Live Longer Weekly #7

Exercise Snacks, Cold Plunge, Exercise changes heritable genes, Women's training

Oct 22, 2023

Hi everyone! Today’s Live Longer Weekly post is dedicated to exercise tips and research. The importance of exercise as the best longevity drug is something I’ve written about a lot in the past, and I found the links below useful in boosting my own exercise regime, especially the first two. Hope it helps you too!

This post is part of my series Live Longer Weekly, where I curate actionable longevity tips from some of the best longevity experts in the world - Peter Attia, Rhonda Patrick, Andrew Huberman, Bryan Johnson and so on. 

Let's unite in improving our health day by day, week by week.

#1 Exercise “Snacks” to Enhance Cardiovascular & Muscular Endurance: Andrew Huberman

Exercise snacks help maintain or enhance your cardiovascular and muscular endurance. These are brief 1-3 minute exercises that can be done during the day. This can be as simple as getting up from your desk and doing 50 - 100 jumping jacks or going up and down the stairwell for 1 minute. The purpose of these exercises is to get your heart rate up and they enhance your fitness training. In this clip, Huberman shares more examples and discusses the purpose of these exercise snacks.

LINK (start at 43:29 for ~10 minutes)

#2 Cold plunge before exercise: Joe Rogan and David Goggins

Joe Rogan talks about the benefits of cold plunge before exercise, giving the example of a man in his 50s who dropped his PSA significantly and increased his testosterone using this protocol. Also note that cold plunge post exercise can decrease hypertrophy or muscle gains.

LINK (4:59)

#3 Exercise changes your genes and your kids inherit it: Rhonda Patrick

“Exercise can potentially affect your unborn children’s genes by altering the chemistry of DNA in sperm and egg cells..Looking at genetic changes in sperm, three months of high-intensity aerobic exercise done twice per week was enough to see changes in paternally inherited genes involved in risk of autism, Alzheimer’s disease, obsessive-compulsive disorder, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and atherosclerosis.” - Rhonda Patrick

LINK + LINK

#4 Training differences between men and women: Peter Attia & Holly Baxter

Holly Baxter discusses why women do better with higher-rep ranges and men do better with lower-rep ranges when strength training. Females have a greater percentage of Type 1 muscle twitch fibers which makes them better able to transport nutrients into the tissues and clear different metabolites. This means that women tend to be less fatigable and are better able to utilize fatty acids. She also discusses women’s training around the menstrual cycle.

LINK (6:40)