 Welcome to the Dr. Gundry podcast. By now you've heard me say it time and time again. Growing old does not have to mean your best days are behind you and it doesn't mean you're destined to experience nagging health issues. Well in my opinion age really is just a number. It's the choices we make and the way we live our lives that really impacts our health and longevity. Now in a moment I'll talk with Marta Zarazka, a science journalist and author of the new book, Growing Young. Wow, right up my alley. Who says the power of community and connection are some of the best tools we have for living long, happy and healthy lives. We'll talk about why loneliness may be even worse for your health than cigarettes and share ways you can maximize your lifespan in easy practical and unexpected ways. Marta I'm so excited to have you on the podcast today. Thank you so much for inviting me Steven. So before we dive into your research I'd love to hear about what started you on this path. How did you go from writing novels to traveling the world to study the link between mind-body connections and longevity? I mean novels were in my very very early years let's say but but I've been traveling the world for quite a while now first as a foreigner first journalist and now also as a science journalist I often travel to meet researchers and to try things on myself sometimes. Also for writing Growing Young I've done quite a lot of traveling. I went to Japan to talk to centenarians there. I participated in some research in Oxford that involves catching wild mice in the forest. I went to a longevity camp in Portugal so there were there was quite a lot of traveling involved and some quiet quite a lot of fun I have to admit. So what were some of the most fascinating cultures you studied while researching this topic? I mean so definitely the Japanese culture is very very interesting in regards of longevity and when people think about Japan and longevity you know it's the longest-living nation on the planet so obviously we want to learn from them and usually we talk about the diet right the Okinawa diet especially even though Okinawa is no longer the longest-lived prefecture in Japan it's Nagano these days but we really like to look what they are eating right so how much fish they are eating how much sushi how much soy and vegetables and so on and yet when I was talking to researchers in Japan one of the things that usually comes up very fast in a conversation is actually purpose in life. This is something they recognize as a very important part of how long and how healthy we live. You know when they talk to researchers in the West they talk about the diet about exercise sleep perhaps and in Japan really purpose in life it comes out at least maybe second or third sentence that we are talking about purpose in life so this is really something that's seen as a health behavior in Japan or health measure. Well let's go there. What the heck is purpose in life I mean is that my purpose in life is getting up and having a cup of coffee and a donut or I mean what does that mean in Japan? I mean so they call it Ikigai I'm probably pronouncing it all wrong but okay anyway so they call it Ikigai and usually when the Japanese people talk about their Ikigai or this purpose in life or reason for living they don't talk about donuts or they don't talk about golfing they talk about the ways in which they can help others or contribute to the community for example so one thing that really I found fascinating when I was traveling in Japan I visited something called a gray hair retirement agency and sorry actually employment agency and what they mean by that is these are employment agencies for people who have retired and yes you heard me right and this is the idea is that you retire from your regular job and then you go to the special retirement employment agency and you find yourself an easier perhaps part-time job that will still make you involved in the society and make you useful basically so people go from being bankers to being public space gardeners or from working in marketing to helping kids cross the street on the way to school and it's actually very very popular in Japan you see these elderly people everywhere doing their retirement silver hair jobs and this is also very often their Ikigai this purpose in life so being useful helping others doing something it can be something very small you know it can be helping your neighbors keep your street clean for example or taking care of your grandchildren but there is usually some helping involved yeah I think you know in my book the longevity paradox one of the things I stress is that when you look at many of the long-lived societies they're they're super elders really never retire from what they do they're still a herding sheep they're still making cheese or they're still they're they're really an important you know resource for the community of nothing else certainly in the west sadly we now now we try to retire early and I know in France you know they push to retire early and I tell my patients don't you ever retire it's it's really one of the stupidest things you can do because I literally see people's health begin you know this downward spiral after they retire and so you found that not only in Japan but did you find other communities where that's true I mean there is plenty of western research on that as well exactly what you are saying that when people retire very often their health actually does go downhill they people who retire early tend to live shorter than people who don't retire and it doesn't necessarily mean we have to copy exactly what the Japanese are doing you know their cultures are different and we don't have to all become public space gardeners let's say but it's important to find something you don't have to employ you know have an actual employment contract until you're 110 but you have to have this purpose in life and there is so much research on that on very various societies American British you're a lot other European ones as well that you have to have something to live for it can be as I said before it can be really something small just the reason to get up in the morning that also makes you contribute to the society not not just coffee and donuts yeah and I actually I give some of my elderly patients prescriptions to get a dog and because that you know purpose of taking care of the dog it turns out the dog obviously gives them a wonderful purpose and they they frame their little prescription for a dog after they get the dog oh no I'm too old for you know a dog well you know what if I die I said don't worry somebody's going to take your dog and so yeah that and you're right people have to have a purpose and another thing about a dog actually there is a some fascinating research showing that if you look deeply into your dog's eyes you guess you get a boost of oxytocin so the social hormone that has lots of downhill also positive effects on your body for example it's the natural painkiller and helps inflammation and bay so looking into your dog's eyes can have direct physical effects positive effects on your body my my wife looks into one of our dog's eyes in particular all the time is a very soulful look we have we have three dogs now one of one of them we would not look in her eyes because we call her the devil dog for obvious reasons and I'm not sure that would have the same effect so speaking of social and social behavior you in your book you mentioned that we are a social species that has actually self domesticated over time and I want to hear your take on this because actually my my research as an undergraduate at Yale was in human evolution biologic and social evolution so this has been one of my fascinations for a very long time so go for it what do you mean so self domestication is obviously not my discovery it's something I've talked over a lot with professor Richard Wrangham at Harvard he wrote a very delightful book on this topic exactly how humans self domesticated and basically he argues that just like other species for example dogs as we mentioned before are domesticated humans also are a domesticated species because our temperaments have changed and also our body has changed in line with what happens to other species when they are domesticated so for example we are much milder you know in our temperaments than our cousin chimpanzees and we also look slightly different we for example have white ice clara we have pink lips and these are things that happen there are some very complicated biological processes involving something called neural crest I won't go deep into it it's it's fairly complicated but basically that cause this coloration that's connected to where your hormones work in your body these are the same hormones that make us milder calmer and basically humans what Wrangham argues self selected for milder temperaments for not being so hot tempered you know the chimpanzees when they start fighting they will basically bite each other's heads off sometimes literally we tend not to do it yes sometimes we fight in bars and so on and so on but this is really nothing compared to how we would have been if we haven't self domesticated and before you say that we are still pretty mean species because we go to war Wrangham argues that is a very different type of aggression there is something there is difference between pre-planned cold blooded aggression and this hot tempered chimpanzee style aggression which we don't really have much of so we are very likely domesticated species and why is it important it's important because we have all these social hormones so oxytocin serotonin vasopressin endorphins and these are hormones that are very important for our social lives for being the social ape and also directly physically for the functioning of our body because they are both having this emotional effects and very purely physiological effects on us so let's go down that road for a little bit because you and I off camera we're talking about COVID-19 and I agree with you and I think all of us agree that we are a very social creature and we clearly are social animals and we need social interaction. What do you think about COVID-19? Can we can we handle this social isolation much longer? Very difficult question and unfortunately the truth is that social isolation is not good for humans humans it's just not we evolved to be among others with our tribes and this is where we function the best for example when we are socially isolated our antiviral response doesn't function the same way it actually functions worse which is very worrying when you are thinking about what we are trying to avoid here right we are trying to avoid the virus and by being lonely or isolated our antiviral response functions worse if we are not getting hugs for example studies show that when people are not hugged often their antiviral response also is worse they are much more prone for to get a cold for example people who are lonely you know there are there were some fascinating experiments where scientists actually put the cold viruses into volunteer's noses at the same time measuring who was lonely and how lonely they were and those who were the most lonely were also the most likely to actually develop the symptoms of the cold after having the virus put into their noses so you know things are not good when you're socially isolated of course I'm absolutely not saying that we should stop socially distanced and saying I live in France we've been really really touched badly here with the virus and we've been in a on a complete lockdown for 56 days when we couldn't leave our house without a special permission so yes we need to isolate but also yes it has negative effects on us so we have to do things to counteract it you know you said even looking in your dog's eyes can help and if you have other people in your household that you can safely hug then please do so and do so often because it's really important for proper functioning of all the social systems in our body so I'm going to go home and hug my dog and look and look in the eyes as well as well as my wife I'll hug her and look her in the eyes so what what is it about you know loneliness and the social distancing that's so damaging to our health I mean you in the book and compared to the health dangers like cigarette smoking or bad nutrition I mean is it that bad it's that bad I mean we evolved a social ape so think about exactly our closest cousins chimpanzees even though they're not so domesticated they're still the closest we have and as just like they are we are very social right we evolve to live in a tribe and when we are outside of the tribe all these negative processes start cascading down in our bodies starting with the fight or flight response right so this kind of stress response when you're alone on the savannah obviously a lot of bad things can happen to you when you're outside alone without the help of the others and all the stress systems start working cascading lots of hormones get released including cortisol adrenaline all this stuff that generally has bad effects on your health just to simplify it very much here and and as you've said you know loneliness is so bad for us that when for example scientists put all these numbers together they show that a complex measure of social integration so for example how many friends you have whether you know your neighbors whether you're involved in your community whether you have a romantic partner all is taken together it can lower your mortality risk by about 65 percent whereas cigarettes it's only about I mean by cigarettes I mean stopping smoking if you are a very heavy smoker this can lower your mortality risk by about 50 percent whereas diet and exercise it usually hovers between 20 and 30 percent so you have 65 percent versus 20 to 30 percent so this is really really huge impact on our life if we're if we have this kind of really well-built social network so are you saying that if I want to live a long time I better go get a romantic relationship if I don't have one I mean it's it's it'll be very good for you yes especially for men actually bizarrely studies tend to show that men profit much more from a romantic relationship committed romantic relationship than the women and even more bizarrely whereas for women the romantic relationship does have to be definitely happy for men even a so-so romantic relationship actually helps too so scientists are still quite surprised by this maybe it has something to do with the fact that women tend to organize the social life of the family but definitely there is some kind of effect like this in research it's been you know replicated over and over and over again that men can profit even from a mediocre romantic relationship and what is there evidence that when a divorce happens or a loss of a spouse for other reasons that men will do worse from all that yes unfortunately there is something called the widower effect and there is also again plenty of research showing that we especially within the first week after a spouse dies the second spouse can pass is much more likely to pass away as well this effect has been known for centuries recently has been really thoroughly confirmed by you know proper modern studies but it does exist so it's it's really risky especially the first seven days after the spouse passes yeah no I've definitely seen that in my own practice where you know one you know one of the spouses may actually be exceptionally healthy and the unhealthy one passes away and you're right within a very short time period all of a sudden that that spouse I've even seen spouses admitted to the hospital within a couple days of each other when one gets severely ill the next one ends up in the bed next door so yes it's okay so what about synchrony with others the power of synchrony what do I have to be synchronized with my tribe or what does that mean you don't have to be synchronized but as I write in growing young synchrony has a very powerful effect on us that tends to double the beneficial effects of some things that we do with others for example things like dancing or singing or sports so what happens when you do things in synchrony and by synchrony I mean for example when we line dance or when we sing in a choir or we do this kind of macarena style style of dancing so what happens is that you get about a double boost of endorphins so those social hormones that are also natural painkillers scientists don't completely understand why this can be happening some say mirror neurons that's very often what scientists say when they don't know what's happening I do look at some different parts of the brain like in soil for example but we still don't completely understand what's happening there is possibly there is some electrical synchronization between our brains as well that definitely humans love synchrony you know you can see it that for example when you're sitting in a rocking chair and there is a second person in a second rocking chair beside you it's after a very short while you will synchronize and start rocking in the same speed even small babies love synchrony to the point that they prefer a person who with whom they are engaged in doing something in synchrony there will be much more willing to help somebody with whom they have been in synchrony and the same happens to adults as well you are much more likely to like people with whom you've done synchrony so for example if you sing in a choir you are going to be very much more connected and trusting the people with whom you sing then if you engage in some other activity so synchrony is very very beneficial to us can you also be in synchrony if you're a fan of a sports team and you go to watch them is that okay or do you actually have to be active I mean depends what you do as a fan you know if you do this kind of wave working of the shouting at the same time with others yes it works perfectly well it doesn't matter what kind of synchrony you know we can there are even studies showing that you can be drumming fingers on a on a table together in synchrony with others and it already works as long as you do something synchronously we just love you know our bodies love this kind of togetherness that it's created this way so in the united states kids play a game patty cake patty cake bakers man sure and so that's synchrony I mean is that why it's synchrony yes yes we just as I said even babies love synchrony we evolved to love synchrony you can see synchrony everywhere you know in all the on all the continents for our history humans we're doing synchronous dancing and synchronous singing the prayers synchrony right so it really does give us something and scientists now see that the endorphins seem to be key here so there's happy hormones that also there's the same thing that you get when you have the so-called runner is high you also get endorphins and here you get double the runner is high from doing things in synchrony so if you jog for example it's better to do it with another person because you'll have double the benefits all right very good that means I gotta I gotta get faster because my wife's a better runner than me but okay okay I want to change directions for a minute so uh if there's one key to longevity my listeners hear me talk about all the time it's the importance of gut health and as I explained in my book longevity paradox we actually share very similar gut microbiomes to those that we hang around with most often uh can you explain the relationships between relationships and gut health yes totally as I said before when I was researching growing young I traveled to Oxford where I um where I observed some researchers studying mice in the forest and what they were doing is exactly to study how relationships and gut health are connected so what they were doing they were observing using infrared cameras mice in their boroughs to see whom who was meeting whom and who was friends with whom and so on and so on to to check on their social lives and at the same time from time to time they would very humanely catch them and basically check their poop to see what kind of microbes they had and also check on their temperament whether they were anxious or happy and so on and so on and they could really see that uh the mice were the the mice that were the most social and they had the most diverse networks of friends you could say had also the more the most diverse microbiomes in their guts and as we know in general having the diverse microbiome in your gut is a good thing for your health and the same thing happens with us humans we actually tend to exchange our gut microbes with other people also with family pets so you're also exchanging your gut microbes with your dogs and um and for example when uh scientists study uh team sports they can see that where two teams are meeting and playing some kind of contact sports they also exchange microbes between each other and these are generally good things for us and also affecting our emotions and our temperaments because we know from research on rodents that if you transfer for example microbiomes from what for from a gloomy mice mouse to a to another mouse the second mouse will become gloomy as well and so so it really impacts it's all very much connected no that's absolutely true um we're beginning to realize how you know important the gut microbiome um the diversity uh and you're right there are you can have a happy microbiome and you can have an aggressive microbiome and you can have a depressed microbiome and you're right this can be transferred um and long ago i wrote uh back in the 1930s they actually did an experiment which you'd never be able to do now is they they gave people who were depressed who were admitted to hospitals enemas cleaned them out and then gave them fecal enemas from happy people and most of the depressed people you know got happy uh and it's like what a good treatment really and yeah so at least now these days you can try to hug more happy people i guess you know that's the more 21st century approved way of doing things well and it's true that you know if you're if your friends are obese you have a very high likelihood of becoming obese yourself even if you you know we're skinny when you join that group of people they they transfer this obesogenic microbiome to you just hanging out with people so does that mean that we shouldn't hang out with obese people or that sounds horrible yeah i'm sorry uh i don't want to hang out with you no i don't think we mean to imply no i no definitely no it's definitely better to have more friends than you know to be and i think that if you went into this kind of mindset it has to have some negative consequences i cannot imagine that this can be good no i yeah i we're not implying that those of you who are listening so what about what about probiotics friendly bacteria is there any connection to brain activity and emotions with probiotics yes plenty and as you probably know there are there's also quite fascinating research showing that when people drink probiotics for example such as you know fermented milk products and they it can affect the their emotions and their moods for example generally for the better right so then they can become less anxious for example if they if they drink this kind of products now so many people you know we're the the highest evolved species haha but so many people you know just don't like the idea that single cell organisms like bacteria uh could actually have some effect on our mood and happiness what say you i mean we are you know biological creatures it's all so fascinatingly connected you know when i when i talk for example about those social hormones i mentioned before they also play a role when we're talking about gut microbiome because actually when the microbes in your gut are talking with your brain one of the pathways they're using are exact again those neurotransmitters so for example serotonin so it all kind of it's all connected you know your your stress for your stress access your social actions your emotions your gut it's it's just all so connected and your uh have there been any research of social isolation changing the gut micro microbiome for the worse i mean there is some research like that unfortunately it's it's been done on mice as you've said these days we don't tend to do such fascinating but very ethically inappropriate research as they did in early 20th century so these days is done on mice and yes there is research showing that when mice are socially isolated the gut microbiome is much poorer with obviously uh health effects negative health effects so you know i want to get back to volunteering for a minute um my my father took early retirement at age 62 because his his father died at age 54 and my father was just absolutely convinced that you know he was going to die you know in that age and he was shocked that he was still alive at 62 but it's fascinating he initially he retirement was not for him so he became a a greeter at walmart i don't know if you know walmart at one of our giant stores and he really loved it but then he became he started volunteering at his local hospital and became kind of head of the volunteers of the hospital uh his only problem was he he lived until he was 91 and you know he said you know if i had realized i was going to live on his 90th birthday he says you know if i lived knew i was going to live to 90 i wouldn't retired at 62 but you know i think that volunteering uh was you know what had him make it to 91 um so is volunteering that important after you retire or can you volunteer even while you're doing other jobs i mean definitely volunteering or generally caring for other people being kind is extremely important and there is lots of research on volunteering showing that anywhere it can lower your mortality risk anywhere between 22 and 44 percent so at least as much as healthy diets so eating let's say six portions of fruits and vegetables a day so this is a very very powerful effect once again there are studies showing that volunteers for example spends about 37 percent less time in hospitals than people who don't volunteer so there is really a lot of things going on here so but also kindness just simple everyday kindness can work you don't have to formally volunteer even though definitely it has very strong benefits but generally caring for other people just being helpful even in formal settings it activates this what scientists call caregiving systems in our body that basically calm down our stress response because you cannot care for other people if you are extremely anxious so the body systems that are responsible for stress have to kind of calm down if you're when you're caring for so it has very beneficial effects on our bodies you know oftentimes when i bring this up with my patients they say well i have i don't have a clue in how i go about volunteering for something did you ever run into that in your research it's like how do you volunteer that's an interesting question that i said again you know it can be formal volunteering but it can also be just being kind in everyday life there are there is also research showing that just so-called random acts of kindness right so opening doors for other people letting others ahead of in traffic making coffee for your spouse or buying cookies for other people at work such things also activate this caregiving system just basically thinking about others and can really lower your levels of stress hormones in your body i actually when i was writing growing young i did some fascinating experiments like i mean experiments because it was just sample of one so not that scientific but i did it in collaboration with scientists from king's college london who actually checked my cortisol levels three times a day when i was engaging in acts of kindness on some days and on other days i was just living my life as usual and what they discovered is that on the days when i was doing plenty plentiful kindness so i would basically wake up in the morning and think okay how can i be nice today and i would it was actually lots of fun actually doing that so i would do this very small things but just you know maybe buy a sandwich for a homeless person or just pick up some trash on it on the streets where i live just very small things but on those days my cortisol levels were much healthier than on all the other days even though completely independent of how actually stressful these days were for me so it was very fascinating for me to see it on myself even though there is lots of proper research on big samples showing exactly the same thing that when you do kind things when you help others it comes down your stress response you get better cortisol healthier cortisol response as an effect so now wait a minute suppose you wake up tomorrow and it's the day you're supposed to be kind and you go i don't want to be kind today this is not a good day to be kind and then you had to be kind so would it drop your stress levels or did it make you stress that you had to be kind i mean maybe for some people i actually experienced it as a lot of it was very pleasurable you know just even planning the kindness i surely enjoyed it all right so what um we mentioned something about women and women in general are far better at socialization than men one of for instance the reasons that weight watchers does very very very well with women is that women really want to get in a group and talk and it does really horrible with men it's never worked for men because men the only reason men want to get in a group is you know talk about football or drink so what is it about women how come you guys are so good at emphasizing with that with others i mean it's true that research does show that women volunteer more they have they're better at friendships uh you know probably a lot of its cultural uh there maybe it's a little bit based on empathy there there are studies showing that testosterone has negative effects on empathy levels although also uh it's not like that either boring with little empathy you cannot do anything about it because you can practice empathy as well but it is true that testosterone is has negative effects on on empathy so there is something biological probably going on as well uh so which also explains for example what we've talked before right this marriage effect that's for men even a so-so marriage can be good whereas for women it has to be a happy marriage so so definitely some of the difference why women tend to live longer than men maybe due to their social skills and engaging in volunteering or donation donating money and things like that okay now another thing you bring up in the book is optimism and i i write about that as well so what what does the effect of being optimistic have on longevity i mean optimism is amazing when you think about it it can add anywhere from four to ten years to your life so it's it's really a lot and there were so many different studies done on very different populations showing the same effect and very often this number ten years tends to appear for example the very famous study on catholic nuns where scientists study diaries written by nuns which you know are great for studying things like that because they tend to wake up at the same hour they eat the same thing they spend their days in very similar ways so it's a very controlled population and yet those nuns who in their diaries were using the most upbeat language most cheerful words to describe their lives outlived by about exactly ten years the other nuns who were much more gloomy in the way they saw their life but were using much more kind of pessimistic and downbeat words and the same very similar study was done also on famous psychologists as well who scientists analyzed the autobiographies and found that those who were the most upbeat also left ten years longer so there is something definitely going on especially those ten years that's that's people who are more optimistic more cheerful simply live longer is there a way to make yourself more optimistic or more cheerful or is that some innate quality i mean very small part of it is innate but is a very small part there's plenty of books out there that tell you that you can learn optimism and so there is plenty of research confirming that yes indeed you can practice it i give some tips in growing young but again there are lots of books that are have been written only about how to become more optimistic so it's definitely something that can be worked on well i always ask for at least one tip so give me one tip on how to practice optimism i think it's just changing i mean the most typical is the cognitive behavior therapy right so just changing your thought patterns and whenever something you are having a negative thoughts try to change it try to first think where it came from and whether for example how likely this thing is to happen and when you are saying i don't know i'm going to definitely lose my job right and is it likely to happen how you know are you just maybe dramatizing things that are not really going to happen so but as i said there are lots and lots of books that have been written exactly on this topic how to be optimistic so the readers can definitely find something for them all right i'm gonna have a lot of optimism and that our listeners will find something so how did researching this book change your life are there things you do differently now after all this research i hope so i definitely hope i'm kinder i'm trying to be kinder i'm trying to see a lot of things as health behaviors that i haven't recognized as such before before i wrote growing young i was always very self i mean health conscious so i ate very healthily i exercise i run and but you know before for example if i were to give up on my daily run to meet with friends i would feel as if i were losing something in terms of health because i wasn't doing my run right now i recognize that maybe sometimes skipping on my runs to meet with friends is actually perhaps even better for me because being with my friends is also a health behavior one very specific example i was planning to run a health marathon this year it was before coronavirus happens but obviously it required a lot of preparation normally i run you know five six k a day and to run a health marathon you have to run much more and it takes a lot of time and i realized that the time it would take will take the time away from me spend talking with my husband basically sitting on the couch and having daily chats with him and i decided that it's much better for me also from the perspective of my health not just my mental health and happiness but also my physical health to run maybe a little bit less and spend more time on my on the couch with my husband maybe with a glass of wine chatting and just connecting because this is also about my health not just about some kind of pleasure and happiness that has nothing to do with physiology that she also is about longevity all right so so maybe you're somebody who doesn't naturally initiate conversation or social interactions with others or maybe you don't necessarily feel motivated to volunteer i mean do you how do you do this how do you pull this off i mean people often ask me no if you are an introvert are you doomed and what i answer is that absolutely not it's not about being the you know the heart of the party you don't have to be surrounded by hundreds of people and going to nightclubs and and things like that it's just about connecting and for example introverts are very good at connecting one-on-one you don't have to have 50 people in the room and all the time around you but do connect and you know most people enjoy it even very who those who are very much introverted still usually have at least one very good friend so as long as you the number of your friends is not zero whatever feel good feels good for you if your needs are satisfied if you really feel that there are people who will help you if you are in need if there that there is someone you can you can always talk to whether it's one person or five or seven it really doesn't matter as long as you feel the number is right for you this is what's necessary but we have to think about friendships and relationships and community in terms of health as well it's not just something you know on top of your um miracle foods and fat diets and so on and so on is actually something that's possibly even more important than uh some things that we do you know the obsessive dieting and things like that it may be more important for you for your longevity than that uh so if somebody reads your book and they use this as a great pickup line in a bar after covid saying can i buy you a drink because i want to live a lot longer you know sure i haven't followed that but why not i yeah i i think you know you could write a book just on that you know um so um give me other than that as a pickup line give me another example of what our listeners can do um in their day to day life of improving this aspect i mean so definitely make sure to to put away basically schedule time for your friendships we are so busy these days and we so but we spend so much time thinking about nutrition and exercise we have apps for example you know that remind us about our fasting or about drinking water and but we don't really have apps that remind you you know call your friend or meet with your friends and we should you know we should have reminders also setting did you call your best friend today uh have you talked with your husband or your wife today and these are at least as important for your health so we should really think in this in these terms to make time in our calendars for our friends and research really does show that it's important to meet your friends as often as possible and once a month is not enough and um and also things like for example uh conscientiousness is another thing we haven't actually discussed so studies show that being conscientious so this kind of person who uh who has a clean desk and keeps pace bills on time it may sound very boring but actually it's very good for your health and not only because people like that take their pills on time and go to their doctor's appointments that they should they're actually physiological links as well that's that's the researchers find so and this thing's just as optimism like we talked before so conscientious there's optimism this kind of personality characteristics can be worked on they can be changed can it can be practiced just like just like exercise right the same for empathy it can it's like a muscle the more you use it the more you try to be optimistic try to be conscientious and empathetic the more you become so so basically fake it till you make it you know and and think it of as a muscle and something that can be very slowly improved so is there any research you know we've talked about COVID is there any research that um zoom calls and Skype and FaceTime can help this social interaction or do we have to have you know physical presence I mean definitely physical presence is the most important and the best because we need for example touch physical touch so hugging you know holding hands touching or looking in directly into each other's eyes these call these are the best for getting this boost of this social hormones like oxytocin but definitely if we are isolating and we we cannot be in person with the other people it's definitely better to call or video call than to text their actual research there's actual research exactly on the topic showing that when you hear the voice of another person you get a bigger boost of oxytocin so this laugh hormone that also is good for for example keeping your inflammation in check and then if you text so it's better to call than text because texting just doesn't bring the same oxytocin boost as hearing actually hearing the voice of the other person that's great advice I have two grown daughters it's actually one of my daughter's birthdays today and I got to call her but she hates phone calls hates them loves texts she always says text me don't call me I don't have the time to call so I'm gonna all right I'm gonna tell her that today yeah all right she's getting less oxytocin yeah you need more oxytocin well Marta it's been a pleasure having you on the show today where can listeners find growing young and learn more about you and your research so there is the book's website I think it's the best place to go it's www.growingyoungthebook.com and you can find me on Twitter that's the best place I guess it's my it's mzaraska so that a r a s k a and you can connect there with me very good and what's what's next for you now that you're gonna live forever yeah we'll see about that I'm trying my best hopefully I will live long enough to write many more books I'm working on my third right now so I actually started writing yesterday so that's yeah so I I already have 1000 words so 74,000 to go more or less I know what you mean I know what you mean all right well take care of yourself and I hope COVID doesn't reactivate over there but it sounds like it's coming unfortunately all right bye thank you all right it's time for our audience question this week Klimba Roo on Instagram asks is sugar withdrawal a real thing during my first attempt to cut out sugar I started to feel really nauseous around day three now on another attempt I'm starting to see feel sick around day six that's actually a really good question and I'm gonna use it as a teaser for the upcoming book the energy paradox quite frankly about 80 percent of us are not necessarily addicted to sugar but have what's called insulin resistance or metabolic syndrome or metabolic inflexibility where you cannot right away make the change for your mitochondria the little energy organelles and all your cells which can burn glucose which is half sugar or free fatty acids fat as fuels and about 80 percent of us can't make a switch because we're basically stuck on burning glucose as a fuel but don't worry help is coming I'm going to teach you how to get out of that trap that about 80 percent of Americans are in so please stay tuned but that's a great question so you're right you're probably metabolically inflexible and we're going to teach you how to get flexible all right time for a review of the week this week's review comes from elite dragon on youtube who watched the episode on the end of all simers disease and wrote thank you so much dr gundry and dr bredison for this fantastic session and for all of your hard work my whole family listened this is the first time I've watched you on youtube and since then your podcast has been running all day long boy you have nothing better to do elite dragon but thanks thanks thanks so much for sharing it's great to hear that you and your family are dedicated to learning and improving your health together so each time you rate and review us on itunes it helps us reach a wider audience so that we can continue our mission of transforming everyone's health and I do mean everyone all across the globe because as you know I'm dr gundry and I'm always looking out for you we'll see you next week before you go I just wanted to remind you that you can find the show on itunes google play stitcher or wherever you get your podcast because I'm dr gundry and I'm always looking out for you