How to Feel Alive in an Exhausting World  🔗 **Source:** [How to Feel Alive in an Exhausting World](https://share.snipd.com/episode/4daedc2a-c46e-488d-bba2-d5cc99f678ac) ## Highlights - **Take Five Minute Movement Breaks Regularly** - Take brief movement breaks: five minutes of gentle movement every 30 minutes dramatically lowers glucose, blood pressure, and improves mood. - Manoush Zomorodi's Body Electric study had 20,000 participants and found 80% stuck with breaks for two weeks, with real health improvements like lowered glucose and BP. Transcript: Manoush Zomorodi We get away with moving so that sitting doesn't kill us, basically. And in 2022, he published a small study that gives us a great idea. He found that just five minutes of gentle movement every 30 minutes had dramatic effects. It slashed blood sugar and blood pressure. In another study, he found that inactive people who traded 30 minutes of sitting for 30 minutes of movement every day could lower their risk of a premature death by 18 percent. And so maybe you're like, yeah, I worked out this morning, so I'm good. Or maybe you're like, phew, I'm so glad I got that standing desk. I am so sorry, but no. If you sit or stand for the majority of your waking hours, your health is in jeopardy too. Don't stop working out, Keith told me, but he said what you have to do is break up these long stretches of sedentary screen time. I decided I would join the study. So one day I went to his lab and I sat and worked on my laptop for eight hours straight. The next day I took those movement breaks every half hour or so. They checked all my vital signs. And the results were actually quite extraordinary. My glucose was cut nearly in half, my blood pressure was down by five points, and my mood was so much better. The science was clear, but like, what did it matter if no one could actually do these movement breaks? It was easy in the lab. Somebody tapped me on the shoulder and led me over to the treadmill. So we decided to ask people out in the world, out in real life, to see if they could do it. Our teams at NPR and Columbia combined forces to create a podcast and a global clinical trial called the Body Electric Study. And over 20,000 people signed up. We had to cap it at 20,000 people. And they could choose a movement dose. So they could move five minutes every half hour, five minutes every hour, or every two hours. They could dance around the house. They could pace on calls. They could walk the dog. They could take out the trash. It didn't matter. They just had to break it up, break up those long periods of sitting. And you guys, I was so excited. I was like, we are going to launch a movement for movement. Yeah, I've got away with words. Those first few days of the body electric study were tough. If you participated, maybe you remember how much intention and rebellion it takes to move more in a world built around screens and chairs. But people started figuring out how to integrate movement breaks into their lives. And when they did, they started having breakthroughs. Speaker 4 My energy went way up. So when you get home from work, you don't feel like cooking dinner. You don't feel like doing anything. I didn't really get any of that while I was doing the study. Manoush Zomorodi I feel so much better, have more energy, can focus better, and I'm happier. I felt as if I could go for longer, and I really felt like the cloud in my brain kind of dissipated. That was Jordan Smith, Roger Eastman, and Dana Lopez-Miley. People told us they felt less pain, they were less tired, they could focus and felt more positive. Surprisingly, taking breaks did not hurt their productivity. People said they got back to their desks and were able to concentrate better. But why? What was going on in their bodies? Keith explained to me some of the reasons why these gentle breaks can have such an outsized impact. So when we sit, our arteries get bent at our hips and our knees, kind of like a kinked vacuum hose. Blood starts pooling in our legs and our muscles stop contracting. But leg muscles need to move, be stimulated in order to clear out fat and sugar and reduce blood pressure. If they don't over months and over years, that's when those chronic conditions can start to creep in. And that is where screens come into the picture. So screens can mess with something called interoception. Interoception is the body's way of telling you what it needs. It needs a snack. It needs to go to the bathroom. It needs to move. The more we focus on screens, the less we listen to the signals that our body is sending us. Your body could be begging for a break, but what do you do? You keep scrolling past the anxiety, scrolling past the exhaustion. That eventually can lead to burnout, yes, and again, those chronic conditions. At the end of the clinical trial, we found that of the people who started taking movement breaks, 80% managed to stick with them for two solid weeks. To be sure, this was a self-reported study with lots of very motivated public radio listeners. But still, the data showed that the more often people took breaks, the better they felt. People who went outside got an extra boost. Some people lost a few stubborn pounds. And most people actually liked taking the breaks. So how did they do it? That's what I wanted to find out next. While Keith Diaz wrote up the research for Scientific Publication, which is now under peer review, I've spent the last few years combing through the surveys and stories and data that All the participants shared. I wanted to understand why some people dropped out almost immediately, but others stuck with movement breaks and thrived. And one of the many things I found was that different life stages required different tactics. Retired people, for example, they often moved more during the day, but they needed to take breaks around the house to disrupt long evenings usually spent sitting at screens. Information workers, those who sat at a desk all day long, were typically interrupted by annoying messages and pings from their colleagues. But when they scheduled purposeful interruptions and added five minutes of movement, they reported that the quality of their work improved and they liked their jobs more. So how can you start making a change in feeling better? Well, first, think about your most sedentary stretches of time. And then make yourself a mantra. So like if you are a student, you could say, I'll take an extra lap around the quad before class instead of checking TikTok so I get to class with more oxygen in my brain and I can actually Focus. Or if you work from home, you could decide that on long Zoom calls, I will march in place in order to manage my glucose and avoid the post-meeting crash. If you're a parent, you could say, I will take a lap around the soccer field once so ([Time 0:03:52](https://share.snipd.com/snip/efa44c8b-ce83-4348-b043-e42ab716c290)) - **Sitting Physically Kinks Circulation** - Sitting bends arteries at hips and knees, causing blood pooling and reduced muscle contractions that clear fat and sugar. - That circulatory kink explains how prolonged sitting raises chronic disease risk even if you exercise occasionally. Transcript: Manoush Zomorodi Keith explained to me some of the reasons why these gentle breaks can have such an outsized impact. So when we sit, our arteries get bent at our hips and our knees, kind of like a kinked vacuum hose. Blood starts pooling in our legs and our muscles stop contracting. But leg muscles need to move, be stimulated in order to clear out fat and sugar and reduce blood pressure. If they don't over months and over years, that's when those chronic conditions can start to creep in. And that is where screens come into the picture. So screens can mess with something called interoception. Interoception is the body's way of telling you what it needs. It needs a snack. It needs to go to the bathroom. It needs to move. The more we focus on screens, the less we listen to the signals that our body is sending us. Your body could be begging for a break, but what do you do? You keep scrolling past the anxiety, scrolling past the exhaustion. That eventually can lead to burnout, yes, and again, those chronic conditions. At the end of the clinical trial, we found that of the people who started taking movement breaks, 80% managed to stick with them for two solid weeks. To be sure, this was a self-reported study with lots of very motivated public radio listeners. But still, the data showed that the more often people took breaks, the better they felt. People who went outside got an extra boost. Some people lost a few stubborn pounds. And most people actually liked taking the breaks. ([Time 0:07:35](https://share.snipd.com/snip/9afdbca6-1075-4cd5-b272-4be753006e1b)) - **Dana Reversed Diabetes With Movement Breaks** - Dana, a 43-year-old with type 2 diabetes, added movement breaks between meetings instead of only a morning walk. - Within weeks her blood pressure dropped 40 points, cholesterol fell, and she tapered off insulin. Transcript: Manoush Zomorodi My favorite story came from a 43-year woman named Dana who works in HR. So Dana was a type 2 diabetic with all kinds of health issues. Her doctor told her she needed to take a long, brisk walk every morning, and she was doing this, but her numbers just were not changing. So with her doctor's permission, she decided to join the study. She started fitting in movement breaks between all of her meetings. And within a couple of weeks, she told me her blood pressure dropped by 40 points. Her cholesterol went down, and her doctor told her she could start tapering her insulin. She's actually off all of her meds today. ([Time 0:11:10](https://share.snipd.com/snip/e6f7e241-6125-4a6e-ba3d-521807da28ce)) - **Mitochondria Are Communication Hubs** - Mitochondria do far more than 'power' cells: they produce hormones, regulate ions, control oxidative stress, and influence gene expression. - Martin Picard argues energy flow, not genes alone, explains why people differ in health and longevity. Transcript: Manoush Zomorodi Is Martin Picard. He's a medical scientist who studies human energy on a cellular level. And Martin thinks the answer to why certain people have more energy might be found in... Martin Picard Those beautiful little things that are in our cells, the mitochondria. Manoush Zomorodi Yes. Researchers are taking a new look at mitochondria, the tiny organelles that swim around in some of our cells. Martin Picard What we've discovered in the last few years is that different people have very different kinds of mitochondria. And some people's mitochondria seem to be quite a bit better at flowing energy. Manoush Zomorodi If you haven't thought about mitochondria since middle school, here's a quick refresher and some new knowledge about how they work in the body. Martin Picard Every living creature is made of cells, but if it wasn't for the energy flowing through the mitochondria, then we wouldn't be alive, right? So the difference between a thinking, breathing, conscious person, like you and I that are having this discussion now, and a cadaver, the main difference is the flow of energy. And what mitochondria do is they take energy in one form, which is food, and then they transform it first into a little electrical charge. So they literally create this little electrical charge, and then they use that electrical charge for all sorts of things, dozens of things that mitochondria do. Manoush Zomorodi I remember learning mitochondria are the powerhouses of the cell. Are we right? Yes. Martin Picard The powerhouse analogy was very useful in the 60s, when 50s, 1950s, 1960s. 80s. Manoush Zomorodi And more recently, my kids were told it was the powerhouse analogy. I know. Martin Picard I was told that too in school. And I still hear this from new students that come in the lab. That analogy is too simple. A powerhouse is a little machine. It does one thing. Mitochondria are living beings and they do dozens of things. So mitochondria produce hormones like cortisol and the sex hormones that allow pregnancy and like testosterone and that allows the male characteristics. They regulate ions inside the cell like calcium. They are responsible for regulating oxidative stress inside our cells, turning on genes, turning off genes, regulating the epigenome. So mitochondria do a number of things that are critical to cell life. Speaker 4 As a medical scientist, my team and I work hard to understand the basis of human health. Martin Picard explains more in his TED Talk. As Peter Sterling says in his book, What is Health? Health is the ability to optimally respond and adapt to challenges. Why do some people remain healthy for decades, while others get sick often and die early? For the past two or three decades, scientists have approached this question by focusing on genes. Static stretches of DNA packaged in the cell nucleus. But you see, our genes are like the inert stuff inside our phone. The screen, the computer chip, the charging port, and health is more like the interactive nature of your phone. Like how it vibrates when you press something, or how the screen turns on when a call or text comes in. Without charge and energy, there's nothing on the screen. Blank. The hardware doesn't allow you to experience or to connect with anything unless it's energized, just like your genome. And in terms of longevity, the best research from over 50 million people shows that genes predict less than 7% of how long we live. Less than 7%. So when it comes to health and longevity, science shows that genes are mostly not in control. I think medicine has failed to understand health so far because we've essentially focused on the hardware without understanding the role of energy in our health. ([Time 0:15:00](https://share.snipd.com/snip/96abaa47-e477-4bcc-b7e3-3c57c1085b1b)) - **Fatigue Reflects Energy Allocation Decisions** - Fatigue often reflects energy trade-offs: during infection the immune system commandeers energy, leaving cognition and body functions depleted. - Martin Picard suggests feeling tired is about how well energy flows, not just total energy available. Transcript: Martin Picard Yes. So, you know, for many years now, I've been going to the clinic where I see patients with rare mitochondrial diseases that impairs the ability of their mitochondria to flow energy from Food to oxygen. And, you know, more than 90% of them, the thing that bothers them the most is fatigue. They feel like they have no energy. So we know it feels like something when your mitochondria cannot flow energy properly. So then the next question is, well, is this then the driving force behind, you know, other people who feel fatigue and tired, like people who have chronic fatigue syndrome or long COVID Or any other normal human being who goes through a phase in their life where they're completely depleted and exhausted? Is this because the mitochondria are impaired? And we don't know the answer to that question, but it's quite possible. Manoush Zomorodi But let's say I have a cold and I'm tired and I don't feel like eating. What is making me tired with that? What's the thinking and how does that relate to mitochondria? Martin Picard Yes. What's going on there? That's a great question. What happens then is not that your mitochondria are broken or dysfunctional or that something's wrong with the circuitry of your body, what's happening here is what we call energy Trade-offs or energy constraint. And when one part of the body is burning more energy than it should, it steals energy away from other parts of the body. So the body makes really rapid decisions about where is energy most essential. So if there's an infection to survive another day, another week, you need to allocate energy towards the immune system. So as a result, because the immune system is burning all this energy, it kind of steals energy away from the mind and from cognition from everything else in the body. So that feels terrible and rightfully so because then if you feel terrible, you just want to lie down in bed, conserve energy so that there's as much energy available for the immune system. ([Time 0:19:24](https://share.snipd.com/snip/29799249-9818-47d8-b619-70577e66122c)) - **Brain Mitochondria Drive Consciousness** - The brain is 2% of body weight but consumes up to 20% of oxygen because its mitochondria power constant sensing, integrating, and signaling. - Brain energy demand explains why oxygen delivery and mitochondria are critical for consciousness and cognition. Transcript: Speaker 4 Naturally, this led to a new interdisciplinary field of research called mitochondrial psychobiology. The goal of mitochondrial psychobiology is to map new pathways of communication between the mind and the body, or the mind-mitochondria connection, to better understand human health. Manoush Zomorodi So all the mitochondria, when they're healthy, they are all talking to each other. Is that because they all work the same way? Or are there different kinds of mitochondria? Like do different parts of the body have different types of mitochondria? Yes. Martin Picard Different types of mitochondria in different types of cells and different organs. So the mitochondria of the liver are very different than the mitochondria of the kidney, which are different than the mitochondria of the brain and the heart and the muscles, the pancreas And so on. You can think of the human body as kind of a social collective. And there are different organs, different cells that play different roles. Speaker 4 See, the brain receives, integrates data and input from all senses. And it coordinates every cell and organ. Just like your phone needs energy in its battery to receive, process, and send data, the brain needs energy to do this. ([Time 0:24:57](https://share.snipd.com/snip/bc1ac5c1-8ab0-4050-ac8b-316febc69662)) - **Exercise To Build Better Mitochondria** - Boost mitochondrial health by exercising and creating energy demand that triggers mitochondrial biogenesis. - Martin Picard: any activity that makes you breathe harder (running, swimming, sex) stimulates making more mitochondria. Transcript: Martin Picard Science certainly that says if you have lots of mitochondria can flow energy easily. This is associated with better health, physical health, mental health, and with longevity. One way to do that, to make lots of well-functioning mitochondria, is moving, exercising. Because when you exercise, what happens is you cause energy resistance in the body. If you contract your muscles because you're running or lifting or swimming or biking, you're causing energy resistance in the body. And it feels uncomfortable because you're pushing and blood lactate increase. Then the body will say, next time this happens, I need to be ready. So I'm going to make more mitochondria. So that's called mitochondrial biogenesis. So exercise is something that enhances overall health because it improves the number of mitochondria in your body. And then if you have more mitochondria, you can flow energy more easily. Manoush Zomorodi Fascinating. So if I am like, I want to feel energized, I want to feel positive, what are some of the things you recommend doing so that we can keep our mitochondria functioning and talking to each other And getting energy into the rest of our cells? Martin Picard Yeah, great question. The first thing is moving, exercise, right? Anything you do that makes you breathe harder, including running, rowing, swimming, biking, making love, whatever it is that makes you breathe harder, you breathe harder because Your mitochondria are using more oxygen. And then if you're driving mitochondrial energy flow, then the body is going to make more mitochondria to be ready the next time this happens. So moving in exercise, number one. ([Time 0:29:16](https://share.snipd.com/snip/aefd56cb-1d23-4755-8b8c-3bdb8386db3c)) - **Use Fasting To Refresh Mitochondria** - Avoid overeating and try occasional fasting to stimulate turnover and creation of more efficient mitochondria. - Picard links intermittent fasting and ancient fasting practices to mitochondrial biogenesis and improved efficiency. Transcript: Martin Picard When we eat too much, it seems to give mitochondria excess energy. And then that drives energy resistance. And that's not good. If you feel hungry once in a while, what this does is it stimulates mitochondrial biogenesis. You get rid of the old mitochondria that are less efficient, and you make more of the new mitochondria that are more efficient. And that's probably why fasting, intermittent fasting or 24 or 48, 72-hour fasting are very healthy in many contexts and why every ancient tradition in the world has a fast as part of Their tradition or their practice. ([Time 0:31:01](https://share.snipd.com/snip/14f5539b-b58d-43e4-90b7-2804b8da8f14)) - **Practice Slow Nose Belly Breathing** - Breathe through your nose, expand your belly, and slow breaths to 5–6 seconds in and out to calm stress and improve oxygen uptake. - James Nestor demonstrates hand-on-belly nasal breathing to recruit lower lung lobes and lower blood pressure. Transcript: James Nestor Poor breathing is what you see when you look at around 90% of the population. It includes breathing through the mouth. It includes breathing up into the chest. Includes unconsciously holding your breath, breathing too much, snoring, sleep apnea, asthma, on and on and on. Manoush Zomorodi And what are the consequences of that? How does that impact a person's health? Because I think people think, well, as long as I'm breathing, I'm alive, right? James Nestor Well, on the milder spectrum, the consequences are more asthma, more panic, more anxiety, more stress. On the more severe spectrum, if you continue having very dysfunctional breathing habits throughout your life, especially at night, that can lead to increased risk of stroke, heart Disease, periodontal disease, diabetes. So all of these major chronic diseases that we're contending with have some sort of connection to how we're breathing. Manoush Zomorodi You call breathing like this a lost art. When did we lose it? James Nestor It's hard to trace the exact moment, but you can trace a lot of this to the age of industrialization. We lost so much 400 years ago, 300 years ago. So we lost our food supply that used to be whole foods and natural and require a bunch of chewing, which allowed us to expand our mouths and tone our airways and breathe better. But we've also lost our ability to have proper posture. And without having proper posture, it is very difficult to take a proper breath. If you are hunched over, you can't extend your belly. You can't take that soft, slow, deep breath. All your breath gets caught up in your chest. And that is extremely inefficient. You're right. Manoush Zomorodi There's no room. I just caught myself. I'm leaned over my laptop and there's nowhere for it to go. The air just has to go up. Whatever happened to stomachs in, shoulders back? That's what I used to be told. James Nestor The old days. Yeah. So if you are ever apprehensive about how you're breathing, look at how a healthy dog breathes, healthy infant breathes, a cheetah, a horse, a cow. They breathe very deep. Their stomachs expand very gently when they breathe. They breathe very slowly and they breathe in and out of their noses. ([Time 0:36:58](https://share.snipd.com/snip/f7671379-61f7-4a54-8ce9-e32f12429970)) - **Poor Breathing Raises Chronic Disease Risk** - Chronic poor breathing (mouth, chest, over-breathing, breath-holding) increases asthma, anxiety, and long-term risk of stroke and heart disease. - James Nestor links widespread dysfunctional breathing to major chronic illnesses and sleep disorders. Transcript: James Nestor It includes breathing through the mouth. It includes breathing up into the chest. Includes unconsciously holding your breath, breathing too much, snoring, sleep apnea, asthma, on and on and on. Manoush Zomorodi And what are the consequences of that? How does that impact a person's health? Because I think people think, well, as long as I'm breathing, I'm alive, right? James Nestor Well, on the milder spectrum, the consequences are more asthma, more panic, more anxiety, more stress. On the more severe spectrum, if you continue having very dysfunctional breathing habits throughout your life, especially at night, that can lead to increased risk of stroke, heart Disease, periodontal disease, diabetes. So all of these major chronic diseases that we're contending with have some sort of connection to how we're breathing. ([Time 0:37:03](https://share.snipd.com/snip/008c0458-d86b-4996-a0e3-45deed1d00d4)) - **Ten Days Of Mouth Breathing Devastated Health** - James Nestor did a 10-day mouth-breathing experiment and experienced rapid snoring, worse sleep, poorer focus, higher blood pressure, and reduced athletic performance. - Researchers warned even a week of mouth breathing can harm health; Nestor's trial confirmed those effects. Transcript: James Nestor Yeah, I had been talking with the chief of rhinology research at Stanford. And I said, why don't you get a group of 100 people and have them just mouth breathe and we can take a bunch of data and then have the other 100 just nasal breathe. And he said, this is a great idea. I will never do it because of ethical reasons. Manoush Zomorodi Yeah. James Nestor He said, I know the damage that will be done after just a week of mouth breathing. And so I finally convinced him. I said, well, what if we did it with two people, me and one other person? And for 10 days, we were just mouth breathing. For the other 10 days, we were just nasal breathing. And a lot of my friends gave me a lot of grief because they said, oh, this is like some supersize me stunt, whatever. But we didn't view it this way. I mean, we really didn't because you've got up to 50% of the population is mouth breathing. They don't realize the damage that's happening to their bodies. So we tried to measure that over 10 days. That was the maximum he would allow. And as advertised, it was an absolute disaster for our health, so much more so than we even thought. Manoush Zomorodi What did you find? James Nestor So I do not snore. I do not have sleep apnea. Within a single day of becoming a malbreath, I was snoring about an hour and a half throughout the night. Within three days, about four to five hours a night, just constantly felt awful the next morning, every single time. The other subject in the study had the same thing. It was very hard for us to focus. Our athletic performance went down. We were extremely agitated. Stress levels went through the roof. Blood pressure went through the roof. And when I shared this data with people in the field, they were not surprised at all. They said, of course, this is what's going to happen, right? We've known this for decades and decades. You just experienced it personally. ([Time 0:40:25](https://share.snipd.com/snip/adfbc34a-af34-4a92-8df2-3100d37c5722))