Transcript Disclaimer - May contain the occasional confusing, inaccurate, or unintentionally funny transcription moment. It’s all part of the show.

Lena: Midlife is where the choices start to matter in the best way. Today on Midlife Circus, Brent and Rob sit down with Dr. Dennis Lipton to talk about longevity fundamentals in midlife. It's a practical conversation on what makes a difference, sleep, exercise, nutrition, community, and the small decisions that compound over time. Before we begin, remember to follow Midlife Circus on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen, and join us in the Midlife Circus community on Substack.

Let's dive into longevity fundamentals with Dr. Dennis Lipton.

Brent: Today, we're going to talk about longevity fundamentals. What actually moves the needle in midlife if you want more energy, more strength, and more good years. And to help us do that, we're joined today and we're super excited about this by our guest, Dr. Dennis Lipton, who I've actually known for several years and I've learned a ton from him. Quick background on Dennis, he went to med school at McGovern Medical School at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston back in 1997.

He's board certified in internal medicine. What he's built now is a concierge health practice, which is very proactive, preventative first, with the big focus on preserving strength, vitality, and independence as we age. And along the way, he also approaches it in combining traditional medicine with more advanced screening and better data. So that means biomarkers, imaging, early detection tools, catching things earlier when you still can do something about it. What makes his perspective different is it's personal.

Dennis lost both of his parents to complications of Alzheimer's, and that pushed him to dig deeper into his own family history, lots of cardiovascular and neurological risks in the mix, which is what pulled him into longevity science, functional medicine, and lipidology. And he's also lived through some of himself, ruptured lumbar disc, joint injuries, so it isn't theoretical to him. Also, we're saying he's thoughtful about newer tools, including AI driven analysis to make sense of all the data, and he's not overly hype-y. He keeps focused on what really matters. And the best part of it is he's able to translate a lot of the science into simple, doable actions for all of us.

So welcome to the show, Dennis. We're really glad that you're with us on Midlife Circus.

Dennis: Thanks. It's great to be here.

Rob: Before we jump into your first question, Brent, I got to give the disclaimer here. We're not giving any specific medical advice on this episode of Midlife Circus today. You should absolutely go and talk to your personal medical provider. So basically, if you go out and do something dumb because you listen to us, that's on you, not on us.

Brent: Thanks, Rob. So for us, two key takeaways as we go through the conversation today. Longevity isn't a trend, it's fundamentals stacked over time. Sleep, strength, metabolic health, aerobic fitness are the big levers. And also the best plan is measurable and livable.

Track the right markers, avoid perfectionism, and don't ignore community and mindset. So to kick things off today, Dennis, I got a question for you. If you could travel back twenty years and give yourself a personal health coaching session, what would you tell yourself and why?

Dennis: So I've given it some thought and I do typically focus a lot on hard data because I like it. And I tend to not focus enough on the soft or the softer markers like community and family and friendships and spending time with people. So, you mentioned my parents. So twenty years ago, my parents were still around and they were healthy. And also twenty years ago, I was in the midst of early career and raising kids and I didn't really prioritize spending time with them.

I would, likely go back and, you know, actually visit them on the holidays and call them more and just get to know my parents a little better. They had a lot of wisdom that I probably missed out on because I was too busy, you know?

Brent: That's an easy trap that we all get into. I've lost both of my parents as well. And I like how you frame that if you go back in time and you think about that connection that's been lost. And it's simple things. For me, I would go a month without talking to my mom.

I was so focused on my career. It's like, but why not call my mom more? And I just think through like those simple things. And we'll talk a little bit more today about community. But I like how you phrase that.

You didn't go back and give yourself a coaching session to say, you should work out more, you should eat better. You actually focused on life and relationships and things there. So thanks for that. I didn't know that was coming. If I could go back in time, I would do the same thing.

I mean, that's something that I dearly miss my mom and dad. So thanks for that. That's a great way to start the conversation.

Rob: Dennis, in one of your recent newsletters, you talked about focus more on the basics. And you said forget about shiny objects, really focus on building the base. When you shared that publicly, what are some of the big fundamentals you think of? What are the top three fundamentals that most people either ignore or they just don't do enough?

Dennis: Yeah, so I like to focus on sleep. A lot of people have an actual sleep disorder like sleep apnea. So I do spend a lot of time screening people for actual sleep disorder because just a huge percentage of people actually have some form of sleep apnea, especially here at elevation. So first of all, ruling out an actual medical disorder would be number one. And then if there's no medical disorder, then I would say focusing on getting seven to eight hours of sleep a night and consistency.

Consistency has really come out in the past few years as being a really important marker for overall health. So that means that you go to bed at the same time and you wake up at the same time. It sounds really boring, but you know, it is the outcomes of people who do that are just better than people whose sleep is all over the place. So even if you get more sleep, say you sleep eight hours, but your schedule is constantly changing from, you know, one night you go to bed at nine, the next night you go to bed at one, and those people are worse off than the person who would just get regular six hours of sleep, every night, essentially. That's what the data would seem to show at this point, which I thought was interesting.

Rob: I know Brent's happy that the first thing you answered was sleep. That's, typically the topic of conversation that we have on Midlife Circus podcast is when Brent's going to get his nap in.

Dennis: Yeah. Sleep is huge, and it's really, I think most people are becoming more aware of how much it needs to be prioritized. And unfortunately, the couple hours before you go to bed is just so important in preparing your brain and your body to get good sleep, avoiding alcohol, avoiding stimulation and lights. Timing exercise is really important too. For myself, you know, like to exercise every day and sometimes if I don't get it done early in the day and then I try to make up for it by doing a hard Peloton ride or something into the evening and then I finish like, at 9PM, then I'm just I can't sleep for hours after that.

Rob: Yeah. Well, I don't have the trouble of exercising late in the evening because usually if I don't get it done before noon, it just doesn't happen for me, unfortunately. So I have to get mine done first thing in the morning or I get lazy in the afternoon. So I'm never having to worry about working out right before going to bed. I just don't do it.

Brent: If sleep is like the first foundational elements that people either ignore or underdose, what are a couple other ones that we can think about?

Dennis: The multiple kinds of exercise from aerobic conditioning, from the zone two type of training into high intensity interval training, then building muscle resistance training equally as important, and then throwing in some stability and balance training also is important as well. So I think a lot of people do a lot of things like running and hiking and cycling, and they don't spend enough time on resistance training and paying attention to their muscle mass.

Brent: When you think about the strength training side, my easy button is to go do something cardio. And the cardio to me always comes in the form of like a trail run. Let's go out and run three to six miles or go for a mountain bike ride for an hour. Can you talk specifically around aging? What's the risk associated with just being so cardio heavily?

And we started the conversation just talking about strength. Can you just give us your perspective there on some of the risks that may introduce?

Dennis: Yeah, so first of all, muscle mass is much more metabolically active. So people with more muscle mass have less things like diabetes and pre diabetes, their metabolic health is generally just better. But then thinking long term, as people age, frailty is a real risk. So frailty means people are, you know, they have very little muscle mass and they're weak and they can't get around and do the things that they love to do. So maintaining muscle mass allows you to continue to enjoy life the way that you want to enjoy it.

We mentioned mountain biking and running and people like to travel and that involves walking through airports and picking up suitcases and even things like going shopping and pushing a cart and just the daily things that we do in life depend on mobility and strength. So, and unfortunately, we get older, aging itself tends to erode those things unless we really intentionally work on them. The things that worked in your twenties and thirties don't work as you hit your forties and fifties as far as maintaining muscle mass and independence.

Rob: So I've noticed that it's been difficult to put on muscle mass. It's not difficult to put on weight, but it's been difficult to put on muscle mass. Is there a place, Dennis, that there's like a cliff effect? So I think about being in midlife, as Brent mentioned, you know, both of us in our mid fifties, trying to get ahead of this versus waiting until we're in our sixties, mid sixties, late sixties, is there a cliff effect that I should be anxious about? Or is this something that I can wait a little bit and actually pick up and focus on muscle building later in my fifties and early sixties?

Dennis: Yeah. So evidence indicates that it's really never too late to start strength training and building muscle. But as you get older, it gets harder. You have to train better and eat better to gain the same muscle that would have been very easy in your twenties and thirties.

Brent: We start to look at strength training, I think all of our listeners hear this on a regular basis, like we need to do more strength training. But what I struggle with is defining what the level of more means. I'm not looking for the perfect formula here. How do you address that? You've got a lot of patients since you've got this demographic that's very similar to the Midlife Circus demographic, the Gen Xers.

How do you address the frequency and the intensity when somebody says, Okay, I'm willing to do strength training. And yes, I understand it. But a lot of people may have the last time they did strength training was when they're in college and they go to the college gym and they're doing bench press and squats. So how do you approach it today to say, there's a modern approach for you to do this? Like how many times a week, 30, forty minutes?

What does it look like? Just from a generic, I know we're not giving medical advice here, but I'm just trying to get a perspective. Because what I find for me is it gets really overwhelming if I try to overthink all of this, because you got to eat, you got to sleep, you got to exercise, you got to lift weights, you got to do all these things. I'm trying to figure out the simplicity. If I walked into your office as a brand new patient and I said, You know, I run a couple days a week, how do you approach that?

Dennis: So I like to individualize. I do have a body composition machine, so we would measure and then start to discuss how to improve things. The first thing, in addition to doing the body composition and measuring muscle mass, is to really make sure people don't have an injury or aren't susceptible to injury. So certainly making sure that it's safe for people to strength train is number one. And then for me, for example, I used to spend a lot of time in the gym through high school and college in my thirties and forties.

I wanted to go to the gym that had the most equipment, right. So I could do all these exercises and feel like I was doing the right thing. Now I actually just have a mat, a kettlebell and a bench and a couple dumbbells and some TRX straps at home. And that is literally all that I all that I use, these days to maintain, muscle mass. So it can look like you doing a 100 pushups, 100 air squats, not even all at once, just 10 at a time or whatever works for you.

Some kind of pulling exercise, whether that's using something like TRX straps or chin ups or even just hanging on a bar. So just getting the big muscle groups involved, pushing, pulling something with your legs, whether it's squatting. Air squats are easy. You don't need to put a big barbell on your back and put yourself at risk. You can do single leg squats.

Pistol squats are really hard for anybody pretty much. So you can do a lot of things without a lot of equipment.

Rob: So you don't need to become a gym bro to actually build muscle. It's really about consistency of doing different exercises throughout the Yes. And it sounds, Dennis, like just a couple times a week even.

Dennis: Twice a week, even thirty minutes, I've seen people improve. Even better would be, you know, three times a week, forty five minutes to sixty minutes. That's what I try to do. But anything is an improvement from nothing. And again, starting very simple with just a mat and a, you know, floor basically is how people can start strengthening, yeah.

Brent: When you think about the next layer, let's say we're doing exercise and training three times a week. You said, you know, if you can get to forty five minutes, that's a really good baseline for you to build up to that. And then you're doing a variety of things and I think everybody can do their own research on that side. Let's pivot a little bit to cardio, but also mobility. And how do you view that?

What is your guidance on the cardio side, but also the mobility, whether it's yoga, where it's core exercises, things like that. How do you view that under the lens of midlife?

Dennis: Yeah, so you bring up a good point about maintaining mobility. So I usually do five minute stretch after a workout and then balance training is really important too, with age. And then as far as cardio, there's the high intensity type and there is the long, slow zone two type. They each have individual benefits. Research is always coming out that one's better than the other basically.

And so I just like to recommend a mix as long as people are doing something. That's what's important. And then we can measure things like VO two max and people can do their FTP test on the Peloton or they can follow their fitness these days with all the wearables that we have. So progress is what I'm looking for.

Rob: It's funny. The zone two, I love zone two. I'm actually probably the king of zone two. It's the fat and slow. I can do that all day long.

Right? Get a good workout in. But I did a HIIT exercise, high intensity interval training exercise just the other day that a friend sent me YouTube video, and I was almost passing out. And it was only thirty minutes. I can go out for, like, a four hour run.

Not a problem, but this thirty minute HIIT exercise dropped me down onto the floor. It just went to show that I need definitely need to be doing those types of things more often. I can't just get away with going out for a nice easy trail run and relaxing. I have to do something else to spike my heart rate, to be able to stay in good shape.

Dennis: Yeah, that kind of exercise, again, has different benefits than Zone two. They're both very important, but good for you.

Brent: What's another one of the fundamentals that you view as something that's maybe ignored, underdosed for improving their overall longevity?

Dennis: I would have to say diet is just such a huge lever in overall health. Diet is debated and it's almost like a religion unfortunately, but from a science standpoint and evidence standpoint, it seems that, you know, something like a green Mediterranean type of diet is the best. Usually people are, you mentioned underdosing, they just don't eat enough green vegetables and other vegetables and wholesome plant foods. It's just way too easy these days to eat processed food because it's everywhere. Right?

And it tastes good. So really going out of your way to get even just what is recommended, basically five servings of fruits and vegetables a day, then going up from there.

Brent: Rob and I laugh about it. When you said religion, we had an episode that we were talking about health span. Rob's words were, when we got to diet, it's like, this is one of the most controversial things out there. It sounds like religion and it sounds like politics. People don't like people to mess with their diets.

So let's take a practical approach to this. How do you address the diet conversation with people that walk into your office and get so fixated on a specific trend. You can go back to trends over the last ten years, you can say keto, you can say paleo, you can say plant based, I mean, all these different things, but how do you address the basics with them? And more importantly, the why behind it? Because like you said, it is so easy to get processed food these days, and it tastes great, and it'll stay healthy on the package.

But how do you address the fundamentals and giving some a perspective of like, what is this actually doing to your body?

Dennis: Yeah, that's a tough one. Again, I just like to individualize and meet people where they are and try to get them to take one step at a time in the right direction. Really the only way I think that works for people to get into a sustainable thing that they can continue to do for the long haul and see some benefits.

Brent: So if you do some sort of diagnostic as an example, where does a poor diet show up the most in somebody's health metrics or things that you can point to say, this is what's happening to your body. Here's the data. So you could say a healthy version versus a non healthy version. And how do you approach that aspect of it? Because where I'm trying to get to is how do you give somebody the clear evidence that what they're doing is incredibly harmful for their body?

Dennis: Yeah, so it shows up in somebody's weight and body composition. Obviously, they're overeating empty calories, they're going be overweight. Their muscle or their body composition is going to show that with too much percent body fat, visceral fat will show up there too. Then as far as labs, even just the simple labs that people get, you can look at blood sugar, liver function tests, AST and ALT. You can look at their A1C.

A1C is kind of a marker of what your blood sugar has been doing over the past few months. And then in the lipid panel, can look at triglycerides and VLDL, LDL, diet has an impact on those things. Those are the basics.

Rob: There is so much readily available information now, Dennis, around our own health, and we can test it ourselves. As Brent mentioned, blood work, we can do our own blood work. We don't have to actually go to a physician's office to get blood work done. We can, you know, track heart rate, metabolic rate on our watches. It's directional, maybe not absolute, but directional.

We can even go and schedule a DEXA scan and go and get our whole body scan to figure out what is the visceral fat and bone density and things like that. And as I think about, you know, as you were talking about the blood markers and things like that, my anxiety starts going up about all these different tests that I can go and do to actually figure out, am I healthy or not? Are there some key ones we should be paying attention to? Is it on a case by case basis with an individual? How do we test what's right and test certain things without actually going above and beyond where we're going to start getting anxiety about what these different tests are giving to us?

Dennis: Yeah. The anxiety you mentioned is a real thing for people who are obsessed with data and it creates anxiety over what you just said. I'm going to do the wrong thing and then I'm going to get a bad sleep score or something like that. Right? Again, I have to individualize.

First of all, not everybody wants to follow that kind of data. So with that person, we just focus on habits. For people that do want to focus on data, which I like to do, you know, I like that. And we just try to focus on just like you said, the sleep scores, their activity levels, keep track of their workouts. If we have to do a food diary, we do that.

And it is all connected. It's pretty clear that if you have a poor night of sleep, the next day your hunger hormones and your insulin levels are altered so that you eat more poorly and you store more fat. Your zone two is, you know, going to feel harder. So you're going to have to scale down your workout intensity. You guys have probably noticed that, right, if you don't sleep well, don't eat well, it affects everything.

It's a vicious cycle, unfortunately.

Rob: What you just shared was really helpful. It's a compounding effect, and that was the moment I just had as you were talking. If let's say I get a poor night's sleep because of a bad decision tonight. I'm going to wake up off, which is then going to cause me to eat differently, which absolutely is the case. I know I definitely eat differently if I had a bad night's sleep.

The donut kicks in or that extra latte kicks in in the afternoon to try and keep going, which then causes another poor night's sleep. And my workout isn't as strong, so it does become that vicious cycle. And so going back to the first thing we talked about on this podcast, yes, Brent, I'm going to go back to the first thing we talked about, which was sleep. You're welcome. It's really the foundation of everything I'm hearing from you right now.

Dennis: It definitely is very important. Yes. Foundational.

Brent: I'm going to do my deep dive in sleep prep because I Alright. I'm so fascinated with this topic. Here's what I don't quite understand is, and maybe you can give us more on the science side of it. We all grew up in the same system, which was sleep less, work more, play hard, you know, four hours of sleep, you're a hero if you can do that. And I was built around that.

Can you talk a little bit about sleep so I understand it more? I've done a lot of reading and I've also watched a lot of videos on YouTube and I follow Dr. Matthew Walker who talks a lot about sleep. But what is your perspective on that foundation and maybe give us a little bit of the science side of what is taking place in your sleep. When you said seven to eight hours, why is that the foundation?

What's happening to the body? I'm interested into the science side of like, what's actually happening in a good night's sleep versus the alternative.

Dennis: Yeah, well, can thank people like Matthew Walker for doing the research and really bringing to light that sleep is, is as important as we now know that it is. So when you're sleeping, you go through different sleep cycles. There's three main ones. There's a light sleep and there's deep sleep, and there's REM sleep. And each one of those cycles does different things for you, has different health benefits.

So deep sleep is the time when you are your brain is kind of flushing out the day's metabolic waste, essentially. It's like through the day, your brain accumulates waste products like little dump trucks. Right? And then when you're in deep sleep, sort of the road opens up and everything starts getting taken out of your brain. So when you don't get deep sleep, that is tied to cognitive problems like Alzheimer's disease.

During REM sleep, which is the time that you dream, it's still not really that well understood, don't think, but what is thought is that REM sleep is where you consolidate memories and where you can de emotionalize traumatic events. Like, you know, the old saying, time heals all wounds. What's really happening is REM sleep is healing all wounds. So if people have PTSD, for example, terrible psychiatric condition, their REM sleep is impaired. So they're not able well, that's one of the things that's happening anyways, that they're not able to process and take the emotion away from an experience like most people can over time.

So that's the importance of REM sleep. And then light sleep has less well defined benefits, but it does have, its own benefits. So your body or your sleep cycles, the first half of the night is dominated by deep sleep as you go through cycles, and then the second half is dominated by REM sleep. So if you're cutting off one of those edges, you're not getting the benefit. So if you're waking up too early, you're not getting the REM sleep that you need, and if you are going to bed too late, you're missing out on deep sleep.

Brent: I've never heard of the deep sleep described the way you described it in the sense of the dump truck. It's like basically just clearing out the pipes and just trying to get rid of the things that are need to be moved out of your brain. Is that did I hear that correctly?

Dennis: Yeah. It's called the glymphatic system. It was actually just discovered in the past five to ten years, essentially. So, what happens actually is your neurons and brain cells actually shrink just a little bit, and then the fluid around them starts to basically just get rid of, you know, metabolic waste that has occurred during the day because your brain is very metabolically active.

Brent: Can you describe, when you say metabolic waste, what does that mean?

Dennis: So, just like car exhaust, you know, whenever you burn fuel, there is a waste product and that happens in your cells as well. And your body has a way of dealing with those, called reactive oxygen species and other types of metabolic byproducts essentially. And the rest of your body, it has a it has blood pumping through all the time, but your brain is tight inside your skull, it doesn't have that same type of circulation. So that's why at night we need this glymphatic drainage to happen.

Brent: I've never heard that before. That's so helpful. I think you start to look at the self here, so I'll reflect back on myself. When I'm only sleeping a handful of hours a night, I'm just not allowing the body to repair itself, clean itself, do what it needs to do. And I've put such an emphasis on sleep in the last probably five to ten years, probably more five years, because, I'm just seeing that I operate better.

The question I have is how do you view if somebody like me comes into a conversation with you that says, traditionally, I'm just haven't put a lot of emphasis on sleep. Is this something, if I put more of an emphasis on it, can I start to repair some of the bad habits of the past? Or is damage already done from the past?

Dennis: So your body's remarkably resilient. I mean, things from people who used to smoke, for example, after ten years, they're close to baseline risk. Once you start to do the right thing and have good habits, your body, is very resilient and that way you get back to the level that you would have been if you never had the bad habit, I don't know that that's true, but certainly things like sleep and things like resistance training, for example, like I said, it's never too late to build muscle. So it's never too late to start doing the right things. It always will pay health dividends.

Brent: That's so good to hear because I do worry about that. That's just on a personal level because of the bad habits I had for thirty years. I really appreciate how you say it's never too late to start anything. And that's part of the diet, that's part of the exercise, part of sleep. Can we just dive in a little bit?

And I want to talk a little bit about Alzheimer's. Can you talk about any of the connectivity that you are aware of or some of the science associated with Alzheimer's and the things that we've talked about today. My wife and I were just talking about Alzheimer's last night. Her father has Alzheimer's and I hear a lot of people that are navigating that with their parents. And I'm just trying to understand it a little bit more.

And how can we talk about it just with ourselves and the age that we're in and things that maybe we can do that might help us avoid it.

Dennis: Yeah. So we've already talked about a lot of things that help avoid it. Sleep, exercise, diet, body composition, community, stress, stress management is big as well. When you have a lot of stress, your cortisol level's high and you're in fight or flight all the time. That's not good for your brain.

So basically all those things that we've talked about are very important. Other things that increase risk include head traumas. So even having one concussion when you were in your twenties, for example, can increase risk. And people are at different risk. We haven't gone into like the detailed types of testing that can be done, but you know, knowing your genetic makeup, genomics can sort of set the stage for how much risk that you have and how careful you need to be as you age.

And then it can also help determine more about how much exercise that you really need and how much you need to pay attention to diet. Then there's medications and very specific diets and, you know, it can get very, very specific. When I have a patient who has a memory concern, we go into all those details. But probably the biggest levers, just as we age in general, sleep, exercise, diet, stress management, all the things we've talked about.

Brent: Rob, you and I have talked a lot about stress, and maybe you can share a little bit about some of the things that you talk about from when you left your last job and what that stress was like, and then how you've thought about it today. Because life can be very stressful know, when you've got all the different things that we're focused on, our careers, our families, aging parents, and how do we manage that?

Rob: I think of it as two types of stress, both productive and then nonproductive stress. And there's the good things you want to stress and do, and working out is one of them. It's a stress on the body, but the nonproductive stress that for years, and I've shared this on the podcast that I exchanged money for is I exchanged you know, they paid me for a very stressful job, and I think a lot of us that are in our generation that have been promoted over the years are now in in stressful positions where they're actually doing work that causes stress. They get paid very well for assuming that stress, but there is a physical impact of that stress on us. And it's the angst that you just gave me a little bit is, does it going to cause cognitive issues down the road for me is that I was assuming that stress.

Now the good news I heard from you today, Dennis, was that I can reverse some of those things too, which is really exciting. I can reverse the reverse the impact of stress. But are there things that are happening right now or studies or research that you're aware of where stress and the impact of that later in life, or is it something that can be stopped if you stop and retire and you go to a stress free life? Does it just do a full reset at that point?

Dennis: Full reset. I don't know about that, but certainly it can help. It can help a lot. Again, it's never too late, and that's something I struggle with as well. Meditation and breath work I know is great.

It helps with stress management. Constantly trying to get more of that into my life. Usually people know that they're under stress, right? Cause they feel it. You can measure it too.

I mean, thing that comes to mind is I, I was wearing a CGM, you know, a glucose monitor. Was set to give a talk to a room full of people about something about health. You know, I was a little bit anxious about it and then didn't think much of it. Then after the talk, I looked at my CGM data, the glucose, and it went from like the eighties up to like 180 and it was like super high, 180 is really high. The whole time I was talking, and then as soon as the talk ended, dropped right back down to normal.

You know, stress impacts your cortisol level, which raises your blood sugar level because that's fight or flight, right? Your body's getting ready to, to, fight or run away. So it's measurable, you know, and you can also measure things like cortisol and metabolites of cortisol and adrenaline and all those things. People need to see that kind of data, they can get it.

Brent: One of the things that our generation as Gen Xers is we're also doers. Like to solve things. Let's go for it and let's figure it out. Let's go build this or let's do everything. Try to have the healthiest family life and have a productive work life and work out all the time.

And so we live at an elevated state. I remember a cardiologist telling me this is probably like fifteen, twenty years ago. He's like, Brent, the risk you have in what you're trying to do is you're just living off adrenaline. You're just living at the high point, but your body eventually is going to say no way. So how do you coach people through that?

Or how do you talk people through that? Because from my own personal experience, yep, health issues started to show up. Because I always felt like I could do it all. And I felt like the resting was a sign of weakness. Now I've since learned and I've had to teach myself, but how do you think about that where living at an elevated state eventually it shows up in your body?

Rob: And meditation's tough for us. Meditation is really tough for us to go and do because we can't stop. We weren't raised to stop.

Dennis: Right. I struggle with it too. So the first step is to be aware of it. So if people, if somebody comes to me and they know that's going on, that's a step in the right direction. Cause I know, you know, I wasn't in my thirties and forties.

Was just, just like you working and not really thinking much about stress. So, just being aware of it is number one. Then trying to develop habits, finding some time to do things that you really enjoy that de stress you. Like for you, Brent, it's probably like the trail running or the cycling, right? So that in itself can be meditative essentially.

And that's usually what works for me as well as time and nature and exercise. I'm trying to use that as an outlet. So different things work for different people, right? Whether it's exercise or a yoga class or social events, some people, you know, love that being social and in community. You just have to find what works for people and make sure they know it's a priority that they have to set aside time to do.

Brent: That's a perfect segue into our last major topic today is community. And one of the things I know you do a lot of writing, and one of the things that you've highlighted is the human factors. So we can do all of these things really well that we've talked about. You can have good sleep hygiene, you can have a great diet, you can exercise, and you can do all your markers and all those things. There's this element of the human factors and the community.

When you spotlight that and when you talk about that, can you just talk about what you've learned, what you've heard, how you talk about the importance of the extras? Because sometimes that is the piece that's left behind is the importance of human connection. I think we saw a lot of that during COVID, but now we see a lot of it in our youth with social media, even in adults where communities kind of trying to be accomplished through a tiny little phone screen. But can you talk about what you've learned and what you've experienced through the important factor of social circles and things like that and how that helps people from overall longevity.

Dennis: Yeah. So just happiness and a sense of purpose is so important and it's really hard to measure. But you gave a great example. If somebody like the person who is trying to eat perfectly, trying to exercise perfectly, get enough sleep, take the right supplement, you know, who is really trying to check all the boxes, yet they are not part of a community and they don't really have a sense of purpose other than checking the boxes on their health. Or they don't have a family life.

That person's going to be worse off than the guy who doesn't exercise every day, doesn't eat perfectly, maybe even drinks a little bit now and then, yet is very socially connected and happy and fulfilled and has a sense of purpose, whether that's a major life goal or family, that person could be, is likely better off when it comes to aging. Right? So the blue zones, I'm sure you guys have heard of that really show that, that people, those people are generally more in community and they have a sense of purpose and they enjoy life and they're not perfect. They just do most things well. So yeah, it's one of those things that's hard to measure, which is unfortunate.

Brent: I can attest to that personally. The more I get isolated, probably the less I feel good. I can feel there's something missing. You highlighted Blue Zones, so the work that Dan Buetner does and the Netflix special was exceptional. I think it's like three episodes about Is it Live to 100?

I think it is. Something of that nature.

Dennis: Something like that. Yeah. No, it was good. I agree that was a good one. Yeah.

Brent: And you see just the communities and all these people that are centenarians that are living to 100 every day. There's a couple of things that they're doing is they're walking, they're eating with people, but it wasn't so hyper focused on none of them were wearing smartwatches. That's a different generation, but they're not so hyper focused on all these metrics and things. It's like, no, I just want to be around people and have laughter and community and family. And those are the things that I think are really, really important.

That's where I wanted to end the conversation today. And I like what you said is it's actually hard to measure, but there's so much evidence out there. And I think we can all attest to it. When we put ourselves in isolation, are we actually feeling a sense of purpose? Are we feeling a sense of connection?

And there is a loneliness epidemic. And I think it shows up quite a lot in people in midlife because you're asking a lot of those big questions. What's my purpose? I've spent this career doing all of these things and maybe that career needs to change. But community is something that we all need to take into consideration.

I appreciate how you're talking about that. Dennis, I'd like you to leave us answering one simple question. And this is a lot of times how we like to close out conversations with our listeners is if someone is listening and they know they need to change something in their lives, like they're just feeling some of these things have showed up in their lives and they're like, I need to change. What's one thing that you would recommend just that's good enough to just that they could pick up and just start going for it? And I know we talked about so many things, but if somebody came into your office today said, I've got this wrong, I got this wrong, I got this wrong.

And it can be overwhelming. And my data saying this and my watch is saying this and all that. How do you calm them down and just to say, All right, let's simplify this a little bit?

Dennis: Yeah, like you said, there are so many choices here, but I would try to pick the one thing that seems to be the most troubling and ask them to make one small improvement. So that would be paying attention to their sleep, maybe getting more regular, as simple as that. Improving their diet a little bit. And one thing I wanted to say about that, I recently read an article that was claiming that who you're eating with is more important than what you're eating. So paying attention to that as well.

Brent: That's great.

Rob: Very cool. Thank you for your time today, Dennis. It's great to actually talk with a professional about these things, something that I know Brent and I have passion around, but, but some way that can actually tell us areas that are right and things that we should be taking, taking into account. What I really appreciated today in the talk about longevity and health span is not the one single shiny object. It wasn't one area.

It's a lot of areas of our life that we actually need to be mindful of, but it's pretty simple. It's sleep. It's strength. It's aerobic fitness. It's community.

So thank you for that. And as I go to summarize today, I as I was taking some notes, it made me think about reverting back to when we were all kids, and it's actually advice that we heard from our parents. Right? It was go to bed at a certain hour every day. So it's your bedtime is at 08:00.

Go to bed at 08:00. The second thing was eat your vegetables. I heard you say that really quick and early. So go to bed at a certain time every day. Eat your vegetables.

It was do exercise, and you mentioned three different types of exercise. It was strength training, was, cardiovascular training, and it was balance training and making sure you're doing different types of exercise. And the last one, which you just shared was the most important, was go outside and play with your friends. Those are the things our parents instilled at us at a young age, and I think at some point, we got shifted away from those as we got in professional careers and weren't doing those things consistently. And so, Dennis, you challenged our audience today was to pick one thing.

Just pick one thing from our conversation today and go and make a habit around that one thing. Once it becomes a habit, you can then pick the next one thing you might go and do. So don't go and try and solve the world today. Solve one area today. Make it a habit around that, and then you can pick the next area of your life you want to have an impact on because you're the director of your next great act.

Lena: That's it for this episode of Midlife Circus. Visit midlifecircus.fm for show notes, transcripts, and all the latest happenings, and be sure to join us in the Midlife Circus community on Substack. Follow Midlife Circus on Apple podcasts, YouTube, and wherever you get your podcasts so you never miss your next great act. Quick reminder, the opinions and stories shared here are personal reflections, not professional advice. This show is for entertainment and inspiration only.

Thanks for listening, and we'll see you under the big top next time. Midlife Circus is a Burning Matches Media production.