. And then a bunch of the, the carnivore people were like, that's that's offensive. How dare you? You're not [01:11:50] one of us. And I'm like, tribal much. And I also think that the quality of the protein matters. And I also see that there's a lot of research around one to 1.2 grams.
[01:12:00] So I said, all right, I'm going to see if I'm wrong about the 0.6. And I went and I actually measured and I did 200 grams, and I just kept getting leaner and leaner to the point [01:12:10] that I'm at 5% body fat. And I also, and I think this is very important. I said, well, I'm doing two meals a day. I mean, you and I are both into that.
Mm-hmm. Um, and if I'm doing two [01:12:20] meals a day, I have to get a hundred grams per meal. And all the science I'd read said 30 to 50 grams, all you can absorb. And I thought, well, that seems stupid because if I can't absorb it, I'll get bodybuilder farts. [01:12:30] So I'll just take my enzymes. And I ate a hundred grams per meal and my health got profoundly better.
Right. And I'm like, this, this is kind [01:12:40] of crazy. And lately I backed off from that because I'm too lean. So I'm like, I actually made sourdough bread from French wheat with no glyphosate, and I've not eaten gluten in the [01:12:50] US and many years, but I fermented it myself. I'm doing that because I'm trying to get fatter.
Yeah. Because I would like to be at 7% instead of 5% by fat. Right. Yeah. So, so what do you think about this [01:13:00] large protein bolus once a day?
Mark: I just it, it doesn't make sense to me. But you know, everybody, to your point, everyone's different. Mm-hmm. And I would say it also depends on what the other macros are in [01:13:10] your diet.
Yeah. Right. If you're just. If you're somebody who's just gonna eat 200 grams of protein a day, that's 800 calories. And then you gonna, what? Make it up with, with a hundred grams of, [01:13:20] of, uh, green leafy vegetables for carbs in the form of, you know, green leafy vegetables. That's now you're 1200 a day.
Mm-hmm. And then what? The rest is fat. I mean, it's, you, you're gonna lose weight [01:13:30] on that. And to the extent that your body doesn't assimilate it, look, you, there's a point at which you also have to do a lot of work to add the, the, the, [01:13:40] um, the protein that you're taking in as a building block to build muscle or to build enzymes.
So I would argue that people are taking in 200 grams of protein a day and losing weight. Are, they're [01:13:50] combusting the protein, just like I said, you're not mm-hmm. You're not adding that on. So it's not like you're, now you're using an inappropriate form of energy. Mm-hmm. Now, now the 200 grams that you're taking [01:14:00] in.
Of which your body only needs, I'm gonna argue your body only needs a hundred to 120. Mm-hmm. So now you're combusting the rest, you're, but you're also, because it's got a high thermic effect to [01:14:10] digest it, you're, you're spending energy digesting the original protein and then you're combusting the other stuff through gluconeogenesis and you're [01:14:20] actually, so, so, you know, it, it doesn't mean you need 200 grams a day.
Sure. It means you need a hundred grams. I'm gonna say you need a hundred grams a day, maybe 120, and [01:14:30] you need 300 grams of, of carbs. Mm-hmm. And you need 150 grams of fat. And that would be my prescription for you to gain weight. But it wouldn't be to [01:14:40] add. Protein because you're not gonna, you're not gonna build more muscle just because you're taking in more protein.
Dave: No, you're not. There's an upper limit. And what did come out [01:14:50] last year was a research it was pretty good research that said that there's no upper limit to the amount of protein you can consume. That if you eat a hundred grams in a meal, you're muscle building will [01:15:00] last for a longer period of time.
And I've long believed that gluconeogenesis is a metabolically expensive and difficult and not necessarily ideal way to get your carbs. [01:15:10] So last year I said, all right, let's see what happens. I added 400 grams of white rice and honey every day and did not gain a single pound four oh grams in the, in [01:15:20] four oh carb grams.
Or four oh oh gram 4 0 400 carb grams. Yeah. I mean, I was eating buckets of cooked and cooled white rice. Yeah, honey and unlimited butter. Yeah. [01:15:30] Not in gain any weight. Yeah. And what I discovered, and again, I'm not trying to disprove anything you're saying, I'm ask, I'm asking 'cause you know a lot, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. What I discovered is when [01:15:40] you're getting those higher doses of protein it has a very strong effect on GLP one, right. Almost like taking Ozempic. Mm-hmm. Right. So what I'm doing just as of last [01:15:50] month is I backed my protein off very substantially because I realized I was protein deficient 'cause I traveled too much.
And what I'm going to eat sushi. So I started bringing protein with me all the time and I [01:16:00] solve the protein problem. And so now I'm like, all right, I'll have moderate carbs. And I cut my protein basically in half to run a hundred, maybe 120 to see, and you're [01:16:10] not withering away. Not withering away. I did put on 1% body fat.
So last I was like six and a half, almost seven. And I'm still very lean and ripped, but not quite as shredded. Like if [01:16:20] the cover of my book, I don't have one in here, I'm look like I play water polo and like I fasted for a week and I didn't, this was just, I got off an airplane like. Like that, that is unairbrushed and like, there you go.
What [01:16:30] the heck? Yeah. Right. This is better than I was 10 years ago. Right? Yeah. Yeah. So there you go, guys. But I'm, I think that the, the answer isn't out and then we have like, perfect [01:16:40] aminos is something I'm a big fan of just getting aminos that, you know, get in. Yeah. What's your take on targeted amino acid?
Supple?
Mark: Yeah, I mean, that's fine. I, I, I think, you know, branch chain or essential amino whet mm-hmm. That, [01:16:50] that's probably a, a, a legitimate supplement to take if you're, especially if you're a vegetarian or vegan. Oh God, yeah. You're gonna take that. I've got, you have to take those. But, um, you know, I, again, minimum effective dose, I eat [01:17:00] meat a lot.
I don't feel like I need to supplement mm-hmm. With BCAAs or, or essential Immunos. So, you know, mostly because it's just too much of a you [01:17:10] know, a, a calendared ritual for me to think about. So I just don't even bother anymore. I mean, I, I, I had a supplement company for 35 years. Yeah. I pretty much don't [01:17:20] take supplements now.
I take vitamin D, vitamin CI take collagen, which I consider a important supple. Wow. Yeah. But I don't take multivitamins. I don't take, you know, any of the, the, you know, the coq [01:17:30] 10, the resveratrol, the NCA, all, all the stuff that I put in my original supplements. Minimum effective dose, what's my minimum effective dose of everything.
Mm-hmm. Which includes [01:17:40] supplementation. So if I feel good back to that original premise mm-hmm. About really it's about how you feel. If I feel good, why would I, and, and you have to wanna throw the [01:17:50] balance of something off. Okay. That's the other thing. Is it? Wow. I started, when I started taking, the first supplementation I did was in 19 87, 7 8, [01:18:00] 19 80.
I was training for Ironman.
Music: Mm-hmm.
Mark: And I was taking 25 grams of calcium. ASCO be a day.
Music: Oof.
Mark: Yeah. Because that's what I. [01:18:10] Linus polling, Linus Pauling said to take. Mm-hmm. And, and I got sick. I got it was, and I didn't, I just got, he gave you oxalate probably. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I mean, he said, take to bowel, bowel tolerance.
Well, geez. [01:18:20] Mm-hmm. Who know that 25 grams a day. It was bowel tolerance. But, you know, it was like, that was stupid. Or in the years later I was taking, you know, 400 IU of alpha tocopherol a day, the
Dave: [01:18:30] synthetic vitamin
Mark: eight. It turns out though, it's one of the worst things you can do. It's an antioxidant. Okay.
But you gotta take it with a full spectrum of other tecos. Mm-hmm. And toco trials. So I think [01:18:40] we're sometimes in this biohacking world, we're going down these paths of like, we don't even know what the long-term effects of these are. And if they're not. [01:18:50] Demonstrably better. Why would you even, you know, begin to, to engage in that?
Dave: I am a hundred percent with you on that. Where we, we probably differ [01:19:00] on the value of some of my lab testing where I used to do a lot of things I believed worked like chronic cardio, 90 minutes of gem a day, low fat, some of my vegetarian diet and I wrecked [01:19:10] my health and I, I'll be a vegan and they'll be a raw vegan That wrecked my health.
Even worse. Yeah. So like, I'm going to get the, the data to see if the needle's moving in the right direction so I can adjust my behavior. 'cause [01:19:20] I realized my belief that something will work was gonna overshadow my intuition, especially early on. I think my intuition's pretty good now. Yeah. Just like yours is.
So I, I'm still finished. All right. Let me try this [01:19:30] stack of whatever and if I feel noticeably better and my labs show that numbers are improving. I'm okay with it. Yeah. But if they don't, then I'm not gonna do it anymore. And, [01:19:40] and it is that p that piece around some things work, some things don't, some things work for you and not for me.
'cause of all the different reasons. Yeah. So the personalization, but it's taken me 25 years to get there. [01:19:50] Yeah.
Mark: Well, and the other difference is, and don't take me wrong, but you, you wanna live to 160, 180 at the top. Sorry. You, you upped it. It's always been 180. Okay. Well it's been 180. You know, I'm [01:20:00] gonna be fine with like 90 or 95.
Yep. And as long as it's you know, quality of life Yeah. The whole way in and. I look at Brian Johnson, I'm like, dude, [01:20:10] don't die. Like that is such a horrible way to look at life. I want, you know, I want to, as they say, I want to, you know, slide in, you know, sideways [01:20:20] screaming and whatever, yelling at the very end.
Dave: Yeah. It's funny, some people were skeptical when I sat I lived to at least 180 when I came out with the big thing. I'm like, guys, the real reason is I, I wanna [01:20:30] die at a time and buy a method of my choosing. Yeah, right. That, that's the ultimate freedom. And same, by the way. Yeah. Yeah. I
Mark: mean, that, that's something that, that would be, imagine creating an app [01:20:40] where you got to, you got to legally that you got to legally create a test mm-hmm.
That you had to pass. Right. And if you didn't pass it, your heirs would [01:20:50] have a shot at, you know, they'd say, okay, we can, uh, you know, we can inject the cocktail now, or whatever. Give 'em the cocktail. Oh my gosh. That's so dark.
Dave: And also enlightened.
Mark: No, it's just, I I, I, this is [01:21:00] stuff I think about later night,
Dave: but they, they had this back in the Viking times.
Yeah. And you can't carry the bucket of water. They piss you off the family cliff.
Mark: Right. Or, uh, little big man where, uh, chief Dan George goes up on the [01:21:10] rock and he says, today is a good day to die. Mm-hmm. And he lies down to die. Mm-hmm. It starts raining. Mm-hmm. He's there for like 15 minutes and he goes, no, today's not a good day to die.
He get, he gets up and walks back [01:21:20] to the, to the camp. That's brilliant.
Dave: Yeah. And ultimately it comes down to if your quality of life is really good, you'll probably wanna live [01:21:30] longer and you'll probably want to become more peaceful, more conscious. Yeah. And I, I really think anyone who starts biohacking for a certain reason, eventually you'll become a longevity person, which is kinda where I started.
And [01:21:40] you're also gonna get into meditation and breath work and the things that make you able to choose your state. Yeah. Which includes a vibrantly healthy, high energy state, but also a stay where other people [01:21:50] can't get outta your skin. Yeah. And those are the two big areas of focus for me now, and I'd rather not be, can you figure out that
Mark: latter one?
Lemme know. All right. Where other people can't get under your skin.
Dave: We're, we're getting there. That's [01:22:00] heavily meditated. I mean, we, we all have our, our times and we're reactive and I have a lot less of 'em now than I used to, that's for sure. Cool. Mark. Thanks for your 40 years of service to [01:22:10] humanity, and I mean that very truthfully.
Appreciate it. Thanks for the impact you've had on me.
Mark: Yeah, thanks for having me on, Dave. Good to see you again man.
Dave: And thanks for making shoes I can wear again. Yeah, truly appreciate it. And guys, it's [01:22:20] pva.com. Yep. P-E-L-U-V a.com. Use code Dave and Mark's gonna gift you 15% off and you can tell we planned that.
Right. Thanks for the gift. Yeah, my [01:22:30] pleasure. See you next time on the Human Upgrade Podcast.