Abel James Show

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What’s better for longevity—running or walking?

It’s a bit of a trick question.

But if there is one answer, it’s definitely walking.

If you want to be fit and live for a long time, you don’t need to subject yourself to suffer fests and slog through long runs.

In fact, when you combine daily walks with the habit of sprinting just about once a week, magic starts to happen.

Today, I’m thrilled to be joined once again by our friend Mark Sisson, New York Times bestselling author and founder of Primal Kitchen and Peluva minimalist shoes.

Mark had an incredible career as an elite endurance athlete, qualifying for the 1980 Olympic trials in the marathon. But as you’ll hear, his high-mileage running habit ultimately took a toll, leading him to rethink everything he thought he knew about fitness and longevity. 

In his new book, Mark makes a compelling case that we humans are actually born to walk, not necessarily run, and that walking is one of the most powerful and most underrated tools we have for improving our health, body composition, and quality of life. 

As usual, this conversation challenges mainstream fitness dogma, and Mark always brings the receipts.

In this conversation with Mark, you’ll hear: 

• Why effective exercise includes walking, strength training, and sprinting (but not necessarily jogging or running)
• How “biohacking” is broken
• Why stem cell treatments might be more dangerous than we thought
• What longevity really means
• And much more…

Read the show notes: https://fatburningman.com/mark-sisson-why-walking-beats-running-for-longevity/

Pick up Mark’s new book, “Born To Walk” on Amazon or wherever books are sold.

Join the Abel James’ Substack channel: https://abeljames.substack.com/

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[00:00:01] Abel James:

Hey. This is Abel James. Thanks so much for joining us on the show. What's better for longevity?   Running or walking?   It's a bit of a trick question, but if there is one answer, it's definitely walking. If you wanna be fit and live for a long time, you don't need to subject yourself to suffer fests and slogging through long runs.   In fact, when you combine daily walks with the habit of sprinting just about once a week, magic starts to happen. Today, I'm thrilled to be joined once again by our friend, Mark Sisson, New York Times best selling author and founder of Primal Kitchen and Paloova minimalist shoes. Mark had an incredible career as an elite endurance athlete qualifying for the nineteen eighty Olympic trials in the marathon. But as you'll hear, his high mileage running habit ultimately took a toll, leading him to rethink everything he thought he knew about fitness and longevity. In his new book, Mark makes a compelling case that we humans are actually born to walk, not necessarily run, and that walking is one of the most powerful and most underrated tools we have for improving our health, body composition, and quality of life. As usual, this conversation challenges mainstream fitness dogma, and Mark always brings the receipts. And if you'd like to stay up to date on some of the cool things that we have coming up, including live in person events here in Austin, Texas and beyond, make sure to sign up for my newsletter   at abeljames.com.  

That's abeljames.com.   You can also find me on most social media under Abel James or at Abel James. On Instagram, it's at Abel James. But no matter where you find me, I always love hearing from you. Alright. Onto this show with Mark Sisson. In this conversation, you'll hear why effective exercise includes walking, strength training, and sprinting, but not necessarily jogging or running. How biohacking is broken.   Why stem cell treatments might be much more dangerous than we thought, what longevity   really means, and much more. Let's go hang out with Mark.   Alright. Welcome back, folks. Returning to the show today is our friend, Mark Sisson, a New York Times best selling author, founder of Primal Kitchen, the founder of the Primal Health Coach Institute,   and Poluva minimalist shoes. A world class athlete in his prime, Mark's sporting career includes a two eighteen marathon finish and a fourth place spot in the grueling Hawaii Ironman World Championship.  

His newest book is entitled   Born to Walk. Thanks so much for being here, Mark. Thanks for having me, Abel. Good to see you again, man. It's been a long time. I know. It's been a long time. I think our paths originally crossed somewhere around 2011, '20 '12. Although, I've been reading Mark's daily app along before that and, oddly enough, I think the way that I originally found my way to your blog was through footwear, because that's when I was going deep into marathon training. And as you share in in your book and in your work, you were running somewhere around a hundred plus miles a week for, I think, I've heard you say seven   straight years. And now, you know, at 71 years old, you haven't run a mile in somewhere around thirty years. So let's just start right there. Yeah. Yeah.  



[00:06:02] Mark Sisson:

You know, I was a typical   young endurance athlete of the sixties and seventies. You know, this was a time when the running boom hadn't taken off yet.   I was a skinny,   ectomorphic,   tough guy who was willing to endure a lot of discomfort in my training.   I gravitated toward distance running just because I was too small to be be playing basketball, football, baseball, hockey. I grew up in Maine where pond hockey was a big thing.   You know, I started running as a young teen and then went out for the track team and did very well. Won the mile, the two mile, and almost every event that I entered, and that just sort of cascaded into,   longer events that I was I the the longer the event, the more I excelled   relatively.  

And, over the years, I I decided I wanna be an Olympian. I qualified for the nineteen eighty US Olympic trials.   That was the year that we didn't send a team, but, you know, that was my goal had been to qualify for the trials. And I was running a hundred miles a week for many years. I mean, up to a a maximum of a 20 miles a week. But, you know, I got injured. I got I got beat up. I had colds and flu six times a year. My diet was highly inflammatory,   thinking that I was having to take in all these carbohydrates.   The footwear that I was, using, the new cushion thick, you know, shoes that Nike was putting out ultimately   contributed to my demise.  

So I kinda pivoted,   at the age of 27, 20 eight to looking at ways in which everybody could be fit and healthy and happy and strong and lean without all of that struggle and suffering and sacrifice and sweating and all of gnarly stuff that people assume they have to do in order to be, you know, fit and lean and and healthy.   So   the running   boom, which took off in the   early seventies,   kinda cascaded over the last fifty years. And   as I'm writing this book on longevity starting about a year and a half ago, and I thought, what is it what what does longevity really mean? And it it means, obviously, being healthy and living a long life and having a quality life. It also means being able to move   and being able to do things like play. What is the one common denominator?  

Oh my god. It's walking. We're born to walk. We are not born to run. Running is a is a is a bizarre   occupation that a lot of people have taken up, and only a handful of people are appropriate to be to be running.   The rest of us should be walking. And so I went down this new   path of, like, wow. This is this is an exceptional   insight that is available to everybody,   and we've sort of bypassed it because we've assumed that running is   is is like everyone's obligation. Like, running is the best thing you can do   in order to achieve fitness. And I'm here to tell you, it's not. It's maybe fiftieth on a list of all these other much more effective, efficient, and fun things we could do.  



[00:08:48] Abel James:

It's so interesting. As I was getting ready for this interview, you know, I was I was going through some of your recent videos and and things like that. And so I'm sure the algorithm sniffed out what I was getting after, and so it showed me something from one of those morning talk shows on, you know, mainstream news that just came out a few days ago. And it said,   what's better, walking or running? And they were a 10%   saying running is better. Everyone on the panel was just like, running is better because it burns more calories, you get more done in less time, yada yada yada. So maybe you can offer a counterpoint   to that because there wasn't much,   they they didn't use scientific references. They didn't have personal experience to share. They were just kind of talking heads as usual. So if you can ask someone with actual experience, please go ahead. Sure. Well, you know, running is,  

[00:09:36] Mark Sisson:

there's a handful of people for whom running would be an interesting choice as it was for me as a, avocation or a vocation,   probably 2% of the population.   Ectomorphs,   skinny people with, great lung capacity,   genetically high VO two max, and a high tolerance for pain.   The rest of populations   should be looking at, kinder, gentler ways to access   a more robust fitness strategy,   a longer lifespan,   a risk reduction for, diseases of, civilization, you know, heart disease, type two diabetes, things like that,   muscle mass, strength, power.   All of those things get compromised when you run. So when people say, well, running is the most efficient way of exercising,   I mean, the first thing I'll tell you is fifty percent of runners get injured every year. At any point in time, twenty five percent of all people who claim to be runners are injured. Like, right now, twenty five percent of all runners are injured.  

That does not speak well for consistency.   When I was a runner, I was injured all the time. You know, I just I just finished a podcast with Ben Greenfield, and we were you know, he was an endurance athlete, and he was a a marathoner, a triathlete, and he shared the same thing, like, all was injured. If it if it wasn't one part of the body, it was another part of the body.   An injury is your body's way of telling you you're doing it wrong.   So   should people stop running who who love running? Absolutely not. This book is designed to make available to everyone   the opportunity to improve their   cardiovascular fitness through walking and through lifting weights and through sprinting.  

Okay. I'm not I'm not saying we're not born to move fast or to run. We're born to walk. We're born to be able to run   when it's called upon,   but we're not born to run every day, metronomically,   eight minute miles, dive ten minute mile pace. It's antithetical to human existence. None of our ancestors ran that much ever until,   a hundred and fifty years ago, two hundred years ago when somebody invented cross country as a up game in England,   and then that morphed into   track and field and   road racing in The US. But most   people today look, 70   of the American population is overweight.  

I'm here to tell you running is a horrible way to lose weight. So if you are trying to,   readjust your body composition,   you as the fat burning man   and   I as the keto guy or the carnivore guy or the paleo guy or the ancestral health guy will tell you   the only way to burn body fat, the best way is to reconfigure your diet. So your body burns its own fat when you're resting.   What happens when you go out and run? Well, most people run   at a pace, at a heart rate   that is too high   for their body to burn fat. So they're when they're running, oh my god, they're they're sweating and they're groaning and they're doing the work and they're and they're managing discomfort   and, they they finish after their three, five, eight mile run and they're exhausted and they feel like they've done something valuable   that's gonna contribute to their their health and their wellness.  

Yeah. It's better than sitting on the sofa, but what they've done, typically, is they've trained too fast. They've they've gone out at at a pace, even a ten minute pace for most people, nine minute pace, too fast for most people to be burning fat. So what do they do? Their watch says, I did 700 calories. My goodness. What a what a good boy am I or a good girl am I. The 700 calories is mostly glycogen. It's mostly sugar. It's mostly stored carbohydrates in your body that your muscles are using because you've not trained yourself to be good at burning fat.   When you do that, you burn the calories. Yeah. You burn the calories, but then because it's mostly glucose, the brain goes, oh my god. Blood sugar's dipped. We're exhausted.  

I produced cortisol because it's a stressful activity. Running is a stressful thing. It's catabolic.   In producing, this cortisol and in burning these calories, the brain goes, we gotta eat. We gotta replenish the glycogen we lost. We have to eat more carbs. So there's this   tendency, whether it's conscious or unconscious,   to   compensate by consuming   at least the number of calories you burned off running.   And over time, people notice I'm running and, you know, I lost 10 pounds the first month I was running. That was great. But I've I've plateaued. I'm not losing any more weight. The reason they lost the first ten pounds,   if they went from being a couch potato, they probably lost a few pounds of water in terms of systemic inflammation   from just this pro inflammatory non exercising lifestyle.  

They probably when you burn through your glycogen,   every gram of glycogen stores four grams of water along with it, so you sweat it out a lot of the water from the glycogen.   So there's a initial kind of, oh, wow. It's maybe this will work. But so many people get so   frustrated, depressed   because their running program   does not result in weight loss. You look at the start of any major marathon, an LA marathon, New York marathon,   Chicago,   Eighty Percent of the runners are overweight.   If running was that good a weight loss strategy, how come not everyone is skinny? How come they're all they've got ten, twenty, 30, 50 pounds to lose still? So running is a horrible   strategy for losing weight. So between   the injury rate, the fact that it's not a great way to lose weight, the fact that running is catabolic,   what does that mean? It tears down muscle tissue. So every elite runner that you've ever seen is catabolic. They go to the gym, they lift weights. How come they're not stronger? How how come their upper body is not bigger from lifting weights? Because running is catabolic. It tears down muscle tissue. Now if that's your job and your job is to be five foot ten, a hundred and eighteen pounds,   legs, legs, legs, lungs, and a head, and you're gonna compete on a world class stage,   great.  

Go ahead and do that. But for the masses out there who are saying I wanna be stronger and leaner   and I wanna improve my cardiovascular,   strength,   running is a bad choice. It's catabolic. So people run four, five, six miles a day, six times a week.   They don't have energy to go to the gym. Or if they do go to the gym and lift weights, they can't lift weights   appropriately. And you and I know from the years of the stuff that we've done, when you go to lift,   do the work. Right? Like like, press yourself into   doing resistance training, not just going through the motions. When you do the work, you build muscle. But if you do the work, you know, you're doing it half assedly because you have no energy from the running that you did   or from the orange theory or from the the cycling class or from whatever other, you know, one hour cardio   pitch you were doing,   If you don't have the strength to lift the weights, you won't do the weights appropriately, and then you'll tear the you you know, muscle tissue will you'll cannibalize that muscle tissue. Well, over time,   you don't get stronger, you get weaker. You and this is typical of most runners. So now here now you're not losing weight. You're frustrated because you're injured a lot, and so your psyche is all messed up. You don't have the energy to go to the gym and lift weights appropriately, so you're not getting any stronger.  

Your family is now a little bit affected because you don't have the energy to go throw the football with your kid or to go, you know, go on a family hike or to or to, wrestle in the backyard with the kids. Nah. I'm gonna take a nap. I already did my workout today.   All of these are are, like, indications that running is just a it got into the psyche of Americans   fifty years ago with   some perfect storm of   Frank Shorter winning the gold medal at Munich and then Jim Fix writing a book on running   and, doctor Ken Cooper writing a book on aerobics that said that the higher   you raise your heart rate over a long period of time, the the longer you'd probably live.  

He actually recanted that. He walked that back about ten years later.   And then the advent of these thick cushion running shoes, which   until Phil Knight and Bill Bowerman invented the thick running shoes,   the only people who could run were runners because   you had to run light on your feet with perfect form. And even then you had these thin minimalist shoes that would say, hey. 45 miles of running this week, that's enough, pal.   You gotta stop running. Well,   Bowerman and and Phil Knight invented this thick running shoe for good runners like me. So I would get my new pair of demo Nikes.   I was a Nike athlete in the early seventies, mid seventies.  

These thick cushion waffle shoes, and it was amazing. I could run I could go from my Chuck Taylors that I ran in or my Onitsuka Tigers that were a quarter inch thick   and do 50 miles a week and be beat up from 50 miles a week. Now I could run 90 miles a week, a hundred miles a week   because I had enough cushioning, but I had good form. I was light on my feet and I had good form, so I could do those miles.   But the same shoes that the elite runners were using to put in more miles now enabled   everybody   to take up running and go, oh, I'm now a runner. I'm gonna end a a five k or a 10 k or a marathon. I'm gonna run to lose weight. I'm gonna run to escape my, you know, troubles. I'm gonna run to   alleviate my,   my concerns and my stress.  

Well, the shoes enabled bad form. They enabled people to keep running with bad form. So what happened to running injuries? They didn't decrease. They increased as a result of these thick cushion shoes. So the book, Born to Walk,   is kind of a a a complete   picture of, like, how we even   got to this point where we had this massive running boom where tens of millions of people were running who shouldn't have been running, who were burned out, frustrated,   you know, weren't weren't getting the results they wanted. And and what's the answer? Oh, maybe I'm not doing enough. Maybe I should be doing more.   Right? And so I wanna dispel that entire myth and that entire notion and say,   we humans, we are born to walk. We're born to walk a lot as much as we can throughout the day. That's that's like a human imperative.  

Our digestion   really depends on us walking a fair amount, moving around a lot. Our lymphatic system, our immune system, our joint systems, you know, we're bipedal. We're supposed to be moving. If we were on four legs like almost every other animal, okay. We could hang out all day on four legs and not have to but the fact that we're on two feet, we're gonna fall over if we don't move around much.   So we're born to walk. We're born to sprint.   And make no mistake, our ancestors sprinted   a lot. They sprinted to get away from something that was gonna kill them or away from the fire or the marauding tribe or towards something that was gonna become dinner for them.   But they didn't run,   oh, hey. You know, it's Tuesday. We don't have a hunt today. Let's just go do an easy five miler. Our ancestors it was antithetical to health. So running   was never a part of human existence except for this   anthropological   little   asterisk in human history that said we were persistence hunters.  

And if you remember the book,   Born to Run, which my book is a tongue in cheek answer to that, and it talked about the fact that persistence hunters will track an animal for two hours, and we have these built in cooling systems that allow us to to sweat and cool off while other animals are overheating, and we can track them down for in the heat for a couple of hours and then jab a spear in them. But even the persistence hunt was not our ancestors running seven minute miles   chasing an antelope for, you know, for two hours   and then dragging it back to camp. It was   walking and and sprinting and and hiding and crouching and smelling and sniffing and tracking for two hours.  

It wasn't some metronomic   clop, clop, clop,   clop down the road. And our ancestors certainly didn't have   long distance races. It was like calories were,   you know, were were scarce, and you had to be very careful about how much energy you expended. So running is a is a completely   new phenomenon in human history, and we're not born to run. We're born to walk.  

[00:21:39] Abel James:

And the metronomic approach, the more you look at it or you take a step back, is quite bizarre. It you don't see that in nature and and kind of I liken it to if you're trying to train, probably most people don't even remember manual cars, you know, like a standard gearbox, but you're redlining   basically the whole time you're staying on the red line burning up all the machinery inside as opposed to kind of cycling through your gears right like engaging that that lower level of walking or really light run and then revving it all the way up to that sprint you know, once a week or or once every so often, but not all the time. If you're just constantly redlining  

[00:22:15] Mark Sisson:

all the time, no wonder we're not getting better. Yeah. And so we see, again, a generation, not two generations of people who have just assumed   that running is the quintessential   activity. It's the best thing I can do for my heart, for my psyche, for my weight loss, for and it's not any of those things. Right? It so in the book, we have we, you know, we talk about the history of running and the and how it came to be and the myth of the marathon,   and, you know, we're honoring this guy, Filippides, who theoretically dropped dead after running   26 miles   from the Plains Of Marathon to Athens to tell the townspeople,   rejoice, rejoice,   we won in this battle against the Persians.  

That never happened. It it was a it was a story that was co opted by a a poet in the in the nineteenth century   to, you know, the notion that the thick shoes that everybody wears and everybody runs in today, that the thicker they are, the more cushioning they are, the more forgiving they are, and that, therefore, the more you can run.   Absolutely wrong. The more injuries they they actually,   create. So what do you do? How look. How do you   approach this, especially somebody who's already a runner? Well, I say, look. I don't wanna take running away from you. If you truly love running,   and I don't think you do, I think you love calling yourself a runner or love having finished running, but I don't think you love running in the moment. But if you love running, how how would it be if I could give you a way to get even faster so you could be more you you could perform better when you do choose to run? And part of that is is a strategy that involves a lot of walking,   some time in the gym lifting weights, some time sprinting because we absolutely   have to do some high end work. You know, the last five years, we've heard   Huberman and Galpin   and, you know, Peter Retia   and Gabrielle Lyon all talk about VO two max, right, being a a metric. Yeah. I wanna absolutely   improve VO two max, but one of the things that happens with people who go out and   run daily at a heart rate that's   too stressful for them, they don't improve their VO two max. They just they practice hurting. They again, they're not burning fat because they've exceeded that heart rate at which we call it the fat max heart rate. The heart rate at which you are burning the most amount of fat, but not going so hard that you now stop burning fat and start burning glucose, carbohydrate.  

So where is that point?   And typically, for most people, it's one eighty minus your age. So if you're 45 year old man, you don't want your heart rate to exceed one thirty five when you're doing   85%   of your your cardio work throughout the week. Well, for most people who are runners,   they can't   run   slow enough   that their heart isn't above one thirty five.   But people will say, but, Mark, I can run, and my heart at one fifty five, one 60. I'm like, okay.   You can do that. A, you're beating yourself up. B,   you suck at burning fat because I know you know, you're only burning carbohydrates.   And, c, you're not you're in that black hole of training where you're training   at a heart rate too high to burn fat and promote capillary perfusion   and and building an aerobic base, but too low,   not high enough to promote VO two max, anaerobic threshold,   strength, power, and speed. So you're in a no man's lane where all you're doing is practicing hurting   five times a week   and costing yourself energy   that you could be using in the gym building stronger muscles.  

And if you did a leg day, you'd actually run faster when you do go out to run. So we are putting together a program that's   when I say I started this book talking about longevity and what are the the sort of the key elements to longevity,   building a strong aerobic base, walking, low level of activity, zone two or lower,   and then twice a week lifting weights, but lifting with, you know, mindfulness. Like, I'm gonna go do the work in the gym. I'm not just gonna go through the motions and have my trainer count reps and that's it. No. I'm gonna build muscle   intentionally   in the gym. And if I do it if I do it   well enough,   I can only do it twice a week because I wanna repair. I wanna recover from the damage I did. And so that's another aspect of running. Running on a daily basis, all it does is it it, you know, tears you down and you don't get enough time to build back. And then you carbo load so you can go out and do it again the next day, and then you don't you, you know, you're you're training harder than you should and you don't have enough time to build back. You accumulate stress over time.  

So not only are you at a heart rate that's too high to be burning fat and building an aerobic base, but it's it's also high enough.   The body perceives it as a stress and secretes cortisol. And what does cortisol do? Cortisol tears down muscle tissue to to create more glucose, gluconeogenesis.   Cortisol suppresses chronic cortisol suppresses the immune system. You get more colds and flu.   Cortisol weakens   bones, bone density, so you get stress fractures and you get all manner of other maybe even some soft tissue injuries.   So I hate to be so bleak for the runners out there, but the reality is if you're a runner, I'm giving you permission to walk again and do so in a way that's gonna make you a better runner even if all you ever do is run once  

[00:27:21] Abel James:

a week. And it's true. I mean, I started experimenting   with this   many moons ago at this point, but the way that I did it was instead of going for these   five, eight, 10, 20 milers where I'm just trying to hit the fastest rate that I can and keep it steady the whole time,   doing sprints and walking. And just, like I was saying before, kinda going through those different gears and allowing your body to recover after each one of those sprints such that at the end of it, you know, the the difference for me is that at the end of that kind of sprint walk session,   I'm relaxed and a little bit gassed, but it's kind of it's not a net energy loss like the other kind of running is. Like, after you do a eight, ten, 20 mile or a marathon or ultra marathon, you are gassed in a very specific way,   that strength training does not do. Right? Like and and maybe that way that your gassed   isn't all that natural. Maybe we're not supposed to live there. Right? Because it does it does actual damage to your inside and out over time. I mean No. It it your heart could be compromised. No. No. No. And one of the chapters in the book  

[00:28:25] Mark Sisson:

is the dangers   of,   overdoing it, of overtraining   in an event like running, you know, as an endurance athlete, either a runner or a triathlete or whatever it is. I mean, I'm someone who damaged my heart from too much running over the years. And to this day, I still suffer from it. Now I don't have a I don't have a life threatening   situation the way a million of my contemporaries do with AFib and things like that. But if there's a point at which the heart goes see, the heart has no innervation. It can't it doesn't feel pain. So the brain says, let's go for an eight mile run, and the heart goes,   alright. Let's go. And the heart has to keep up with the demand that you put on it by deciding to go run. Okay. Once a week, once every two weeks, that's great. But if you do it every day,   it's like you wouldn't go to the gym and curl 300 repetitions of 75 pounds   every day   to get bigger biceps, that'd be crazy. Well, the heart has to work the same way. Now what you just mentioned is one of my favorite workouts in the world. I go to the South Of France, you know, every summer. I do about an hour and a fifteen, hour and twenty,   minute, hike,   but it's so inspiring that I find myself breaking into a sprint around a tree or through the meadow or whatever for 200 yards, and then I walk. And I walk for five minutes. And I only sprint when I have good form and I could feel myself,   like, literally,   you know, not just slogging it through, but I'm energetic and I have good form. And then once the form drops and the energy is, like, gone, okay, walk. And it's one of my favorite workouts to do. And just like you said, I come back from that workout   energized. Mhmm. I mean, I'm tired, but I'm not having to take a nap that afternoon   to, to offset   the damage I did to myself or the work I did to myself. And I don't do it every day. I do it once once a week, and it's my, you know, it's, like, my favorite thing. I look forward to it Yes. As opposed to dreading   look. When I was a runner doing a hundred miles a week,   there was a hundred miles a week is some days you do 20 milers. Some days you do   an easy 10 k in the morning, like six thirties, six thirty miles, and then a hard 10 miler in the afternoon.  

Every workout was like, you know, you gotta gird up for it and you gotta get psyched for it and you gotta   it was never fun. It was never fun. It was about managing discomfort.   Certainly, there was a aspect of feeling   superior to other people who are sitting at home watching TV,   but there was never a point where, oh my god, this is so fun. I'm just like, I'm, you know, I'm I'm running five forty fives in in my workout, and I'm crushing it. No. It's I'm busting my ass, and I'm in I'm in the zone, and I feel good about what I'm doing, but I'm just not it's not enjoyable in the in the sense that playing ultimate Frisbee or playing a pickup basketball game or playing professional football, whatever it is. All these other games are much more, you know, enjoyable.   So   but I love the fact that you do that. We call it fartlek.  

An old Swedish term for speed play, fartlek workout.   That's the best thing you can do. So having said that, on those runs, I might accumulate,   you know, a mile or two worth of running   over the six miles that I might cover,   but   I have not run a mile in thirty years.   So I was a career runner, and after I ran as a as a runner, I became a triathlete. I had to run as a triathlete too. I've not run a mile in thirty years. Now there have been a couple of times when I when I thought to myself, you know, I'll put on the shoes and I'll I'll just I'll lace up the shoes. I'll go down and I'll I would get 200 yards down the road and I'm going, what am I doing? This is not fun. Yeah. I don't know why I'm doing this. I'm gonna get nothing out of it and I would walk home. So that, for me, the real kind of moment is that I'm 71.   I'm closer to seventy two than 71 right now.  

I   am   very fit.   I don't run at all. I I sprint. I walk a lot,   and I lift weights. And I play. I play. I play on you know, I stand up paddle. I do fat biking on the beach. I do a lot of other I'm able   to take the elements of what I put together, the strong aerobic base from walking and a little bit of sprinting,   and put those into   a hard I'll do a hard one hour bike ride on the beach, a fat bike on the sand. I'm applying what I've done to that, and it's my heart rate can be high. I can be zone three, four, and five,   but I only do it once a week. It's maybe the best toughest workout I do, but that's my VO two max stuff. But I can only do it because I spent so much time walking, walking, walking, doing low end stuff, moving around as much as I can throughout the day.  

Walking is is a legitimate way of building an aerobic base, a strong aerobic base, and burning fat while you're doing it.  

[00:33:10] Abel James:

And I think if runners are honest about it, walking actually does a lot of the same things that running does for them, whether you're talking about the mindfulness or being connected out out with nature, whatever, just getting away from your phone, getting away from your your normal day. It's like it's checking a lot of the boxes, but those negatives of of injury. And also, let's talk quickly about,   I know you said you you can't outrun a bad diet, but also the the turn of the phrase of saying you   basically, what happens when you start running a lot is your appetite goes nuts, especially if you're practicing that slog Even compared to strength training and building mass or whatever, there's nothing that compares to the hunger that you get, the unrelenting hunger from endurance training. And a lot of times, you'll get injured, then all of a sudden, the weight comes back on. You've already lost the muscle. It's a total mess. You've lost the muscle, the weight, and and you've now you're injured, but the appetite remains. Yes. And so it becomes a real struggle,  

[00:34:01] Mark Sisson:

you know, an internal struggle and a battle, unnecessary battle to, you know, to diet,   which I you know, we both hate that word, which   calls upon the the original concept here that is 80% of your body composition   happens is how you choose to eat. If you can reconfigure   your diet to make you metabolically flexible   so that you burn fat   at rest or even doing low level activities,   even zone two activities,   that's where you're gonna lose the body fat. Anything else is not gonna contribute to that. I mean, one of the problems with cortisol production and and,   chronic cortisol production from running every day is it raises   cortisol raises insulin. Insulin,   you know, is a sort of a prediabetic   issue. Now the higher the insulin is, it takes the glucose out of your bloodstream, it sequesters it in the fat cells. Now you there's no you don't even have access to to the carbohydrate that you just ate, so you're hungry more often. You're hungry every two or three hours. It's a vicious cycle that I think   is best broken. I wouldn't say can only be broken, but is best broken by reconfiguring your diet so you become good at burning your stored body fat   regardless of how much work you're doing. Now that raises another issue, which is,   but, Mark, I burn more calories when I'm running.  

Look. I tell people, don't count the calories when you're when you're walking. It's it's the the calories are irrelevant.   Part of what we talk about, there's a study in the book that we talk about this sort of a compensatory nature of the human body that that whether they're indigenous people living in Africa or South America   or you're a couch potato, all of these different people burn about the same number of calories every day.   So you whether you're walking or whether you're running, if you're running a lot and burning off   a thousand calories, it just means there's a thousand calories you won't burn the rest of the day. So you still would have, by walking and moving a lot and and just living your life and enjoying your life, you would have burned about the same number of calories as you would   busting your ass on a hard   forty eight minute run and then sitting on the sofa the rest of the afternoon and tired because you're beat up from the work you did. So counting calories is is not a good way to do any sort of exercise program. Yes. You have to do the work, but the whole calories in calories out   equation,   it should be better described as,   calories stored versus calories burned, and that becomes a hormonal   equation. Like, there's certain type of calories I can take in, and the hormonal response to that to that food might be either to store it or to burn it. And if you can train your body   to do that, to burn stored body fat or acquire that metabolic flexibility,   then the calorie   thing is irrelevant. You can do whatever amount of work you wanna do, and you and you point is you don't need to go   sweat to feel like you're melting the fat off your body. Right? You're just beating yourself up. Why not just walk a lot, enjoy the walk, and like you said, I I go you one better and say, walking is even better for your psyche, for your creativity, for your enjoyment of stuff. Like, if you wanna think about a a work project or,   craft a letter to somebody or write a write a blog post or whatever it is, walking is a lot   more   productive   than running,   as far and I've done both, and I've and I've used both as a sort of meditative experience.  

You know, if you walk, you probably listen better to a podcast. If you're listening to podcasts, you probably get more out of it walking.   And you just when you're running, you're quite often   disassociating   from the discomfort. So you've got headphones on, you're listening, you know, to Metallica or to some, you know, head banger stuff,   to just get you out of the out of the the situation that you've put yourself into mentally,   when in fact, if you really love running, you you'd never wear headphones. You'd you'd associate with the sounds and the smells and the feelings and the breath pattern and the strides and the arm,   positioning, and and you'd be always   refining and redefining and reframing   all of these aspects of your run because you love it so much and you're so into it. That happens and that exists. I mean, they used to say that   what defines a a great runner from a good runner is is association   versus dissociation.  

They used to say that the that the good runners,   not the great ones, were dissociators.   Like, in order to adapt to the conditions and deal with the pain and the discomfort, they would like design and build a house in their mind while they're running. Right? The associators were the ones who are okay. My breathing. One in in two out two. My my, you know, my strap pattern. How's my ankle doing? That's good. I think I wanna adjust this. How's my how's my arm swing?   Always   in real time in the moment   dealing   with the realities of the discomfort, but in a way that   that associates with it rather than   trying to invent some way to to suggest that it doesn't exist. Does that make sense? I'm I'm trying to It definitely does because,  

[00:39:02] Abel James:

I think we can   all probably relate to   the fact that we at least want to escape sometimes, and we know that that certain people have a ridiculous   tolerance for pain, especially during exercise, and those people are usually somewhere else. They're not connected to their bodies. And so   when you do connect   to your body, you notice the injuries before they they happen. You made those adjustments. Right? And so that that can be the difference. Instead of running through the pain,   no matter what the cost, you're actually tuning in and and cleaning things up as you go. Right?  

[00:39:34] Mark Sisson:

Right. I mean, and by the way, an injury   is your body's way of telling you you're doing it wrong. Yeah. I mean, if you were doing it right, you would not get injured. So it's either a biomechanical injury and and whole section that we talk about in in Born to Walk about shoes and about how horrible they are for your biomechanics.   And, you know, I'm trying to push people into more minimalist footwear where they get ground feel. They could feel the ground underneath. They have toe splay so they can their their big their big toes not squished up against the other toes, where their heels not raised and therefore shortening their calf muscle and then putting pressure on their Achilles. You know, all of these   so called accommodations that, high-tech running shoes   offer   are actually counterproductive   to good running   and definitely counterproductive to good walking. Right? So they these high high heeled,   high thick, you know, 40 millimeter high cushioned   cloud like shoes,   they encourage bad form. So people run with bad form thinking, and and they try the shoes on in the shoe store, and they're like, oh my god. These are so soft. These are softer than the last pair I had. Yeah. You know, they walk down the aisle, maybe jog the last two steps down the aisle of the shoe store, and they're, oh, these are great. I'll take them. And then they get home, they start running them, and they wonder why their knees hurt or their lower back hurts or they've got something going on. It's because   when you cut off that input, that sensory input that the bottoms of the feet require   in order to organize   the kinetic chain from the bottoms of the feet up through the ankles, up through the knees, up through the hips,   if you're barefoot, for instance, by the time you weight that forward foot, the brain has all the information it needs on how to scrunch the arch maybe around the rock you're stepping on or bend it, flex the toes to accommodate the divot or ditch that you've stepped in or the twig that you're stepping on or the rock. How much to roll the ankle out a little bit maybe so that the knee doesn't have to get tweaked?  

Because   in the absence of that information,   if the foot is encased in this thick,   cushioned,   stiff shoe, and now you step sideways on a rock, first thing to go is the knee, you know, because you've stabilized the ankle so much that the knee is the first point of weakness, weak length. Well, when you have thin soled shoes and wide, flat, flexible toe box,   the brain says, oh, okay. This is how much we roll the ankle to accommodate that. Maybe we have to bend the knee, dip the knee a little bit lower now because of this. Maybe we have to, you know, rotate the hip a little bit to offset the   impact trauma of that football. Whether you're walking or   running or sprinting or jumping or dancing or throwing a football   or setting yourself up for a golf shot or a baseball   swing or a hockey shot. It it all starts with the feet,   and walking is the best thing we can do for our feet. Every good step you take walking   improves the strength of your feet, improves the resilience   and the mobility of your feet, But it requires that you either be barefoot or in some minimalist shoe to really optimize that. Mhmm. And then as far as the body composition goes, what was your racing weight again compared to now?  

So I raised at one forty two, and I weigh one seventy two now. So I weigh 30 pounds more. I you know, in the book, I say I get 20 pounds more of muscle mass because I probably have 20 pounds more of muscle and a little bit more bone because my bones are denser. Sure. But I'm I'm pretty much the same body fat when I was a runner as when I was a runner. So I I raced at one forty two. I'm one seventy two now. Now when I raced at one forty two, I'm five ten.   Number one, I was probably ten pounds overweight for a elite marathoner. So I should've weighed one thirty two,   but I lifted weights. I knew enough in those days that I should lift weights.  

So I kept some upper body   weight on,   which which had me at one forty two. Now the only thing that's changed in the last   forty years,   thirty five years anyway, is I stopped running. So I stopped being catabolic. So as soon as I stopped running and started doing more anabolic stuff like walking and easy stuff and then high level sprinting and very high intensity stuff, but for short bursts,   I put on 20 pounds of muscle. So that's a real   eye opener right there. Like, I raced at one forty two. I should've I should've weighed one thirty two,   and yet   my VO two max you know, well, Mark, you're not doing any high level. You're not you're not running hard multiple times a week. What happened to your VO two max? I thought VO two max was like   the prime indicator of longevity now. So my VO two max that I've had it tested recently   is in the top   5% of my age group, the the ninety fifth percentile from my age group, just like it was ninety fifth, not 1%,   but ninety fifth percent when I was 27 years old in an elite racer. So for my age group, I'm in the same category. The difference is I'm stronger in every other metric.  

Right? I really can sprint better. I can deadlift more. I can, you know, I I mean, a lot of the metrics that,   I mean, look, I'm not setting I'm not setting personal bests on the bench anymore. Right? But what I'm saying is as an organism that's trying to be thriving   across   all planes, not just become a skinny ass runner that runs a thirty eight minute ten k and wins my age group,   but as a human being trying to be able to enjoy life, to play with my grandchildren,   wrestle with, you know, my grandson,   stand up paddle for an hour with the dolphins, ride a fat bike on the beach, snowboard, play ultimate Frisbee,   and then I all my I can hang, you know, dead hang for a minute thirty. I can do a hex bar deadlift   almost twice my weight, and it'll 1.75   times my weight. I can bench my my weight, you know, a couple times now.  

I'm strong   across a lot of different platforms   versus   some cardio beast   that's advanced and accelerated the aging process because I chose to just do  

[00:45:28] Abel James:

chronic cardio my whole life. Yeah. So interesting because I was also very similar. I'm a little shorter. I'm five nine and, I was at like one   forty seven, one forty eight when I was doing a lot of marathoning. And now I'm about 30 pounds heavier than that and have been for many years.   Much much stronger,   much faster,   feel a heck of a lot better too. And then I'm much more useful. You know, we've moved house a few times and I've had to actually live heavy lift heavy things, you know, functionally.   And   being useful is really nice compared to being, like, completely useless and gassed out as someone who just ran the the 10 or 20 miler that day. Completely useless. You can't use any of your muscles. You're not gonna be, like, volunteering to help,   anyone else around the house or around the neighborhood because you're just you're sapped as opposed to being strong, feeling good, full of energy, and all of that. It's just it's it's night and day when you're comparing the lifestyle factors of of cross training versus this endurance specialization. Right?  



[00:46:29] Mark Sisson:

And that's what I want for people. So, you know, if somebody says, well, don't tell me what to do. I wanna be a runner and I wanna be skinny and, you know, whatever.   I'm like, okay. You know, go for it. My job in life is to identify opportunities that that we all have to, you know, turn on those hidden genetic switches that we all have   to build muscle and to burn fat and to do all those things. But I don't have the way. I have a way. I have a way to enjoy your life better. I've set you with beginning with the primal blueprint,   a template for living your life better. How to eat, how to sleep, how to you know, you don't have to do what I suggest, but if you tell me I wanna enjoy my life, I wanna be stronger across all platforms, I wanna be able to play games and and do things, you know, then I'm gonna say, well, running is not your best choice. There are a lot better ways to do that. By the way, if you wanna enter a five k or a 10 k in in four months,   I can have you   total line in that race   and do better, perform better on my strategy that involves a lot of walking than if you just grind it out, you know, 35 miles a week, you know, struggling and suffering at a at a heart rate that's too high to burn fat, but too low to build aerobic capacity,   and literally accelerating   the aging process within your body. Why would you wanna do that to yourself?  

Especially since you probably have   the regular stressful burdens of life, like, you you you got a family you're trying to take care of or spouse that you're trying or girlfriend or boyfriend or whatever that you're trying to navigate life with. You've got a job that might be stressful. You've got, you know, overdue bills. You've got family members that are sick. Whatever it is. Everybody's got a a layer of stress already.   Why would you add an unnecessary   layer   of chronic cardio   burnout stress   running   when I'm telling you it's we're not born to run. We're born to walk, and you get so much further down this path of longevity and enjoyment of life  

[00:48:24] Abel James:

by backing off and slowing down and being mindful about it. What have you seen in terms of people going from, like,   not walking at all and not wanting to, not seeing that in their lifestyle at all, and then actually   doing it on a regular basis. Have there been any  

[00:48:40] Mark Sisson:

Yeah. So there's two you come at it from two different angles. One is the ex runners who are like, Jesus, thanks for writing this book, Mark, because I thought walking was I can't run anymore. I gave up running years ago. I used to do it. I got injured. I got I'm over it. I hated the fact that I was injured and sick all the time. Thank you for giving me permission to walk. I see it now. I'm gonna embrace the hell out of it. You know, my ex roommate from prep school was a perfect example. He was a lifetime runner,   and   he was not a great runner, but he was an adequate runner, a fairly good runner. And he was, like, very successful guy. I mean, he was he was,   commissioned the IRS for a while. He was with with, deputy director of immigration naturalization. He'll he'll create homeland security. He's been in government service and public service over the years. And and one day, he goes, I'm depressed because I can't run anymore. I'm like, dude, get on a treadmill, put the elevation at 10, and you watch your heart rate go up. He found a whole new lease on life. Wow. No injury. He started losing you know, he because he was gaining weight from the appetite that he had and the depression that he had from not being able to run. I worked on his on his, you know, eating strategies a little bit. So he rediscovered   he rediscovered walking from having been a a pretty good runner. On the other hand, you have people who've never run   but don't walk because they have heard that the only way to do this is to run and that walking isn't burning calories and so walking is useless. Like, why so these are people who,   don't have the right information and are like, I'm screwed because I can't run. You know? And and apparently walking is not that beneficial. Why would I do it? So I'm just gonna sit here and gain weight and and atrophy and, you know, have my lower back go up. So I have a lot of people who have now seen that, oh my god. Like, all I gotta do to start walking   is start walking. I could just go out and walk down to the mailbox and back day one and then add a hundred yards to it every day and within a couple of weeks, I'm doing a mile and two miles and the next thing you know I mean, I have people in my building.  

I live in South Miami and South Florida. It's a building of all ages, but my wife has, a lot of friends who are over 60, over 60 five.   They walk six, seven, eight miles a day,   found a whole new lease on life. It's like, oh my god. Like, they can't wait to walk because   and they're walking in paloovers, by the way. They're walking in minimalist shoes, and so their bunions are getting fixed. Their plantar fasciitis is getting fixed. It's an incredible study in the power and the benefit of walking.   And while they're walking, like my wife called me one day and she she went out with them and she said she said, jeez, I went out for a three mile walk. We wound up doing eight miles because we're talking and having such a good time. Nobody said, oh my god. Let's extend it five miles. We just started getting into it and talking and walking and they walked briskly.   I wanna give runners permission to walk again   for sure, and I wanna give everybody else I wanna say, look, walking is   not only something you can do, it's probably the best thing you can do for the rest of your life.  

Now that's a pretty potent statement, but when you say the rest of your life,   one of the things that defines the end of life is movement. Like, once you stop moving, you start dying.   So the longer you can move,   probably the longer you live. You know, my, my next door neighbor, downstairs neighbor is Dan Buettner, you know, the Blue Zones guy. Oh, wow. Yeah.   And,   we are very good friends, and we give each other, endless grief about the choice of protein because I'm a beef guy. He's a bean a bean guy. So I sometimes I say the only thing we differ on is the last two letters of that word. You know?   But he will say, you know, the the thing the the the main   thing about all the Blue zones communities is they walk. They do a lot of low level activity. Walk a lot,   and they garden, and they're out moving around.  

Ancient Asian societies that do Tai Chi and Qigong. They're not like punching.   They're doing slow movement and putting their bodies through different   planes and ranges of motion and things like that. That's what the body requires. It doesn't require that you go, you know, beat it up   six out of seven days a week for years on end   with nothing to show for it at the end except   a beat up stressed   body that's sick more often, is more prone to injury, and at the end of the day, didn't lose any   body fat. Yeah.  

[00:53:02] Abel James:

Man, in in just a few minutes that we have left, I would love to have you, Mark, touch upon or at least preview a bit of what you're looking at in the world of longevity. Because especially these days, I mean, there's no shortage   of things to try. We've got peptides, stem cells, gene editing technologies,   and all sorts of different things. So where are you at? Where do you think things are going? What are the shortcuts that people maybe shouldn't try right now? What are we looking at? Yeah. Yeah.  

[00:53:27] Mark Sisson:

Look. I'm probably the wrong guy to ask this because I'm I'm the anti biohacking   guy. I am so suspect of most of that stuff. Mhmm. You know, I see   new vitamin   preparations come on the market that were big forty years ago when I started in vitamins. They fell out of favor, now they're back.   And now they're the hot new kid on the block. A good example is cold plunging. Like, you know, I was cold plunging fifteen years ago in my unheated swimming pool in Malibu.   I I stopped doing it about a year and a half ago. I do it once in a while, but it's like   I I never got the inflammatory aspect of it. I never understood that. Now they're saying, by the way, you know, don't cold plunge   after a workout because you want the inflammation   benefits of,   of inflammation after a workout. So if you cold plunge, you'll negate the workout. So don't cold plunge between, you know,   for for four hours after the workout.  

Don't cold plunge at the end of a stressful day because it's it's a hormetic stress. It is a stress.   So I I stopped cold plunging a couple years ago, and now I'm just doing sauna.   And, you know, there is some, I think, you know, Rhonda Patrick is among those who will say that there's some research that shows that sauna over over a lifetime,   extends   the decreases risk. You can't just say it extends your life Right. Life you   know, decreases risk for certain things. I mean, I'm so   old school. I don't do any of the wearables.   I don't   track my sleep. I don't trust the data.  

I would say that that bad data is worse than no data. Yeah. So I operate my entire life on how do I feel. How do I feel? I wanna feel good in the moment. I don't wanna risk   feeling bad now   for something that might happen   twenty years down the road. Like, I might get an extra week or not on the end of my life for something I do today that's painful and and and causes   an issue. Brian Johnson, you know, god love him. He's a he's a seems like a nice guy, sweet guy.   But first of all, don't die? Are you fucking kidding me? Is that that your slogan is don't die?   If that doesn't encapsulate   the entire biohacking community, how about   live now and have fun and enjoy?  

But I feel like he's putting off,   many of life's amazing   adventures and hedonistic pleasures now   so that one day he might survive   a couple more years. And by the way, I think it's it's highly unlikely. I think some of the things he's doing are are probably   counterproductive   to living a longer life. But, you know, it it's his journey. It's his again, I I don't wanna take away from it. I think he's entertaining.   I think he's an interesting point of view in the space, but I don't track sleep. Sleep trackers are are among the worst. I wake up one morning. Oh my god. I slept great. And then my wife who has a tracker on our bed, she goes, says you got a 72. I'm like, what the fuck? Like, I like, I I slept great. Don't tell me. Yeah. What a buzzkill.   What a buzzkill. Now I'm gonna worry about my sleep. Now I won't sleep tomorrow night or tonight because I'm worried about not getting enough sleep when I think I'm getting sleep.  

HRV,   you know, would tell you you're ready to go do a hard workout today. I'm like, I'll tell you when I'm ready to do a hard workout when I feel like it. Yeah. And I don't like, there's days I go to the gym,   and I I'm go with all the best intentions of having a really killer hard leg day. I get two exercises in. I'm going, nope. Today's not the day. I'm taking the day off. And what do I do? I go for a walk. Because you could always go for a walk, and it's always   a productive end of a workout without compromising   your health   in a way that going for a long run would be doing if you chose to switch those.  

So   longevity. I mean, like I said, I was gonna write the anti longevity book. It was literally gonna be Anti longevity.   Well, not anti but but just the concept of, like it was like, you know, my original t shirt, you had one, I think. It said live long, drop dead. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My concept was enjoy your life. Live a long life, enjoy it, and then, you know, die of natural causes when it's time.   So, you know, is Dave Asprey gonna lift the one sixty? I don't think so. And in the meantime,   you know,   the goofy glasses, the, you know, all of the little the the hacks and the lights and the and the therapies and the buzz sounds and Jesus. I mean, I go to these, like, I'm I'm gonna speak at one of the conferences coming up this summer. Are you going to you are, right, at Tim Biohackers?  

I might be. I haven't confirmed yet, but I might be. I would love to see it. Optimization stuff, but it's gonna be good. I'm gonna speak there. And I'm gonna talk about well, I'll talk about walking, but I'll talk about these   low tech,   you know, they're not even hacks. They're low they're so low tech, they're not even hacks. They're just like   by the way, the term hack   has the connotation. It was originally a connotation about some,  

[00:58:17] Abel James:

unethical or illegal way of circumventing a system. Yeah. You know? In music, it is not a good word. Hacking is not a good word. No. No. No. You do not wanna be a hack. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, what are the things?  

[00:58:28] Mark Sisson:

Walking,   getting enough sleep, controlling   your diet, being in control of your eating strategy to the to the extent   that you determine   what to do, not your, you know, your hunger and appetite and cravings. I mean, those are those are the top three, and those will get you   85% of where you need to be. The rest may or may not even contribute.   You know, I we go back, like, nobody I know today even does a ketone   reading anymore because, you know,   I was one of the early ones that said, why are you testing ketones?   You get to the point where you're bragging like, I'm in such ketosis. I'm I'm four millimolar or five millimolar. I'm in ketosis. And I'm like, okay. Well, what that tells me is that   you're not good at burning ketones.  

Because if you were good at burning ketones, you'd be at point five and your brain will do using just enough ketones to get you by and your liver be producing just enough. But right now, your body is overproducing ketones, you're spilling them out in your urine, you're spilling them out in your breath, and you're bragging to me that you have you have this ketosis,   which is enosis is not necessarily a good thing. Right?   And so I've I I think I helped   kinda quash that a little bit going, you know, let's be keto adapted. Let's be metabolically flexible, but let's not brag about the high ketones that we're putting out just because   we're we're chasing numbers   with   no outcome downstream,   no goal, no intention of what that represents   other than today, I was five millimolar. Well, Jesus. I mean, okay. Good. You breath the mouse. Get out of my face.  



[01:00:05] Abel James:

I'm totally with you, Mark. And I really appreciate you speaking candidly about all of this because   there is a lot of tomfoolery and nonsense. And just like people with something to sell that may not be serving people on the other end with the all these gimmicky new technologies especially. So  

[01:00:21] Mark Sisson:

So No. You go to some of these shows, and I look at some of the gear and, like, expensive gear. I'm like, oh my god.   Like, you know, some of these people   have these programs that you pay a hundred thousand dollar a year membership to be able to use the hyperbaric chamber and the, you know, and and this device and that device and get a, you know, a a NAT infusion and whatever. And I'm like,   I mean, where does it where does it end? And at what point are people gonna go,   like stem cells? I'll I'll give you an example. Stems I I went   inappropriately. I went ahead a stem cell infusion   a year and a half ago in Costa Rica.  

You know, a friend of mine convinced me that it was good and it was gonna, you know, fine. And I'm like, okay. I have the money. I have because it's very expensive. My wife and I went down. Five of us went down, and we got, you know, we we went through this,   plasmapheresis   where they take your your blood out and they clean it and put it back in. And and, you know, while I'm doing it, I'm like, Jesus, Mark. You, like, you know better than this. And so I did the infusion. Nothing happened. I didn't have any benefit. It was a systemic   infusion, and I did it in advance of getting my hip replaced. So I I thought, you know, I'll see if this does anything. Maybe I won't need a hip replacement.  

So there's that. But   at any rate,   came back. And then a few months later, a good friend of mine not a good friend of mine. A friend of mine, a prominent   person in Miami went to Mexico for the same thing and died. Died of a, anaphylactic shock Oh my god. From a stem cell, you know, a so called stem cell treatment. So I'm like, okay. So   I'm I'm taking a step back from that. I should've   relied on my instincts   and should've   trusted the science, which which is essentially nonexistent   at this point. There's just anecdotal stuff going on   and wait until, you know, something something else crops up. But, you know, I see   exosomes everywhere. I see, you know, umbilical cords derived stem cells. I see, you know, autologous   stem cell   stuff. I mean, I don't want my 72 year old stem cells to be regenerated and may who knows? Anyway, I'm I'm I'm going down a rabbit hole here, but that's what this longevity, this this biohacking community is doing. It's taking people down   massive rabbit holes, and I'm like, no. No. No. Stop. Stop. Stop. How do you feel right now?  

I feel great. Okay. Good. We got work you know, we're off to a great start. You know? Your your blood work's good. You feel you feel good. You're energetic. You're excited to get out of bed every day because you have purpose. I mean, that's, like, more important than anything else.   I mean, I I wonder about all these people are chasing the numbers and still don't have, like, a purpose in life. Like,   you know, so so Just be a big distraction. Right? It's a big distraction, I think. Yeah. And that's that's and by the way,   so running   morphed into   this antiaging thing. So running was the that distraction for a long time. Running's my panacea. That's how I'm gonna get younger. That's how I'm gonna get, you know, live longer, get my cardiovascular fitness. And then now many of those people have moved on to biohacking and longevity and and and that   that, artificial community   that I'm thinking has just gone way off the deep end. Yeah. It's so funny because, like Prove me wrong.  



[01:03:33] Abel James:

We'll see. We'll see. Yeah. I have a lot of people coming up these days where I'm just hanging out in Austin or whatever, and and it's like, what are you into? A lot of people are saying to me, they're just like, I'm really into longevity. They're like my age or 30 and they're 25. I'm like, what does that mean you're in still? Like, you're 27 years old, man. Like, what are you talking about?   It seems like, looking forward, there's kind of this line.   And, in the health world, you might be on either side of it, but I'm I'm really glad that, for the most part,   many folks like you, who have been leaders in the ancestral health movement for a long time, are still sticking with mother nature on this one because I think it's pretty easy to go wrong once we start start thinking that we're smarter than mother nature. Right? Yes. For sure. For sure. Well, Mark, thanks so much for joining us once again in all of your work. What is the best place for people to find you all of your various projects and especially Born to Walk? Okay. So Born to Walk is is available for sale now on Amazon and Barnes and Noble and every other place that you could buy books. I recorded the audible, so if you wanna hear me if you wanna hear me talk about it, that's the place to go. If you wanna look into it before you buy it, the website is borntowalkbook,  

[01:04:39] Mark Sisson:

born to walk book   Com.   If you wanna try our shoes, our our five toed minimalist shoes, that's peluva, p e l u v a, peluva dot com. On Instagram, we are where peluva, w e a r peluva.   I'm mark sisson primal on, Instagram, and I'm posting something a couple times a week, something that, raises eyebrows here or there based on the the contrarian stance that I tend to take on a lot of things.   And, yeah. And and, Abel, keep up your great work too, man. I mean, it's great to talk with you always, and,   you know, we have a we share a common heritage going back to 02/2010.  

[01:05:16] Abel James:

So yeah. Really appreciate it. Look forward to the next time having you on here, Mark. Alright. Thanks, man. Take care.   Hey. Abel here one more time. And if you believe in our mission to create a world where health is the norm, not sickness, here are a few things you can do to help keep this show coming your way. Click like, subscribe, and leave a quick review wherever you listen to or watch your podcasts.   You can also subscribe to my new Substack channel for an ad free version of this show in video and audio. That's at ablejames.substack.com.   You can also find me on Twitter or x, YouTube, as well as fountain f m, where you can leave a little crypto in the tip jar. And if you can think of someone you care about who might learn from or enjoy this show, please take a quick moment to share it with them. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll see you in the next episode.