The Living Proof Challenge: Simon Hill’s 12-Week Protocol To Optimize Your Health, Fitness & Longevity

To welcome 2024, I'm joined by recurring podcast favorite Simon Hill—a nutrition expert, physiotherapist & host of The Proof podcast—to introduce The Living Proof Challenge: a no-cost, science-based, habit-building protocol designed to optimize your physical and mental well-being, reduce your risk of chronic disease, and promote longevity. This free 12-week challenge focuses on improving the most important markers with a sustainable structure stress-tested to uplevel well-being with staying power. Today Simon explains how the Living Proof Challenge works, the science he relied on to create it, and how it will inform your health, fitness, and longevity. We also discuss the 10 most important biomarkers for long-term health, the four key systems of the body this challenge is designed to address, and how you can optimize this challenge based on your own unique biology. Now is the time to take action for yourself. New habits are the product of new decisions coupled with the best tools. And Simon has provided us with just that. The Living Proof Challenge begins on February 1st, 2024. To learn more and sign up, CLICK HERE. Show notes + MORE Watch on YouTube Newsletter Sign-Up Today’s Sponsors: Inside Tracker: InsideTracker.com/RICHROLL Eight Sleep: EightSleep.com/RICHROLL Momentous: LiveMomentous.com/RICHROLL AG1: DrinkAg1.com/RICHROLL BetterHelp: BetterHelp.com/RICHROLL Plunge: Plunge.com Peace + Plants, Rich Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rich Roll?

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• 0:44Rich Roll?

  It's kind of an amazing thing. For listeners of the show, all you special people, we're offering an exclusive $20 off an annual subscription right now. To get it, go to meals.richroll.com, take your quick personalization quiz, and enter promo code RICHROLL20 at checkout.

• 1:04Simon Hill?

  The current state of public health is horrific. Nearly 50% of adults have some type of cardiovascular disease. 10% of adults have type 2 diabetes. Less than 7% of adults are metabolically healthy. Whoa. And these numbers represent individuals. They have real-world consequences, and a lot of us are floating along with no idea what's happening underneath the hood. We have great intentions. We want to be healthier, but we're kind of throwing darts at a dartboard with the lights off.

• 1:42Simon Hill?

  My core mission is to empower people, to use science to turn the lights on.

• 1:50Rich Roll?

  How do you help us understand what this 12-week challenge will do for our health?

• 1:59Rich Roll?

  Hey everybody, Happy New Year. With the new year now upon us comes this sense of new possibilities, of renewed commitment to self-betterment. And I think it's fair to say that many, if not most of us typically resolve ourselves in one way or another to improve our health, our fitness, or our general well-being around this time of year. Now, I spend a lot of time thinking about the nature of change. How does one truly change? I'm obsessed with resolving this question, but the answer, or I should say answers, are complicated. They're complex. And the course of action requires a full

• 2:41Rich Roll?

  and arduous reckoning with not just our bodies and our habits, but our minds, our spirit, our perspective, our past, and also our relationship with the future not yet told. That said, there are indeed certain principles that when practiced, can and will move the needle. And in thinking about all of this, I want to start the new year by providing you, the audience, with some compass points, as well as a defined sense of direction to structure your approach to well-being in the form of a doable challenge. A doable

• 3:20Rich Roll?

  challenge intended to help create and sustain the most important habits when it comes to the health metrics that matter most. And to do this, I have invited my sagacious friend and colleague, Simon Hill, a nutrition expert, a physiotherapist, an author, host of The Proof, a podcast I urge you to subscribe to if you haven't already, and simply just one of the smartest people I know when it comes to grounded, evidence-based advice on diet, nutrition, and fitness. Here today to lay out the what

• 3:59Rich Roll?

  The hows and the whys of a comprehensive and very doable program and evidence-based habit-building challenge that Simon has created and stress-tested with the intention of providing all of you, and me, quite frankly, a really solid structure to frame your nutrition, fitness, longevity, and wellbeing goals as we embrace 2024. So, Simon, welcome back to the podcast after that rambling, preparatory monologue. It's interesting because we're here today on the heels of a podcast that we recorded back in August of this past year

• 4:41Rich Roll?

  that we ended up not sharing, which brings us here to today. So maybe reflect a little bit upon what happened and what led to us getting back together for this one.

• 4:53Simon Hill?

  I'm still trying to get my head around sagacious.

• 4:56Rich Roll?

  Sagacious. You are a sagacious young lad, mate.

• 5:00Simon Hill?

  That's a word I'll have to look up later. It's a hard act to follow.

• 5:03Rich Roll?

  It's a positive adjective.

• 5:05Simon Hill?

  That very well-articulated introduction, but thank you for having me back. Yeah, we had that two or three-hour conversation and I thoroughly enjoyed it. As you know, I love going super deep and I do that each week on my own podcast. I try and invite domain-specific experts, people who dedicate 20 or 30 years of their academic career, in some cases, maybe even 40 years, to a particular topic. And I sit down and extract as much information as I can about that topic and my role is to act as a translator

• 5:44Simon Hill?

  and help hopefully make that information more accessible. But inevitably, what ends up happening is I get emails and comments and I listen, I read pretty much every comment on YouTube. Maybe I shouldn't.

• 6:01Rich Roll?

  Yeah, maybe in 2024, we can revise that habit.

• 6:05Simon Hill?

  Yeah, whether it's a good habit or not, I do take the feedback from the community very seriously. And I realized my passion is to go deep and people find those conversations useful, but but often end up thinking, where do I start? How do I put all of this together? And I think both you and I felt after that last episode we recorded, which maybe one day it'll be released.

• 6:31Rich Roll?

  Yeah, maybe we can figure out something that we want to do with it. But the the gist of it is that I don't know how long we went, like over three hours probably. And I think we just bit off more than we could chew and tried to canvas everything and ended up down all of these rabbit holes. And a lot of, you know, kind of chasing tangents and a little bit of losing the forest for the trees. And although it was chock full of incredible information, I think our shared sense was upon reflecting upon that conversation was that it might just serve to confuse people more than to be helpful.

• 7:07Simon Hill?

  Yeah, my my core mission is to empower people, make people feel more confident. And sometimes when you provide too much information, as you say, you can distract the attention, the focus from what really matters. So upon reflecting on that episode and you and I speaking and and speaking with other colleagues, I work very closely with Drew Harrisberg, who you've had on the show, and he's been very influential in this this this challenge coming together. You know, upon that reflection, I realized that I needed to go away and think about a very simple framework.

• 7:47Simon Hill?

  What really matters in terms of predictors of of health? You know, how healthy we're going to be in 10, 20, 30, 40 years? And how happy we're going to be? That we can measure so we can be objective, that we can intervene on with some type of science-based protocol. So that was really the the kind of framework or philosophy for this this challenge and trying to simplify it was. Finding biomarkers or things that we can measure that predict longevity that meet these three criteria. Number one is they are great predictors of longevity. Number two, they are easily or relatively easily measured.

• 8:33Simon Hill?

  And number three, we can intervene on them with some type of specificity with evidence-based protocols and then shift them in a more favorable direction and in doing so, improve our health span and longevity.

• 8:48Rich Roll?

  On top of that, these interventions and these testing protocols have to be accessible to most people, correct? They have to be specific as well. And of course, evidence-based with all of the work that you've done and all the domain experts that you've spoken to, I have no doubt that everything you're going to share today is sufficiently evidence-based. But in trying to untangle that knot and truly drill down on what is most important, in other words, what are the levers that when pushed are going to move the needle the most, given the construct of the typical individual's busy life where they're time constrained,

• 9:32Rich Roll?

  they're budget constrained, and they really need to be efficient, economical, and focused on those most important things at the cost of all the other information out there? We're not suffering from a lack of information on any of this stuff. I think what we need and what we're thirsty for is a very specific, focused set of protocols or a structure or a framework in which all that information can be condensed and drilled down to its essence and delivered in the package of a set of principles and interventions that the everyday person can wrap their head around, practice, and in turn, move their

• 10:15Rich Roll?

  own needle towards their health goals and health span goals.

• 10:20Simon Hill?

  Yeah, and another way of saying that is this is not a case of needing to know more, it's just being able to do what we already know. And what gets measured?

• 10:34Simon Hill?

  Gets managed, you've probably heard that before, but what gets measured, I think we can take that a step further and say allows us to optimize what gets measured can be optimized. If you look at current state of health in this country, I mean, that's why we're doing this, the the current state of public health is is horrific. You look at the statistics from this year, nearly fifty percent of adults have some type of cardiovascular disease. A third of adults have metabolic syndrome. Metabolic syndrome, just very briefly, is a cluster of five characteristics. If you meet three of them, then you're considered

• 11:18Simon Hill?

  to have metabolic syndrome. Ten percent of adults have type two diabetes. Forty percent of adults have prediabetes. Thirty percent of adults have non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Over the age of sixty five, one in ten adults have dementia. Another twenty two percent have mild cognitive impairment. If you were to go and and look at what percentage of adults in America would be what we would deem metabolically healthy, that statistic's even more shocking. It's less than seven percent of adults. Wow. So these are the numbers that we're up against, and these numbers, they represent

• 11:58Simon Hill?

  individuals. They represent individuals who I get emails from that are suffering, their quality of life is being negatively affected. So this is why we're doing the challenge and, you know, why I spend so much time thinking about creating a a plan that is evidence-based and to actionable and it will really shift the needle and give people confidence. The predictors of of longevity that I focused on here were really speaking to four key systems of the body. They are the cardiovascular system, metabolic system, musculoskeletal

• 12:38Simon Hill?

  system, and psychological well-being or emotional health. So we had a long laundry list of things that you can measure to act as a window into how those systems are operating. And again, I mentioned at the outset, we had specific criteria. What are the best predictors in each of these different systems of the body? That we can measure and that we can intervene on. And we were able to reduce that very long laundry list down to what we've called the 10 truths. So this is a list of 10 things that we can measure.

• 13:20Simon Hill?

  And in doing that, we can really get an understanding of our current health status. And what we've called a longevity score. And from there, we can intervene with some degree of specificity based on the evidence that we have. What protocols can shift specific biomarkers in the right direction? And then we can, we can retest afterwards. And so that's really the, the premise of the challenge is we're going to test the 10 truths at the beginning. To get a window into these four key systems of the body. We'll do the challenge all together from February 1st.

• 14:05Simon Hill?

  And then afterwards, we retest everything and we can see how that longevity score has shifted.

• 14:12Rich Roll?

  So we're going to drill down on the 10 truths and the specifics of the challenge. But just to kind of set the stage and contextualize this, this is a challenge that we're, we're, we're releasing this podcast on January 1st. The challenge will actually begin on February 1st. So everybody has a month to get their blood work done. And we're going to get into the specifics of that. That's the testing piece. So you have a baseline of where you're at and a window into not only your 10 truths, but a canvas sort of 10,000 foot look at those four key systems in the body.

• 14:55Rich Roll?

  Then there will be a 12 week period of challenges. And then at the, at the end of that, you will test again and measure the results. So that's the basic premise here, right?

• 15:08Simon Hill?

  Test, intervene, retest. Principle that we want to really drive home. I should add, there's a couple of caveats there where, that people should be aware of. Let's say, for example, you can't do the testing. Then you can still participate in the challenge, even though that's not our recommended approach. I would rather people understand where their baseline health is before they intervene and then see how it shifts. I think that in itself can be very motivating and help some of these habits stick. Of course, this is a 12-week challenge, but the idea is that we're introducing people to very effective, evidence-based lifestyle habits that hopefully they continue on with afterwards.

• 15:53Simon Hill?

  And then the other caveat is that we're starting February 1st, and that's when the community will be doing this together. It's when I'll be jumping on Instagram Live and on my stories. And each week, there's a different theme that we'll be dedicating that week to and providing education and coaching on. But if for some reason you cannot start on February 1st, you can still do this challenge on your own, at your own.

• 16:22Rich Roll?

  Right, so if somebody's listening to this or watching this a year from now, they can still

• 16:26Simon Hill?

  Exactly.

• 16:27Rich Roll?

  begin the challenge. So let's just walk through the fundamentals and the basics of it. Essentially, what you're gonna do is, the first thing you're gonna do is you're gonna go to your website, right? Theproof.com

• 16:40Simon Hill?

  forward slash livingproof.

• 16:42Rich Roll?

  And what happens when you go to that page?

• 16:44Simon Hill?

  So that's the landing page for the Living Proof Challenge, which is what we've called it. And here, it'll take you through the different steps. So step one is understanding where your baseline health status is at, which means measuring each of the 10 truths. And there'll be guidance on how to do that. So for example, four of those 10 truths are blood tests. So you can get a blood test. We've partnered with InsideTracker and have a discount that people can make use of if they want to use InsideTracker. Then there's functional tests like grip strength and a shuttle test or a beep test,

• 17:26Simon Hill?

  which is a great way of approximating your VO2 max. And so on and so on. And so we guide you through how to measure each of the 10 truths. Once you've measured them, you can put them into our calculator. There's a link to the calculator on that landing page, which then gives you your longevity score. Now you're ready to start the challenge. Again, on that landing page, you'll be able to download the PDF, which will have the complete 12-week challenge. Within that document, there's also a recommended supplement, protocol, there's references to support all of the interventions

• 18:07Simon Hill?

  that we're recommending across the 12 weeks. And you'll be getting emails along the way, as I said, which will be with coaching and providing key learnings that speak to specific topics. So I've been able to go back through a lot of two, three-hour podcasts, even seven hours I did with with Thomas Dayspring on lipids and just pull out some of the, you know, five, 10-minute nuggets of information so that we can provide that as a very quick key learning, which will help emphasize why we're doing some of the things that we're doing. And at the end of the 12 weeks,

• 18:49Simon Hill?

  you'll go back to that landing page, having retested everything, put all your information back into the calculator and you can see how that longevity score has changed.

• 19:00Rich Roll?

  So we should point out, this is no cost. This is free for anybody who wants to do it. You have to pay for your own blood work and that kind of thing, right? But there's no fee to join this challenge. You just go to your website, you can download the PDF, you enter your email, you'll get weekly emails that will help guide you through it and your hand kind of gets held throughout this whole process.

• 19:23Simon Hill?

  Yeah, the idea was to make this, the challenge at least, zero cost and make the whole thing as accessible and as affordable as possible. And, you know, our various partners have helped make that possible, which is amazing. But as you say, you know, it can be as little as $0 to do this if you were not going to go ahead and do the testing.

• 19:46Rich Roll?

  So it begins with a series of tests. Some of them are strength tests, fitness tests. Some of them are blood work tests. Like Simon said, we've partnered with InsideTracker. They're providing a discount on the blood work piece. And you'll be able to find the code and the link to all of that on Simon's website when you go to that landing page. And from there, the weekly challenges. Each week is a different theme drilling down on a specific aspect of this. I want to get to the longevity score and all of that, but I think we should walk through these 10 truths and how they relate to the four key systems in the body that you've already identified. Cardiovascular, metabolic, musculoskeletal,

• 20:30Rich Roll?

  and psychological slash emotional wellbeing. So what are these 10 truths? And how did you arrive upon these as the most important variables or levers to look at in terms of moving the needle on one's health?

• 20:47Simon Hill?

  Okay, so maybe we should go through system by system. So if we start with cardiovascular slash cardiorespiratory health, there's three biomarkers that we want to test here. They're APOB, blood pressure, and VO2 max. So let's start with APOB. The most common type of cardiovascular disease is atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease. People probably have heard of that term here and there. In very simple terms, what that means is it's the type of cardiovascular disease where plaque is building up in an artery, and it can lead to obstruction of blood to the heart.

• 21:32Simon Hill?

  You can have a heart attack or obstruction of blood flow to the brain, and you can have a stroke.

• 21:37Rich Roll?

  And this is the number one killer. Of all things to be focused on and concerned about, this is paramount.

• 21:43Simon Hill?

  This is absolutely paramount. And over the last 50 or 70 years, the science community has been able to identify what is the primary cause of this.

• 21:59Simon Hill?

  There are particular lipoproteins in our blood, which is just a fancy way of saying a protein that carries fats. Because fats are not water soluble, so they can't freely flow through the blood like glucose can. They need to be carried by something. So we package these fats and cholesterol up onto a protein, and that allows them to move through circulation, primarily so we can take those fats to tissues and they can use them to produce energy. Some of these lipoproteins are considered atherogenic. That means that they can penetrate the artery wall and become stuck,

• 22:42Simon Hill?

  and their contents, the cholesterol and the fat, this builds up, and you get the building up of the plaque, as I mentioned, which can become a problem over decades. It's not something that results in a heart attack in a matter of years. It's about lifetime exposure, very similar to smoking cigarettes. Now, LDL cholesterol has been the biomarker for a long time. That's been really measured as a kind of surrogate way of looking at what concentration of these atherogenic lipoproteins do we have circulating in our blood? But LDL, or low-density lipoprotein, is not the only atherogenic lipoprotein. There's a family of them.

• 23:28Simon Hill?

  So there's LDL, there's IDL, and VLDL. In short, when you measure ApoB, because each one of those lipoproteins has one ApoB, you get the summation, the total, of all atherogenic lipoproteins in the blood.

• 23:44Rich Roll?

  Oh, that's interesting. So ApoB is basically the common denominator amongst all lipoproteins?

• 23:50Simon Hill?

  All atherogenic lipoproteins. So HDL, for example, does not have an ApoB. It has a different protein attached to it. The beautiful thing about ApoB is that all of the lipoproteins that we know that can penetrate and build up into the artery wall have one ApoB. So if we measure ApoB, we can get a very clear understanding as to the total burden of these atherogenic lipoproteins in our circulation.

• 24:18Rich Roll?

  So this makes testing for ApoB the number one indicator of cardiovascular health or lack thereof. What's interesting is that this is still relatively new. It's interesting that, why did it take so long to figure this out? LDL has always been kind of the gold standard marker in terms of cardiovascular health. And to this day, a lot of general practitioner doctors, if you ask them to do an ApoB test, there's some confusion, right? It's still not as, there's not, there still isn't an adequate enough mainstream awareness around this marker as being as important as it actually is. Is that correct?

• 25:03Simon Hill?

  I asked Dr. Thomas Day spring this question. And if you look at the peer reviewed literature, it's clear that ApoB is a better predictor of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, particularly in 20 or 30% of the cases when people measure. His response was that LDL cholesterol is what's been measured for a long time now. It's very hard to imagine the amount of education that's required to get all of the doctors to understand that LDL cholesterol is outdated.

• 25:40Rich Roll?

  Can't the AMA just send an email out to every single doctor making alert?

• 25:44Simon Hill?

  And then get all of the labs to update the testing that they offer. And so the system takes a little bit longer to change. But. You know, most of the prominent voices in lipidology and preventative cardiology are of the opinion that it will shift to APOB. It's just a matter of time. And for the time being, it can be something that you can request from your physician. But as you say, you might be met with some resistance. And then companies like InsideTracker have made it easier. They, I think they added it, added it in the last six months or so.

• 26:24Rich Roll?

  Yeah. And, and that gets to my own blood work. The last time that I had it done, which was February of 2022, was just before they offered that. So I regrettably have never had my APOB tested. So in the context of this challenge, I just want to point out, like, I'm going to be doing this. I need to do this. I've had a relatively sedentary year compared to prior years because of my lower back dilemma, but I'm on a good path with that now. And I'm back to a regimented fitness routine. And I'm really looking to get structured and very intentional about what I'm doing in 2024. So I'm excited about

• 27:06Rich Roll?

  this, too. And I'm going to be getting all my blood work done as well.

• 27:10Simon Hill?

  And not to go too far on a tangent here. I know I promised you.

• 27:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, we had a whole con, we had a confab before the podcast, no tangents.

• 27:19Simon Hill?

  Intervention.

• 27:22Simon Hill?

  That was the intervention that I needed.

• 27:23Rich Roll?

  The intervention that you need the most is to stay on track, my friend. But go ahead. I will indulge you this one time.

• 27:29Simon Hill?

  I'm not, I promise I'm not trying to, you know, show off or, or show how smart I am or anything. In fact, everything that I'm presenting and in the challenge is, is information mostly from my guests. And I'm, I'm just synthesizing that information. But it'd be irresponsible for me not to mention this. So within our, our calculator, one of the things that we consider is someone's baseline level of cardiovascular disease risk.

• 28:02Simon Hill?

  Why is that important? Well, we're attributing, you know, zero points to someone's APOB if it's what we call suboptimal. We're attributing half a point if it's normal and we attribute one point if it is optimal. But what's optimal for APOB depends on your risk of cardiovascular disease. So we ask that question. And within that question, we ask people, do you have a history of smoking? Do you have hypertension? Do you have a history of, of some type of cardiovascular event? But one of the important things that we ask for is, do you have an LP little a level

• 28:44Simon Hill?

  over 30 mg per deciliter? And I'm, I'm not sure that this is something a lot of people are aware of. It's something that's been spoken, you know, really only over the last couple of years. And there's been some quite damning research that's come out to show that this LP little a, which is pretty much 100% driven by genetics. So it's not something that's, that's driven by lifestyle. It's not something we can intervene on with lifestyle, which is why it's not one of the 10 truths. Every one of the 10 truths, we can improve with lifestyle. But this LP little a is a subclass of LDL, primarily driven by genetics, that is particularly

• 29:29Simon Hill?

  atherogenic. About one in six people have a, an L L or a sort of gene mutation that places them at one, one and a half times the risk of having a cardiovascular event in their lifetime. Everyone should go out and measure LP little a as a once off test.

• 29:53Simon Hill?

  There's nothing that you can really do to modulate LP little a right now. As I said, lifestyle doesn't seem to change it. There are pharmaceutical companies looking at drugs that maybe in the future could lower it if you had elevated levels. But what it tells you, if that's elevated, then you want to be more aggressive at getting APOB down. Your goal for APOB is actually lower.

• 30:18Rich Roll?

  Hmm. Interesting. So this speaks to the person who has a genetic, non-life style predisposition to a higher risk of a cardiovascular event in their life. A genetic predisposition, meaning that there is no intervention or non-pharmaceutical intervention that is going to ameliorate that.

• 30:44Simon Hill?

  Not yet.

• 30:45Rich Roll?

  And that in turn drives the importance we place upon what your APOB is. If your APOB is suboptimal and you have that LP little L allele or genetic predisposition, then that makes your risk even more heightened. Contrarily, or conversely, if somebody doesn't have that genetic predisposition and their APOB is slightly suboptimal, this is of lower concern than if you're that person who has tested positive for LP little L. Is that a correct rehash of what you just shared?

• 31:27Simon Hill?

  Yeah, I think that's, that's correct. And, and the way that I would look at this is that if you're considered high risk of cardiovascular disease, then your optimal, an optimal APOB is under 50 milligrams per deciliter. So that's, if you have a history of cardiovascular disease, you have hypertension, you have smoking, or you have type 2 diabetes, any of those, or you have this LPA gene mutation, which causes LP little a to be really high, then...

• 31:59Simon Hill?

  Your target for ApoB is lower. You want it to be under 50mg per deciliter. So if you're high risk of cardiovascular disease, the target for ApoB is under 50mg per deciliter. If you're considered low risk, then the target is under 80mg per deciliter. Essentially, what we're saying is, if you have all these other risk factors that are going against you, then you don't want to just stack ApoB on top of them. You want to be more aggressive at getting that down.

• 32:28Rich Roll?

  Interesting. And your calculator, in the context of this challenge, takes that into consideration through questions that you ask the person when they sign up. So that gets factored into the longevity score that gets associated with this one truth, which is how meaningful is your ApoB result?

• 32:47Simon Hill?

  Exactly. And the calculator is considering, for many of these 10 truths, is considering questions like that. It's also considering your sex and your age, these other factors that for some of these 10 truths, what is suboptimal, what is normal, what is optimal, is different depending on your age and your gender. So we've considered all of that when we've been kind of putting it together.

• 33:22Rich Roll?

  Let's move on to truth number two.

• 33:25Simon Hill?

  Blood pressure, which actually is the number one risk factor for cardiovascular disease, believe it or not. And more than, I think, 50% of adults in this country have hypertension, stage one or stage two, which is a blood pressure of, a systolic blood pressure over 130. So ideal blood pressure, we're sitting at 120 over 80.

• 33:53Simon Hill?

  And what those numbers just very briefly mean is the systolic blood pressure, the top number is measuring the pressure in your arteries as your heart is contracting. And then the heart relaxes so that it can receive blood. And as it's relaxing, you're measuring the pressure in the arteries. That's the diastolic blood pressure. For every 20 millimeters of mercury that systolic blood pressure goes above 120, you double your risk of having a stroke, ischemic heart disease, or other types of vascular disease.

• 34:30Rich Roll?

  That's a shocking statement. I feel like blood pressure was something that the generation above me paid a lot of attention, paid a lot of attention to. And then for some reason, we don't pay enough attention to it now. I don't hear a lot of people talking about it.

• 34:48Simon Hill?

  When's the last time you had your blood pressure checked?

• 34:50Rich Roll?

  Oh, it's been a long time. Like, yeah, you go to the pharmacy and you see the cuff like by there and there's old people taking it, but it never occurs to me to do it. I don't think of it as being such a powerful indicator of, of risk or health. So what you just shared is like, wow, that's, in terms of like the biggest things that can move the needle, that certainly sounds like something that we should be prioritizing better than maybe we are.

• 35:16Simon Hill?

  And there's a study that came out recently comparing at-home measurements of blood pressure versus in-office. And at-home measurements are more predictive of cardiovascular disease. And there could be a few reasons that explain that. It could be the, the white coat effect. Sometimes people go in to get their blood pressure measured and it just reads high, simply because they're anxious.

• 35:41Rich Roll?

  You're anxious.

• 35:42Simon Hill?

  They're anxious. It could be because it's not being carried out properly in the clinic. You should be resting for five minutes. Your legs shouldn't be crossed. Your arm or cuff should be at the level of your heart. All of these things make a, a big difference. But I'm of the view and what I recommend.

• 36:00Simon Hill?

  And it sets you back about forty dollars is to get an Omron at home blood pressure cuff. I have no affiliation with that company. I just know that they make very reliable devices that accurately measure blood pressure and you can get that for a wrist cuff or the upper arm cuff and that these are automatic machines. You know, you can get manual blood pressure equipment, but they're a little harder to use if you're not experienced with them. So.

• 36:30Rich Roll?

  And they're accurate enough? Like, I always wonder, like, the sort of over the counter type measurement devices that you can find at your typical pharmacy, like, are these legitimate?

• 36:40Simon Hill?

  Like. These are accurate enough in that you can monitor over time. And if you see changes, whether that be significant drops or significant increases, then that's a reason to go in and see your physician and get a manual test done.

• 37:00Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 37:01Simon Hill?

  Um, but yeah, I certainly, I, I recommend, you know, I think I agree with you. It's one of these things that, you know, I think the last time I did it was a year ago. I recently bought one of these, these cuffs and I saw, you know, there's companies now working on watches and, you know, other ways of giving you kind of real time blood pressure, which I think is where the, the future is.

• 37:22Rich Roll?

  All right. So ApoB, that's going to be part of the blood work that you get done, either with InsideTractor or however you want to do that. Blood pressure, you can test on your own at home or accurate anyway. Uh, what's next?

• 37:38Simon Hill?

  Next is VO2 Max. So VO2 Max is really a measure of our cardio respiratory fitness. How much oxygen can we utilize? Uh, you know?

• 37:54Simon Hill?

  Per milliliter, per minute, per kilogram of body weight. You know, we use oxygen, of course, to produce ATP, to produce energy. And the higher our cardio respiratory fitness, the higher our VO2 max. And when we go out and look at a population of, let's say, fifty or sixty year olds. There's a couple of studies now that have looked at this. And stratify people based on their VO2 max, their cardio respiratory fitness. And you can put people into buckets, you know, low, below average, average, above average, elite, for example.

• 38:38Simon Hill?

  And you can then monitor these people. And the two studies I'm thinking of monitored for between seven and 10 years. And you look at the risk of dying during that period. Compared to people that have low cardio respiratory fitness, a low VO2 max. People in the elite category are five times less likely to die during that follow up period.

• 39:09Simon Hill?

  We're not asking everyone to be elite athletes here. What I find incredibly promising and empowering is that just going from low to average will halve your risk of death and cardiovascular disease. And researchers have looked at what it would take to do that, to get from low to average. And you'd be shocked, it's in line with what the recommendations are to do 150 minutes a week of moderate intensity exercise.

• 39:46Rich Roll?

  In those studies, tracking people's VO2 max and evaluating the association with longevity or disease prevention, I have to wonder about confounding variables. Because if somebody has a superior or optimal VO2 max, they're probably practicing a whole battery of other healthy lifestyle.

• 40:10Rich Roll?

  Habits within the construct of their life. So how do you isolate VO2 max in relationship to longevity and disease prevention outside of the influence of those other habits?

• 40:22Simon Hill?

  This is the same problem that really any observational study has. How do you get a clear view of the variable of interest? To see what the effect of that is on the outcome that you're looking at? In this case, mortality or premature death? And what researchers use is called a multivariate analysis. So they have a statistical model which accounts for differences between those different groups, low, below average, average. There probably is differences in smoking incidence. There's probably differences in alcohol consumption, BMI.

• 41:04Simon Hill?

  All of these things can get factored into that model. Now, I will say, one of the things I've pushed back on these studies previously on is that there doesn't seem to be any adjustment for diet quality. And as you rightly pointed out, people with a higher VO2 max.

• 41:23Rich Roll?

  They're paying attention to what they're eating.

• 41:25Simon Hill?

  They're probably eating a healthier diet. So can we say that the five times lower risk of premature death is purely based on the VO2 max? Probably not. There's some residual confounding in there and there's some other attributes of their life that are influencing that. But I think there's enough signal to say that it matters.

• 41:46Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. VO2 max was something I had previously thought in my youth was a genetic predisposition. There are certain people who are born with a crazy VO2 max. They end up becoming these amazing elite athletes. But in truth, VO2 max is malleable. Through lifestyle changes, you can influence and increase your VO2 max. So it's just a disabuse anybody who's like walking around with that myth in their head.

• 42:18Simon Hill?

  And there's some, I think I understand where that's come from. Cause there's great debate. If you speak to endurance athletes and coaches that have been in the space for a long time, they'll talk about case studies where people have increased their VO2 max by 40 or 50%. And then you read the literature and quite often they'll say. You can probably increase VO2 max by about 10%, but we have to appreciate that often in these studies where you're looking at shifting VO2 max, there's a time limit. It might be a six-week intervention or an eight-week intervention. And usually it's isolating specific modality. So it'll be comparing a high-intensity protocol

• 42:59Simon Hill?

  with a moderate. It's not comparing, you know, or looking at multimodal interventions and then looking over the the long term. So I think that's where you you see that discrepancy between the research and what people in the endurance community perhaps have seen.

• 43:15Rich Roll?

  Obviously, we could do a three-hour podcast on VO2 max alone and the interventions that are going to move the needle in terms of improving it and drill down on all the various training protocols and philosophies behind them. That is not this podcast. Suffice it to say, VO2 max is an important lever in terms of overall well-being and longevity and disease prevention. This is one of the 10 truths. We're going to try to move the needle over this 12-week period through these interventions, but you got to test. How does one test for their VO2 max? That in and of itself is, um, has spawned a thousand

• 43:57Rich Roll?

  Reddit threads about how to figure this out. So in the most simplistic terms, obviously, blood pressure, we know how to test that. ApoB, we're going to get a blood test. How is somebody going to figure out what their VO2 max is?

• 44:11Simon Hill?

  There's a bunch of of different ways. There's the direct, direct way where you go into a lab and you're connected to a machine and you're either on a treadmill or on a bike. That's going to be the most accurate way to determine your VO2 max.

• 44:27Rich Roll?

  Proper lactate test, lactate threshold test.

• 44:31Simon Hill?

  And I did one of those recently with Dexafit, who we've actually partnered with here as well. So within the PDF, people can find some information out about them.

• 44:43Simon Hill?

  So you can go in and you can do it that way. But I wanted to make this challenge as accessible as possible for everyone. And not everyone's going to go in and do a VO2 max treadmill test.

• 44:56Rich Roll?

  Although if you have access to one of those labs and you can afford it, I would highly suggest it. I mean, I was doing this super regularly when I was training for all of these races. And it's quite revealing in terms of where you think you are with your fitness versus where you actually are. And some of the findings I think you'll discover are quite counterintuitive because it is extremely precise. If you can't do that, go ahead. Sorry, I interrupted you. I went on my own tangent there. I'm telling you not to do it.

• 45:28Simon Hill?

  I'm all for tangents.

• 45:29Rich Roll?

  So I know. We're keeping this on. We're on the highway. We're on the super highway here, Simon. We're chugging along. We're doing good. Keep it going. How do we do this? How do we do the VO2 test at home, man? Come on.

• 45:40Simon Hill?

  You've set a precedent.

• 45:41Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 45:42Simon Hill?

  Tangents are completely acceptable. So you can, you can do a beep or shuttle test. This has been done in studies where they've looked at. Did you ever do a beep test or a shuttle test at school?

• 45:57Rich Roll?

  What is that? I know that's part of this whole thing. I have no idea what that is. I just like run slow really far. All this running back and forth and all the high intensity stuff. This is a new world to me.

• 46:09Simon Hill?

  There's a lot of people listening right now that are having flashbacks and are thinking, oh, the beep test was the thing at school that you tried to get out of.

• 46:20Rich Roll?

  So you're running back and forth in the gym, picking up the erasure.

• 46:23Simon Hill?

  You set up, you set up two cones 20 meters apart, which is give or take, I think it's 65 foot, right? And there's.

• 46:34Simon Hill?

  A beep and you're running to the beep. You have to get between the two cones before the beep. And that beep gets progressively quicker and quicker and quicker and quicker. So the amount of time now that you can rest at each end is getting shorter and shorter until you get to a point where you're sprinting from one to the other. And ultimately, if you miss one beep, you have the opportunity to make it back to the other end and you can stay in the game. But if you miss two beeps, you fall short, you're out.

• 47:13Simon Hill?

  And at that point, you will have a reading like level nine shuttle three. And we have a table, so this is one of the other assets that people will get with the challenge that tells you with, with a very, the correlation coefficient between this shuttle test and VO2 max is point nine two. So it's a pretty strong correlation. So it tells you with a fairly high level of, of confidence what your VO2 max is. And, you know, from there, then you can put that VO2 max straight into the calculator.

• 47:52Rich Roll?

  And I assume in the materials for the challenge, you have details about the beep interval and all of that. Like, is there like an app on your phone? Like, how do you do this at home? Like, how, what do I, are you, he just handed me a piece of paper.

• 48:07Simon Hill?

  So the protocol is completely laid out. We, we mentioned the app. There's, there's various apps you can download. They're free. I recommend connecting the app up to some type of speaker so it's loud enough so that you can hear it. And it's as simple as just following the beep. And at, at each stage, the app tells you level one.

• 48:32Simon Hill?

  Shuttle one, level one, shuttle two. And so that when you eventually get to your limit, you've been listening, you know what level and shuttle you're up to.

• 48:42Rich Roll?

  Exactly. Okay, I love it. So it's basically a test of failure with, which is the same as what you would do in a lab on a treadmill or on a stationary bike.

• 48:51Simon Hill?

  Right, but you can do it on a basketball court, any flat surface.

• 48:55Rich Roll?

  And you don't even need a heart rate monitor? Is heart rate part of this? It's just you're at your level. Wherever you reach failure, that's going to dictate where you're at. And then that gets calculated in terms of your age. And what else? Like, does your body weight factor into that or just?

• 49:11Simon Hill?

  Age and gender.

• 49:12Rich Roll?

  Age and gender.

• 49:13Simon Hill?

  So you just need a flat, hard or firm surface. Your runners, joggers, and the app. There's many that you can find that are free to pace you. That's all you need.

• 49:28Rich Roll?

  I love it.

• 49:30Simon Hill?

  Simple.

• 49:30Rich Roll?

  When am I going to do this?

• 49:31Simon Hill?

  Let's do it together.

• 49:32Rich Roll?

  You're gonna laugh.

• 49:33Simon Hill?

  I rubbed, I've rubbed a few people into doing it. And we recently ran a couple of those retreats in Bali.

• 49:40Rich Roll?

  This is not, this will not be like my specialty.

• 49:43Simon Hill?

  Let's do it and let's.

• 49:44Rich Roll?

  You should get a chuckle out of this.

• 49:46Simon Hill?

  Let's upload that to Instagram.

• 49:48Rich Roll?

  Um, cool. All right. ApoB, we've talked about. Blood pressure, we've talked about. VO2 max. Anything that remains to be shared about VO2 max before we move along here?

• 49:58Simon Hill?

  I think that's sufficient. Let's keep moving.

• 50:00Rich Roll?

  Cool. What's next?

• 50:03Simon Hill?

  Next are the 10 truths which speak to metabolic health. And there's four of these. So triglycerides, waist circumference to height ratio, fasting blood glucose, and HbA1c. So three of those are things that you'll get on a blood test. And the other one, you'll measure with a tape measure. All of these give insight into your metabolic health. What is metabolic health? Because it can be a somewhat abstruse or, I guess, ambiguous term. It's a buzzword. A lot of people are using it, but I'm not sure it's clearly defined.

• 50:48Simon Hill?

  The way that I see it is there's two key critical components of this and both are addressed in the challenge. One is that we are storing energy, particularly fat, in the right place. And we can delve into that if you want. And the second is that we are able to efficiently convert chemical energy, so the energy in our food, into mechanical energy, which requires healthy mitochondria. These are the two key aspects of metabolic health.

• 51:33Simon Hill?

  And metabolic health, you can think about as a spectrum. It's not that you go from healthy to type 2 diabetes. There's a large spectrum. And I spoke to Inigo San Milan about this in our episode. And he really emphasized the point. You don't have prediabetes, you don't have type 2 diabetes. But if you're not moving your body as it's made to be moved, you will have mitochondrial decay. It's happening underneath the hood. So there's a spectrum. And when we begin to, particularly when we begin to store fat in the wrong place, we start to see elevations in triglycerides. We see elevations in fasting glucose.

• 52:18Simon Hill?

  We see an increase in waste circumference to high ratio.

• 52:22Rich Roll?

  Okay, so basically, what we want to do is get our bodies in a place where we are efficiently metabolizing nutrients.

• 52:36Rich Roll?

  Our bodies are regulated in terms of how we're storing fat in the right place. I guess that means the difference between visceral fat versus subcutaneous fat, or fat as an energy source. And for fat that is an energy source, that, or those foods or those nutrients are being properly converted into energy. Somebody who is metabolically dysregulated has some level of dysfunction with one of these two systems.

• 53:09Simon Hill?

  Or perhaps both, in many cases. And so you might say, well, what determines whether you're storing fat in the right place or the wrong place? And to that, I would say, to prevent us going into a deep dive, listen to the episode I did with Roy Taylor, who is the domain-specific expert on visceral fat, ectopic fat, and type 2 diabetes. But in short, each of us have what he describes as a personal fat threshold. And a personal fat threshold essentially speaks to our capability to store fat subcutaneously. There's essentially three different places we can store fat.

• 53:54Simon Hill?

  Subcutaneously, which just means under the skin, which is the more safe place to store fat. It's more benign. It doesn't seem to have these deleterious effects on metabolic health. That's where we want fat if we're storing it. Then there's visceral fat, which is between organs, and there's ectopic fat inside organs, particularly the liver and in the pancreas. It seems that our personal fat threshold, how much fat we can store in the subcutaneous adipose tissue compartment, is largely determined by genes.

• 54:33Simon Hill?

  And that's actually why the BMI chart for Asians is different to Caucasians. Because genetically, they're predisposed to visceral fat at a lower body mass. So our personal fat thresholds are all a little bit different. And that's why you you can look at two different people, you can have two people in front of you, who have the same body fat percentage, but one of them has type two diabetes and the other doesn't. Where they're storing their fat differs.

• 55:07Simon Hill?

  And once you exceed your personal fat threshold, what happens is that the the body has to store that energy somewhere. And it begins to store initially that fat in the liver. And as a liverer, you're increasing the amount of fat that's in the liver. The the liver becomes insulin resistant.

• 55:31Rich Roll?

  And this is this is non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

• 55:34Simon Hill?

  Right. And one of the the really key tasks of the liver, and insulin at the side of the liver, is insulin actually acts to slow down glucose being released from the liver into the blood. So when you become insulin resistant at the liver, you start to see elevations in blood glucose.

• 56:00Simon Hill?

  And you'll also see elevations in in insulin as well. Because the pancreas initially, which produces insulin, will try and compensate for that. It will say, hey, let's just let's just produce more insulin and try and get this glucose level down. And for a while, people might be able to maintain normal glucose levels. But their body will be producing a lot of insulin to do that.

• 56:26Simon Hill?

  Over time, if the person remains in an energy surplus, so Roy Taylor refers to this as energy toxicity, and they continue to build up fat in the liver, eventually there's so much fat being poured out of the liver because it can't be stored there, it has to go somewhere else. So it goes into circulation into VLDLs, which are ApoB containing lipid proteins, so you get elevations in ApoB. And the body has to make a decision, where are we going to send these, the fat? Subcutaneous fat store, the subcutaneous adipose tissue site is full.

• 57:10Simon Hill?

  Mm hmm. And now the liver is full also. The liver is full, and now it starts to go into the pancreas. And as it goes into the pancreas, you start to lose the function of the beta cells, which produce insulin. And this is when you start to see a reduction in insulin production over time, as the pancreas is really fighting an uphill battle, becomes more and more worn out, and you get elevations of fasting blood glucose, elevations of HbA1c, which are two of those four truths that I mentioned that speak to metabolic health. The point being here is that people say to

• 57:50Simon Hill?

  me, well, how do I know if I'm under my personal fat threshold? These markers, HbA1c, fasting glucose, waist circumference to height ratio, and triglycerides, offer you a window into that. So explain that specifically, one by one. Okay. So triglycerides. I just mentioned there that as you're getting increased fat lipid production within the liver and it's building up with fat. The body has to do something with that. So it packages those triglycerides up into these lipoproteins called VLDL and pushes them into circulation. That's why you get the elevation.

• 58:34Rich Roll?

  So when you get the blood test, you are getting a calculation of the, the, the volume of those um, VLDL, is that what you said? In your, in your blood and that, that's the triglyceride metric.

• 58:48Simon Hill?

  They're a triglyceride-rich lipoprotein.

• 58:51Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 58:52Simon Hill?

  Right. Um, waist circumference to, to height ratio. We know that waist circumference is a much better measure than BMI if we're thinking about fat distribution and we want to understand where someone's holding that fat. So when you're above your personal fat threshold, or what I, or I should say, when your waist circumference is increased, it is a sign that you have visceral fat. And that you're storing fat around the abdomen, which is not where we want it. Fasting glucose, as I, as I mentioned, so you know, when you become insulin resistant in the liver

• 59:36Simon Hill?

  and when the, the pancreas begins to get worn out, your glucose level's rising. Your body's having great difficulty shutting off glucose production at the liver. And HbA1C, which is just another measure of blood glucose, but it's looking at an average over a three-month window.

• 59:54Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm. So all of those together paint this picture. So when somebody gets results for these four metrics, they then do what? Like this gets plugged into the calculator and you get a score from that? Is there one of these that's more important than the other? Are they all informed in the context of each other? Like, how do you make sense of these? If you, let's say, two of them are elevated, the other ones aren't. I guess, though, if you're truly metabolically dysregulated, they're all gonna be out of range, right?

• 1:00:29Simon Hill?

  Yeah, they usually go hand in hand. And I think it's important to to measure each of them. Because there can be some scenarios where, you know, you may have an elevation in fasting glucose, but not in triglycerides. Um, but measuring all four of these is a comprehensive way of understanding what your risk is of these metabolic conditions. Prediabetes, type two diabetes, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, et cetera. And if you have exceeded your personal fat threshold,

• 1:01:11Simon Hill?

  it seems that, you know, if someone has is considered overweight or obese, typically they need to lose about ten to fifteen kilograms of body mass in order to see these things normalize. But it is possible, Rich, to have to develop type two diabetes and be of normal BMI. One in six people that have type two diabetes have a normal BMI. And Roy Taylor just published a paper looking at this specific population. And he was able to show that, um, again, if these people lost weight, they didn't need to lose as much weight.

• 1:01:56Simon Hill?

  So they didn't need to lose ten or fifteen kilograms. They were a lower body weight to begin with. On average, if they lost around seven or eight kilograms, these markers would normalize, which was indicative, and they did scanning of showing that you're getting fat out of the pancreas and and the liver. And I guess that's a more direct way of answering your question. These four biomarkers are essentially telling us if you're storing fat in the wrong place. And so we want to normalize them, and then we know that you do not have excessive fat, ectopic fat, fat within these organs.

• 1:02:36Rich Roll?

  What is the understanding or the current science in terms of of metabolic health and mortality? So if somebody is significantly metabolically dysregulated, how does that correlate in terms of mortality?

• 1:02:56Rich Roll?

  Do we know, do we know the answer to that? Or?

• 1:02:58Simon Hill?

  Yeah, we do. We, I mean, we have data looking at metabolic syndrome or type 2 diabetes, for example. If you have type 2 diabetes, you have double the risk of cardiovascular disease mortality. You know, the number one cause of death. So we know that, that, you know, poor metabolic health is driving most of the chronic disease health burden that we're seeing today. It's driving a lot of cardiovascular disease. It's driving type 2 diabetes, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and probably a significant chunk of dementia as well.

• 1:03:41Rich Roll?

  So the next category would be the, um, the truce that fall under musculoskeletal health, yes?

• 1:03:51Simon Hill?

  Right, so there's two things we're asking people to measure here, and that is grip strength and bone mineral.

• 1:04:00Simon Hill?

  We know that as we age, there are age-related changes to skeletal muscle and also to our bone. And this is, this is important for a few reasons. One is that, um, strength of our muscles and our ability to produce force, and also the strength of our bones affects our risk of falls and fractures. Fractures are not a leading cause of, of death, but if you have one, there's a very high mortality rate. I think it's 25%. If you fracture your hip, there's a 25% mortality rate in the first year and 80% within the

• 1:04:44Simon Hill?

  three to four years after that hip fracture, if you're aged 65 or older.

• 1:04:49Rich Roll?

  Because of the domino effect.

• 1:04:51Simon Hill?

  Right.

• 1:04:51Rich Roll?

  That occurs as a result of that fracture.

• 1:04:54Simon Hill?

  Right, and if we want to prevent falls, then, or fractures, I should say, then that really boils down to two things. We want to prevent someone from falling in the first place, and if they do fall, we want them to have strong bones so they don't fracture.

• 1:05:14Simon Hill?

  So we can get a very good understanding as to what someone's sort of global total body strength looks like with a grip strength test. This seems to be quite indicative of overall body strength. It's not that grip strength itself is magical and is the kind of longevity hack. We're not going to ask people to go away and do wrist curls necessarily. But grip strength is highly predictive of mortality. It's highly predictive of cardiovascular disease. We know that for every five kilogram reduction in grip strength, you have a 16% increased risk of premature death. Wow.

• 1:05:58Simon Hill?

  And that's that strength, and we can go as deep as you want, but that is that is dictated by a number, a number of factors. It's not just muscle mass. You know, there is strength independent of muscle mass as well. And a lot of that is to do with the chemical and the neural signals that go from the brain to to the muscle and the kind of motor units is what they're called, which is the the nerves innovating into the the muscle tissue. We see from the age of about 40, you start to lose two, three percent

• 1:06:41Simon Hill?

  of strength on a yearly basis, which is, that's a considerable amount of strength to be losing. Yeah, and it accelerates the older you get. And it accelerates the older we get, but we have to remember that this is looking at populations that are mostly sedentary. So we shouldn't assume that that is just the way it is, and these are the age related changes that are going to occur to our muscle. Because we know with certain interventions, for example, that you can actually increase the number of those motor units. You can increase the size of the muscle. So there

• 1:07:22Simon Hill?

  are things that you can do to at least attenuate that loss in strength as you age. A couple thoughts.

• 1:07:31Rich Roll?

  You mentioned the difference between muscle mass and actual strength. In other words, it's not just about putting bulk on your body. It's about your body's ability to recruit the muscle fibers that you have and to do that efficiently. Those are two different things and that recruitment can be trained, of course, as can bulk. And grip strength, correct me if I'm wrong, this came up in the podcast that I did with Peter Attia. It's not that you're going to train grip strength. It's that grip strength is a proxy or a way of

• 1:08:10Rich Roll?

  getting a sense of what somebody's overall strength is. Cause if you have strong grip strength, you're probably doing lots of things or whatever that are just making you strong and robust.

• 1:08:19Simon Hill?

  Right, a byproduct of the way that you're living.

• 1:08:21Rich Roll?

  Yeah. So how do we test for grip strength?

• 1:08:25Simon Hill?

  We use a dynamometer, which is a $20 or $30.

• 1:08:29Rich Roll?

  You can't just hang from a bar and like, you know, count to however long it takes until you have to let go?

• 1:08:35Simon Hill?

  Yeah, that, that is a test that's been done, but, but probably measures grip endurance more than strength. So the dynamometer allows you to look at absolute strength. And it's what's used in these studies where they're looking at grip strength as a predictor of mortality. They're using a dynamometer to measure someone's grip strength.

• 1:08:56Rich Roll?

  And where do you get one? How do you use it? How expensive is this thing?

• 1:09:00Simon Hill?

  $20 or $30. I mean, like a lot of things in life, you can go out and you can, you can indulge and spend $300. I don't think you need to do that. In, in the challenge, we have a link to one that has been used in studies is about $30 that you can order on Amazon. And the protocol to measure your grip strength is very simple. We outline those four or five steps. You do your left, left side and your right side and you repeat it three times and you take an average. And then you plug that into the, the calculator.

• 1:09:39Rich Roll?

  And what gets factored in there again is age and sex and you get a score for that.

• 1:09:45Simon Hill?

  Exactly.

• 1:09:46Rich Roll?

  Okay.

• 1:09:49Rich Roll?

  Grip strength, uh, what was the other one? Bone mineral density.

• 1:09:54Simon Hill?

  So bone mineral density is measured with a DEXA scan. We know that for, for every one standard deviation below the average bone mineral density of a 30 year old. So every one standard deviation below, which is like a 10% reduction in bone mineral density. You have a doubling of your risk of fracture. The DEXA scan measures your, what's called a T score. So you get this number that is exactly that. It's measuring you against the average bone mineral density of a healthy 30 year old adult.

• 1:10:39Simon Hill?

  And so if your score is zero, that is the average for a 30 year old adult. If you're minus one, or you're 10% lower. And at, from minus one to minus 2.5 is called osteopenia. So this is the stage before someone is diagnosed with osteoporosis, which is from minus 2.5 and down. On the retreats that we just ran, because we had everyone measure these 10 truths before they came.

• 1:11:15Rich Roll?

  And it was you and Drew Harrisburg who were hosting this retreat in Bali. And you put all of your campers like through a version of this challenge, yeah?

• 1:11:25Simon Hill?

  Yeah, we, I mean, we deep dived this entire challenge. We had 90 minute lectures on cardiovascular system and then on metabolic health. And then on psychological wellbeing, all the things and all, and all the 10 truths and what we're measuring. And then all of the interventions. But what was really surprising to three of the, the guests who were all post-menopausal women. Now, post-menopausal women are the, are the highest risk category for osteopenia and osteoporosis. And three of these women who had never done a DEXA scan, for the first time, were told that they had osteoporosis.

• 1:12:10Simon Hill?

  And that's important information to know because it can affect the choices you make with your lifestyle. Where are you going to focus your attention on from an exercise point of view, for example? What parts of your diet do you want to focus on a little bit more? Is there pharmacotherapy that's important? So, you know, measuring these things, they have real world consequences, I guess is the point that I'm trying to make here. And a lot of us are floating along

• 1:12:40Rich Roll?

  Sure.

• 1:12:40Simon Hill?

  through life with really no idea what's happening underneath the hood.

• 1:12:45Rich Roll?

  Yeah, yeah, I'm one of those people, I think. I've always thought bone mineral density or things like osteoporosis, these are issues that predominantly concern women more than men. Perhaps I'm incorrect in that assumption. I don't know why I even think that or where that came from. And secondarily, that this is something that would be very unusual to be concerned about until maybe you're in your mid 50s in terms of testing and evaluating. So

• 1:13:19Simon Hill?

  That's a two-part question. So part one, you're right. It is more common to see osteoporosis in women, particularly post-menopausal women. There are some other conditions, some pre-menopausal conditions where you can see osteoporosis, particularly in athletes who are restricting energy. Now, why is that the case? The simple answer is it's probably driven by hormones. So in that post-menopausal phase, and I did a two or three hour episode with Dr. Suzanne Davis on menopause where we spoke at length about this, but in that post-menopausal phase, estrogen kind of goes off a cliff.

• 1:14:03Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I just had Lisa Moscone in here. We did a couple hours on that.

• 1:14:09Simon Hill?

  One of the key roles of estrogen is when we load our bone. So, you know, the, the two best ways to load bone, to stimulate it, to grow stronger is, you know, weight bearing exercise where there's some type of ground reaction force that is greater than what we would be subjected to just in everyday life. So, so let's say we walk around all every day. Just walking more is not going to increase our bone mineral density, but skipping or hopping or jogging, these types of things where you increase that ground reaction force can stimulate the body to lay down more bone. But hormones are very important for that process and estrogen in particular sort of

• 1:14:52Simon Hill?

  acts as the signal between the force is recognized by estrogen, it stimulates estrogen, which then stimulates these cells called osteoblasts to produce more bone. And so if you have less estrogen around, then you're getting less bang for your buck when it comes to the stimulus of jogging or skipping resulting in that adaptation that you're looking for.

• 1:15:25Rich Roll?

  But there still is some adaptation.

• 1:15:27Simon Hill?

  There still is some, and I mean, that's why I mentioned though pharmacotherapy because, you know, depending on someone's context, for example, estrogen therapy, it's not indicated for everyone, it's contraindicated for, for some people. But, but for others, it can be indicated and can be very helpful for things like osteoporosis.

• 1:15:51Rich Roll?

  Interesting. And for men, is there a point at which there's no return? Or is this something where interventions can always lead to improvements? I'm just imagining somebody who gets their bone mineral density evaluated, realizes they're, they're way off the mark. Obviously, you, you, then you have to worry about fractures, right? So when you're talking about load bearing exercises, that suddenly becomes a precarious, uh, you know, kind of prospect, right? You have to be safe about this, but also engage in it so that you can get that stimulus and, and try to regenerate some of that density.

• 1:16:30Simon Hill?

  And I think this is why you're starting to see. These bone health clinics being set up, I'm not sure if you've seen any of them.

• 1:16:38Rich Roll?

  I haven't seen that, that's a thing.

• 1:16:40Simon Hill?

  Yeah, it's a thing and and you can go in and do very specific training to increase your bone mineral density under the supervision. Because as you say, there there will be a large percentage of the population with low bone mineral density that also, quite frankly, don't have very good balance. And and and getting them to do some of these exercises could be dangerous. So I think if you if you do a DEXA and you have osteoporosis or osteopenia, then that's a time with a physician and hopefully with an exercise physiologist, if you can access one, you create a really robust plan for you. You know, jogging and skipping is not going to be for everyone.

• 1:17:23Simon Hill?

  It's going to depend on on someone's baseline health and their risk of having a fracture. So I want people to to kind of do this safely. But yes, the body can adapt. There's some beautiful studies looking at eighty and ninety year old subjects. And even at eighty or ninety, you can build muscle and you can increase bone mineral density. Okay, so it's not as though it gets too late to for the body to to adapt to a stimulus. It's it's still will, but you need to to do that safely.

• 1:17:55Rich Roll?

  Is the only way to get an accurate sense of your bone mineral density uh to is to undergo a DEXA scan? Is there any other way of testing this? I'm just imagining not everybody's gonna have access to this kind of technology. How does that work? If somebody does want to get a DEXA scan, how do they even go about figuring that out?

• 1:18:15Simon Hill?

  There's some other technology, but that doesn't really speak to the accessibility uh part of your question. So like there's another um scanning device called the Echo, which is becoming popular. But the the DEXA scan is by far the

• 1:18:35Simon Hill?

  Marker that is used in clinical research to look at risk of fracture.

• 1:18:42Rich Roll?

  Right.

• 1:18:42Simon Hill?

  So we know it's a robust, if you measure your T score, we know that that is a robust marker that can be used along with other risk factors. So there's, we're going a little bit into the weeds here, but if you were in a clinical setting and you had a DEXA scan and you were speaking with your physician and you were trying to work out what's your 10 year risk of a fracture, they have a calculator and they can consider your history of smoking and alcohol and whether you have osteoporosis in your family and, and all those sorts of things get factored in as well. But certainly, this is probably the least accessible of the 10 truths to measure.

• 1:19:22Simon Hill?

  I'm aware of that, but I think it's something that everyone should do, but particularly postmenopausal women. And I say everyone because you made a point before about, you know, what happens if you measure your bone mineral density at 50, 60 and it's low, is there still enough time to, to change that? I think we need to think about our bones like a savings account in a bank. And so if we can build that saving up early in life, then we're less likely to run into issues later in life. So I'm speaking to the young person here now who's 20 or 30 or in their 40s.

• 1:20:06Rich Roll?

  I'm not even going to think about this for another 30 years.

• 1:20:09Simon Hill?

  Yeah. And I'm saying you should approach this as your savings account. So the interventions that are in the challenge that have been included in there to promote bone mineral density should be things that you should try and integrate into your regime in advance.

• 1:20:29Rich Roll?

  On top of all of this, if you do get a DEXA scan, you're getting a window into not just your bone mineral density, but a whole number of things, your visceral fat. Like there's a lot of data that you can extract from that experience.

• 1:20:44Simon Hill?

  Yeah. So, and visceral fat, I thought about putting that into this, these truths that we're measuring, but I feel like it's adequately covered with triglycerides and fasting glucose and HbA1C. I spoke to that earlier. I had my.

• 1:21:03Simon Hill?

  Visceral fat measured recently.

• 1:21:06Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:07Simon Hill?

  I had it.

• 1:21:07Rich Roll?

  You say with a twinkle in your eye.

• 1:21:09Simon Hill?

  Yeah, I can brag about it. Well, I feel like I can brag about it because I, I, I got so much shit on YouTube and on Instagram for at least a couple of years where proponents of an animal-based or carnivore-style diet were nagging me to get a DEXA scan, saying that, you know, maybe, maybe I'm, I'm fit and strong on the outside, but with that high carbohydrate diet, probably have a lot of visceral fat.

• 1:21:41Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 1:21:41Simon Hill?

  Being built up. So I was pleasantly surprised to see that my visceral fat was almost zero.

• 1:21:47Rich Roll?

  Have you made a little video, clapback video about that?

• 1:21:51Simon Hill?

  I haven't posted anything that is directed towards that crowd. I did put some stories up on my Instagram with the, the results, but yeah, maybe, maybe I should think about that.

• 1:22:03Rich Roll?

  Interesting. If somebody wants to get a DEXA scan, how do they even go about figuring out where to go and what does that cost and what does that entail?

• 1:22:13Simon Hill?

  I went to Dexafit in Boston, but they, Dexafit are, are all around the United States. And in, in most countries now, there are studios set up to measure, to do a DEXA scan and a VO2 max often are in the same place. So Dexafit do both. So if you wanted to, to do a treadmill VO2 max test and a DEXA, you know, you're wanting to go all out with measuring your 10 truths accurately.

• 1:22:43Rich Roll?

  The premium plan.

• 1:22:44Simon Hill?

  Yeah. Then you would go to an organization like Dexafit, or if you're in another country, something that's equivalent. We have a partnership with Dexafit so that if people doing this challenge who are based in the United States want to use them, they can get some saving on either the DEXA scan or VO2 max or both, if they choose to do both. But in terms of what it costs, I probably should know that. I think it's between $200 or $300.

• 1:23:14Rich Roll?

  Uh huh. Oh, I would have thought it would have been more.

• 1:23:17Simon Hill?

  I think it's more if you do both. I think that's the cost just for the DEXA scan, but don't quote me on that.

• 1:23:23Rich Roll?

  Interesting. Yeah, but there'll be a link to the Dexafit situation in the materials.

• 1:23:31Rich Roll?

  For the challenge, right? So whatever savings or discount is going to be made available, people can figure that out there.

• 1:23:37Simon Hill?

  Exactly.

• 1:23:38Rich Roll?

  Okay. Have we covered this, this, uh, this system, the musculo mus- Why do I have so much trouble?

• 1:23:47Simon Hill?

  Musculoskeletal.

• 1:23:48Rich Roll?

  I have trouble saying that word. Musculoskeletal system.

• 1:23:53Simon Hill?

  I get made fun of for saying musculoskeletal.

• 1:23:56Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:56Simon Hill?

  Because in this country.

• 1:23:57Rich Roll?

  I know. You said, I've let you, I've, I've given you a long rope with some of your pronunciations. Uh, cause I'm trying to keep it on the rails, dude.

• 1:24:06Rich Roll?

  Can we move on to psychological and emotional wellbeing? Any final thoughts on what we just covered before we go to the next thing?

• 1:24:15Simon Hill?

  I think we, we covered that pretty comprehensively. The two truths that we're measuring to get a window into your musculoskeletal health are your grip strength and your bone mineral density.

• 1:24:27Rich Roll?

  Okay. So now we move into this weird, uh, you know, kind of ephemeral area. Like I can understand testing for APOB and grip strength and all this sort of thing. How are you going to create an accurate way to evaluate somebody's psychological or emotional wellbeing to get a baseline before introducing interventions?

• 1:24:51Simon Hill?

  This was the hardest of all 10 truths to

• 1:24:57Simon Hill?

  find a tool that can accurately measure that and encompass all of the various aspects of emotional health, psychological wellbeing, whether that be self-esteem or purpose or optimism, relationships.

• 1:25:13Rich Roll?

  You can't just blow into a tube and have a number?

• 1:25:17Simon Hill?

  I wish. Uh, so I had to dig pretty deep here and consulted a number of different people in psychology and psychiatrists and came across a tool called the flourishing scale, which was, was produced by a psychologist. He went by the name Dr. Happiness, actually. And this is the most robust, I guess clinically validated tool that I could find. It's not the only one that- Can act as a relatively simple way to get a gauge on your psychological wellbeing, psychological resources and strengths.

• 1:26:02Simon Hill?

  There's eight questions on this flourishing scale. And for each of those eight questions, I have it in front of me, I can read out a couple of, a couple of them, so you can kind of get a better feel for it. For each of the eight questions, you either strongly agree, agree, slightly agree, all the way up to strongly disagree.

• 1:26:24Simon Hill?

  And I'll, I'll, I'll read all eight.

• 1:26:29Simon Hill?

  I lead a purposeful and meaningful life. My social relationships are supportive and rewarding. I am engaged and interested in my daily activities. I actively contribute to the happiness and wellbeing of others. So being of service. Debatable. I am competent and capable in the activities that are important to me. I am a good person and live a good life. Everybody thinks they're a good person. I am optimistic about my future.

• 1:27:04Simon Hill?

  People respect me. Hmm, that's a good one. And so, you know, that's, that's the, the tool that we've used to kind of assess this. And the maximum score you can get is uh fifty six. If you score um eight on, sorry, seven on all eight. Cause each one of these is, you score it one to five? One to seven. Oh, one to seven. And there's eight questions. Okay. So maximum score is, is uh fifty six. And you know, why these questions? Why relationships, self-esteem, purpose, optimism, service? Well, there's a whole lot of research that underpins that.

• 1:27:47Simon Hill?

  You know, we could, we could speak of a number of, of different studies. The, the one that maybe people are familiar with is the Harvard Study of Adult Development.

• 1:27:58Simon Hill?

  I just looked at a group of students from Harvard and tracked them for eighty years. And they were interested in what were the greatest predictors of happiness and longevity? And more than than money or fame. And money was important, actually, but up to after a certain level of about seventy five thousand dollars income. That might be a little higher today.

• 1:28:25Rich Roll?

  Yeah, probably.

• 1:28:27Simon Hill?

  But up to a certain level, after that, it wasn't a great predictor.

• 1:28:32Simon Hill?

  Above all of those, and also above traditional risk factors like LDL cholesterol and even smoking. The quality of their relationships were the greatest predictor of their happiness and their longevity. And Robert Waldinger, who is the director of that study. He's very famous for a quote where he says loneliness kills. And that is often mistaken for solitude being deleterious. But I don't actually think that's the case. There's some research looking at how much time you spend by yourself versus with others.

• 1:29:16Simon Hill?

  And certainly spending time by yourself can be healthy and appears to be healthy. But if people are spending more than seventy five percent of their time by themselves. They're significantly they're significantly more likely to experience loneliness. So these are, you know, some of the, I guess, some of the science that has informed. The decision to use a scale like this, that's, you know, measuring some of these questions are related to relationships. There's other questions in here that are related to service. And there's some incredible research looking at the differences between.

• 1:29:58Simon Hill?

  Giving or getting and looking at the differences in how our brain is activated. And you know, you see when, when someone is, is giving something. The reward center of the brain, it lights up in, in both of those contexts. But also the stress level of the brain goes down.

• 1:30:23Rich Roll?

  Oh, interesting. I didn't know about that piece.

• 1:30:26Simon Hill?

  And so there's this really interesting MRI research that's shown that, which is then corroborated by population level research where you look at, at large populations of people. And you use different questions to determine, you know, how frequently someone is service, is of service to others around them. And you see that people who are of service to others are less likely to die during the, the follow up. Period. And on the flip side, you, you see that people that are highly stressed have much higher risk of, of premature death.

• 1:31:11Simon Hill?

  But the interesting thing is people that are highly stressed

• 1:31:17Simon Hill?

  that are of service do not have increased risk of mortality.

• 1:31:20Rich Roll?

  Oh, wow. So that's, that's an interesting ripple.

• 1:31:23Simon Hill?

  So there's something about giving and being of service to others. That seems to attenuate stress and I don't think it's been fully elucidated. Exactly what's happening there, but there would be a physiological explanation and there are researchers debating as to whether that's sort of mediated through inflammation or, or other physiological processes. But you know, point being that being of service seems to be incredibly important when it comes to our psychological resilience, wellbeing and.

• 1:32:03Simon Hill?

  So that's something that's evaluated within the flourishing scale. And that's why it was included in that scale specifically. And then in our 12 week challenge, we have a few things in there that hopefully inspire people.

• 1:32:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I'm interested in what the interventions are here or what the exercises are here. But let me just say, first of all, I commend you in tackling a soft science. You know, as a hard science guy, like you try to wrap your brain around like, how do I make sense of this very unwieldy world where, um, you know, data points are less inter are sort of less mission critical than insights and kind of general ideas about where you should place your attention and your focus. All of this is of course true and vetted through the social sciences and the hard sciences that overlaps or intersects quite nicely with what we know about the blue zones and

• 1:32:58Rich Roll?

  the centenarians, as well as the work that Chip Conley is doing with his modern wisdom, modern elder, you know, academy and, um, and his, his, his, his focus on the relationship between longevity and kind of human connection in that regard. And then the surgeon general who has made loneliness, you know, his mission to ameliorate. Like, these are very real things that we're grappling with. And I think it's cool that you wove this in as one of the four key systems. Because with your background, I could easily just say, we just have to focus on diet and nutrition and, you know, maybe brain health. What else can we throw in there? Strength, et cetera. But this is key.

• 1:33:42Rich Roll?

  And I think it's important to point out that you can have an absolutely pristine, perfect diet and you can adhere to your fitness routine with extraordinary consistency. But if you're a narcissist, or you're self obsessed, or you're just an asshole, or you isolate from other human beings and you never consider the thoughts or emotions of other people, uh, not only does that make you just a giant douchebag, it's really not doing a lot for your longevity, right? So even if you are selfish in that regard, it is in your interest to figure out a way to give of yourself for others.

• 1:34:22Simon Hill?

  And do you, do you want to live a long life? Or do you want to live a good life? Because for me, the difference there is that.

• 1:34:33Simon Hill?

  Living a good life requires emotional health. It requires you to be happy with with the things that you're doing in that time that you're alive. So it was an important pillar, you know, and important inclusion within those four systems, emotional wellbeing. And you can't deny the science, you know, there's, there's a reason that the quality of our relationships are the number one predictor of longevity, because those relationships affect our physical body. So, yeah, I'm glad that we included it.

• 1:35:14Rich Roll?

  All right, well, we're like an hour and forty minutes into this, and now we have our baseline, right? We're good. We're on track for a five hour podcast. That's a joke, Simon. Okay, so on the template of test intervention retest, we have our test results, we have a baseline for where we're at. Now we're into the intervention phase of this. And obviously, we can't address every single aspect of this. So how do you help us understand what this twelve week challenge will involve before the retest at the conclusion of those twelve weeks?

• 1:35:51Simon Hill?

  Okay, so let's start very high level. There are twelve different lifestyle habits. And these are split across nutrition, exercise, sleep, and emotional wellbeing. Each week, there are focuses for nutrition, for exercise, for sleep, and emotional wellbeing. And we start off in week one relatively gently. And then over the course of the twelve weeks, we're building on what we're putting into practice, and we're making it more and more challenging, such that at week twelve, we

• 1:36:31Simon Hill?

  arrive at a point where the evidence suggests you will have significantly shifted your longevity score, those ten truths.

• 1:36:42Simon Hill?

  So then you can do your retest and you can see proof that this program has worked and has shifted your health in a favorable direction. Do you need perfect adherence to achieve this? You do not need perfect adherence. In fact, I would encourage people to not be so hard on themselves. I don't expect a 100% adherence. We've, we've factored that in to what we're recommending. Now, we're going to provide coaching and emails and reminders along the way to, to kind of help encourage and improve adherence. But even if you were to adhere to this 70 or 80%,

• 1:37:27Simon Hill?

  you're going to get improvements in your health. So,

• 1:37:33Simon Hill?

  you know, for example, some of the, the lifestyle habits that we've included, from a nutrition perspective, we, we want people to optimize their protein intake. We think that's important for a variety of reasons. Now, the, the total amount of protein that you consume has a direct effect on your strength. It affects bone mineral density. But also where that protein's coming from affects your cardiometabolic health risk factors. So we're providing people with a target for total protein intake. But then we're also recommending that they're getting at least a certain amount of that from plant protein.

• 1:38:17Simon Hill?

  And we have a whole guide on protein so that they, people can see what are the, the, the really good sources of plant protein on a per calorie basis. And so if they're not familiar with that, they can um make some decisions more easily. We have a, a lifestyle habit built around fats. So we're encouraging um people to cook with olive or avocado oil instead of butter or tallow or coconut or palm oil. Does it include recipes or just general guidelines? So we have, we have both. The, the guidelines are general.

• 1:39:02Simon Hill?

  In the weekly learnings, people will get some recipes. So for example, in week one, the theme of that week is built around protein. So each week, there is a different theme that we're educating on. And in that, in that week, we have a short video that we want people to, to watch. You know, I've interviewed Stuart Phillips, Don Lehman, Chris Gardner, Volta Longo, all these guys with slightly different research backgrounds, different individual or personal diets themselves, who all have really important things to say about protein. So we've pulled some of that information together for people to listen to.

• 1:39:44Rich Roll?

  Just finding the specific pieces that relate to the theme or the subject matter that you're trying to address and organizing that in a, in a way that is helpful to the, to the person.

• 1:39:57Simon Hill?

  And then that week, they do get recipes. So they get a high protein, plant-based recipe PDF, which has sort of 15 or 20 different recipe ideas in there.

• 1:40:08Rich Roll?

  How much of a time commitment is this whole thing?

• 1:40:12Simon Hill?

  A lot of this is set and forget. The exercise component is the most time consuming.

• 1:40:19Rich Roll?

  How much time a day per week?

• 1:40:22Simon Hill?

  Well, we're, we're wanting people to, by, by week 12, be doing 150 minutes of zone two slash three training per week. So we would call zone two, three, moderate intensity. Somewhere in the ballpark of, say, 60 to 80% max heart rate. So that's 150 minutes a week, two and a half hours. We want people to be doing, working up to a four by four minute hit interval per week.

• 1:40:54Simon Hill?

  With a warm up and a cool down, that's another thirty minutes. So you're at three hours of training from a cardiovascular exercise point of view across a week. And then on top of that, resistance training by week twelve, we want people doing at least twice per week. And those sessions are to be forty five to sixty minutes. So let's just say that you're doing sixty minute sessions. It's five hours of exercise a week. That's the most time consuming part of this program, which is less than an hour a day if you if you drag that over a seven day week.

• 1:41:33Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm. Talk a little bit about the sleep piece.

• 1:41:38Simon Hill?

  So sleep, we focused on two aspects. There are so many things that we could include into this challenge.

• 1:41:46Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, it just it's a, you know, it just gets infinitely more and more complicated.

• 1:41:52Simon Hill?

  Right.

• 1:41:52Rich Roll?

  I've had conversations with domain experts in a lot of these areas. You've had more than I have. And if anybody who's listening to this or watching it wants to drill down deep on VO two max or sleep or protein or whatever, just like go to the proof and get into Simon's archive because I'm sure that you're going to find what you want. And people are going to talk for hours about this stuff. We're trying to like canvas it and get to just the meat on the bones here.

• 1:42:22Simon Hill?

  Yeah, exactly. So you can go and find a holler to our episode on fermented foods if you want.

• 1:42:30Rich Roll?

  Only two hours?

• 1:42:31Simon Hill?

  Yeah, yeah, that was one of the shorter ones. We're getting people to focus on sleep duration. So how long are you in bed for? So research is pretty clear that seven to eight hours of sleep per night is associated with lower total mortality premature death. Now, if you're in bed for eight hours, you probably get seven hours sleep. I'm not sure if you've ever looked on your Whoop.

• 1:42:59Rich Roll?

  Oh, yeah, it's, you know, it's like, oh, because I used to just think, oh, I went to bed at this time and I woke up at this time. The Whoop, you know, you realize like, oh, time in bed is not necessarily an indicator of how much time you slept, nor is it an indicator certainly of the restorative phases of sleep that are most important.

• 1:43:20Simon Hill?

  So we're recommending that people are in bed for eight hours per night. Now, I think you've had Satya and Panda on.

• 1:43:31Rich Roll?

  No, I haven't actually.

• 1:43:32Simon Hill?

  You haven't had him on, okay. But you've had episodes on where you've discussed circadian rhythms and circadian biology and everyone's experienced chronic jet lag. Fly across the other side of the world to Byron Bay, where I live, and you're going to feel pretty lousy until you adjust to that new time zone. What people may be a little less aware of is that that's a very sort of acute form of chronic, of circadian disruption. But you can have more of a chronic insidious circadian disruption, which is occurring whilst you're staying in

• 1:44:13Simon Hill?

  the same time zone because of the way that you're living. And so, you know, circadian biology, in short, we have these natural fluctuations of hormones and, you know, things like our heart rate and our blood pressure, they change throughout the day. And they really just change in order to prepare us for what we're about to do. So in the morning, things are changing to get us ready for being active and get us ready for digesting food. Later in the evening, various physiological processes are changing based on these circadian rhythms to get us ready for rest and rejuvenation and renewal overnight. These circadian rhythms are primarily affected by two external cues.

• 1:45:03Simon Hill?

  In our environment, there's two things that can really throw them out of whack. One is light exposure. So if we're

• 1:45:14Simon Hill?

  sitting up late at night in very, very, very bright lights, it's, let's say it's nine P M.

• 1:45:21Simon Hill?

  Our body, and it's dark outside, our body, we might be sitting in L A, but our body thinks we're in Sydney. Mm hmm. So we can cause some dysregulation of our circadian rhythms and then that affects the release of melatonin, which has an effect on your sleep, for example. We can also dramatically affect these circadian rhythms through the timing in which we eat. That's the other really important signal here. So within this challenge, we have two different habits that speak to nurturing our circadian rhythms. One is light exposure. We want people in the morning to get outside,

• 1:46:04Simon Hill?

  get at least 10 minutes of natural light exposure in the first couple of hours of waking up. That's important. That sets your clock. Mm hmm. This is the Huberman protocol around morning sunlight. And then at nighttime, when, as the sun's going down, ideally you're, you know, you don't have to turn all the lights off in the house, but it will be helpful if you dim the lights down. And if you're using screens, you can adjust the brightness on those and put them into night mode. And then with regards to the timing of our food, there's some really interesting research that has come out of Courtney Peterson's lab. I interviewed her.

• 1:46:48Simon Hill?

  Looking at how

• 1:46:52Simon Hill?

  efficiently is our body utilizing nutrients at different times of the day?

• 1:46:57Simon Hill?

  And it seems that particularly at nighttime,

• 1:47:03Simon Hill?

  a couple hours, a couple of hours before we go to bed, we have changes in hormones that make things like glucose, glucose metabolism much less effective. How, it makes sense. Our body is getting ready to go to sleep, not to digest food and convert it into energy.

• 1:47:25Simon Hill?

  The ideal kind of eating window, and some people have described this as a circadian biology eating window, circadian fasting, it's not, I don't think it's really a crazy fast, is you're in bed for eight hours a night, that's what we said just before. And when you wake up, not eating for one or two hours upon waking, and before you go to bed, not eating for one or two hours. Before you go to bed. Before you go to bed. Now, if you, let's say you, you do that as two hours, so you, you're in bed for eight, you don't eat for the first two hours of waking up, and then before you go to bed, you're not eating in the two hours leading up to bed.

• 1:48:10Simon Hill?

  Automatically, that means your eating window is at 12 hours. Mm hmm. The average person's eating window in America is 15 to 16 hours. Hmm. So pretty much rolling out of bed, having a bite of a donut, and eating all the way up to going to sleep again. The reason why all of this is important is that we know that this chronic circadian disruption significantly increases risk of metabolic diseases, significantly increases risk of obesity, of cardiovascular disease. So there are repercussions if we're living in a way where our circadian rhythms are disrupted.

• 1:48:55Simon Hill?

  And it's not just the long term. If you're experiencing chronic circadian disruption, you're likely to feel more brain fog, more fatigue, less, lower energy or lethargy on a, on a daily basis. So just getting some routine in place where we're in bed for eight hours, which thinking about light exposure, and then we're eating at a regular time, trying to avoid eating too close to waking up or going to bed. Can make a very big difference.

• 1:49:27Rich Roll?

  This is like my Mount Everest because I get so hungry at night, man. It's very difficult for me to not eat in the two hours before I go to sleep. Like, that is my Achilles heel. So if I accomplish nothing other than figuring out how to master that as a result of doing this challenge, that would be a huge win for me.

• 1:49:50Simon Hill?

  Have you played around with the types of food that you're eating?

• 1:49:53Rich Roll?

  Yeah, and, and, you know, when I was wearing a continuous glucose monitor, it was very evident, like, when I would eat, like, right before going to bed, how it would wreak havoc on me. And, and, and, you know, I wake up, I would wake up in the middle of the night and stuff like that, and my blood glucose regulation is, is, you know, super dysregulated as a result of that. Like, I know, I know I shouldn't do it, and I, it's just, this is a habit that's been very difficult for me to break.

• 1:50:24Simon Hill?

  I haven't seen this formally studied, so I can't speak to an intervention, but I have a hypothesis here, and I'm not sure whether you've tried this, but I'd be interested to see what happens if you have a slightly lower carbohydrate dinner and higher fat.

• 1:50:40Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:50:43Simon Hill?

  And I suspect because that will be slower to digest and metabolize, that you might feel fuller for longer.

• 1:50:52Rich Roll?

  It's a weird satiety thing, and I don't know if it's just mental or emotional, but if I don't feel full when I get into bed, like, I feel, like, agitated, you know, I feel like I need to, there's something emotional or physiological about, you know, how you kind of relax when you have, when you, when you've just eaten, like, your anxiety and your stress level. Uh, lowers, um, and for some reason, if I'm going to bed and I'm hungry, like it becomes very difficult for me to fall asleep.

• 1:51:25Simon Hill?

  I get that. You might need a bigger, bigger plate at dinner.

• 1:51:27Rich Roll?

  I eat, I eat plenty. Trust me, dude. Anyway, I don't want to get too sidetracked on that, but I think that's really important and that's great. And if you want to be more, uh, rigorous about your sleep tracking, there's always, you know, like a whoop or something like that that you can get, um, that, you know, listen, I never take this thing off and it's really been helpful in keeping me on track. Not so much for the day to day, but more for the trends and just understanding the types of behaviors and habits that influence things like HRV and the amount of REM or deep sleep that I'm getting every night and how that impacts resting heart rate, stress, like all those sorts of things. Like just,

• 1:52:09Rich Roll?

  it's just information that arms you with the data points to kind of solve the arithmetic of what works for you and what's leading you astray.

• 1:52:20Simon Hill?

  Yeah. I, I love the sleep data and, you know, I agree. I've, I've been able to identify a few different kind of patterns. I've noticed if I'm, if I'm working really late, then my restorative deep sleep is much lower.

• 1:52:38Rich Roll?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:52:39Simon Hill?

  Probably going to bed thinking about all the things I need to do.

• 1:52:42Rich Roll?

  And then if you correlated that with what your, where your stress levels are and how long it takes them to go down as you go to sleep, um, because if you haven't reduced those before going to bed, you're going to have a less restful evening of, of sleep.

• 1:52:55Simon Hill?

  Yeah. My recovery today was 86%.

• 1:52:58Rich Roll?

  That's pretty good.

• 1:52:59Simon Hill?

  I was happy with that.

• 1:53:00Rich Roll?

  Yeah. Right on. Um, all right. What else do we need to know? Uh, I think we have a good idea of, in a general sense, of the type of interventions and protocols that are going to be served up as a result of this challenge. And then of course, at the tail end of this, you're going to retest all of this stuff. But what else do you want to share, um, generally about?

• 1:53:26Simon Hill?

  The challenge itself. I mean, there's so much in here. We have an emphasis on fermented foods. Based on evidence out of Justin Sonnenberg's lab and Chris Gardner's work, we have information and recommendations on both moderate and high intensity cardiovascular training. Both of those are important. They're different stimuli. You know, I see exercise is very much like a poly pill. A poly pill, some people might be familiar with that.

• 1:53:58Simon Hill?

  You can package up, you know, like a lipid lowering drug and a blood pressure lowering drug and a blood glucose lowering drug all into one thing and, and, and take that as a pharmaceutical drug. Exercise is similar in that you have all of these different types of exercise, moderate intensity cardio, high intensity resistance training, and they are providing different stimuli. Really important stimuli to get different systems in the body to adapt. So we have a guide in there for resistance training, for that moderate intensity cardiovascular training, for high intensity interval training. Again, we start off gentle and we progress it over the 12 weeks. And then there are,

• 1:54:42Simon Hill?

  as I mentioned before, there are some lifestyle habits and things that we're wanting people to do that we think will shift the, the needle on emotional health. And so I'll give one example of this. Tom Gilovich is a psychologist who did some fascinating research looking at

• 1:55:05Simon Hill?

  regret at the end of someone's life. What is it that accounts for the most regret? And he was looking at, is it actions that they've taken throughout their life? Or is it inaction?

• 1:55:27Simon Hill?

  His results were really, really insightful and a little bit surprising. So seventy six percent of the regret

• 1:55:39Simon Hill?

  was through inaction. It was through things that people wished they did that they didn't do. Now importantly, he was able to identify through different questions. You know, each of us have kind of, he describes this as our actual self. That's who we are today, who we think we are. And then we have our ought self. Our ought self is who we ought to be from society. Expectations, what society kind of wants us to be or um conform to. And then we have our ideal self. And our ideal self is who we truly want to grow into.

• 1:56:22Simon Hill?

  The seventy six percent of the regret was explained seventy six percent of the time by inaction towards the ideal self. So it was, and they have all of these beautiful quotes from people. It was simple things, Rich. It was people who wanted to pick up that musical instrument, but never did. They wanted to write poetry, but never did. They wanted to grow a garden at home for their family, but never did. And digging a little bit deeper, they were able to see that

• 1:57:06Simon Hill?

  the main reason why people didn't take these actions was fear. A lot of the time it was fear of what people around them would would think or that they weren't.

• 1:57:17Rich Roll?

  Yeah, the pressure to conform to the ought self. Moving the actual self towards the ought rather than the ideal self. And the delta between the actual self and the ideal self or the aspirational self is a direct correlate to the extent to which someone. Experiences regret on their deathbed, right? And we get caught up in that fear and those social expectations. We internalize them and, and then we move further and further away from the things that authentically, you know, bring us happiness.

• 1:57:52Simon Hill?

  Yeah, like I do this myself. I used to play the guitar when I was 15, 16. And, you know, from when I was 10 up to 15, 16. And then I remember getting to an age where I started to, to focus on, you know, whether I was good enough and what other people thought of me while I was, you know, playing, playing music. And it no longer was fun and I gave it up. And I think, you know, for the last five or 10 years, I've said to myself, gosh, it'd be good to pick that guitar back up, but I haven't. And if I'm being completely honest, a lot of that is fear of, am I going to be good enough? Is this going to be embarrassing?

• 1:58:30Simon Hill?

  And the interesting thing is that we're all doing that. So I'm sitting here thinking about what everyone else is going to be thinking of me. And so I'm not doing something.

• 1:58:46Rich Roll?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:58:46Simon Hill?

  And that's what everyone else is doing.

• 1:58:48Rich Roll?

  Sure. But the good news, Simon, is that there's a 12 week program. That's going to correct this for you.

• 1:58:54Simon Hill?

  Exactly. So, so my, my challenge is I'm going to have to come back on here and play the guitar at some stage and make a fool of myself, but have fun.

• 1:59:03Rich Roll?

  That's good. Well, there, there we go. That, that's enough to, you know, get the appetite, right? Well, we are going to do that. We're gonna do some follow up, check in podcasts. You're going to do a whole bunch of like IG lives after February 1st. Um, I'm going to be in Australia on my sabbatical during, um, the first two weeks of, of February. So maybe you and I can get together and share some stuff or, or see where we're at while we're in the midst of all of this.

• 1:59:31Simon Hill?

  Should we go for a surf in Byron?

• 1:59:33Rich Roll?

  Oh, that, yeah. That will be the, that's the embarrassing thing for me. Did Ben Gordon tell you about me? Did I tell you that story? And I just, oh God, anyway, I'm not going to indulge people with that. But I actually am committed to getting better at surfing. That's a big intention for me when I go back to Australia. And that requires just consistently doing it. Like, it's not that I don't know how to do it, it's that I never do it, you know? And I enjoy it when I have some level of fluidity with it, but I never invest the time to do it. So that's one of my, that's like one of my big things for. That period of time, which happens to segue, you know, completely overlap with this challenge period.

• 2:00:12Simon Hill?

  Yeah, Ben's the guy to help you do that.

• 2:00:15Rich Roll?

  Yeah, I know. I know. He's, uh, he, he, he, he's like, uh, I gotta make amends for the last, and whatever.

• 2:00:21Simon Hill?

  Well, he did take you to the most crowded break.

• 2:00:25Rich Roll?

  Like, I'm a super, like, I'm not a great surfer, like, let's just go where there's nobody there. And he's like, sure, and we went to this break and the, the break was flat. So he's like, duh, don't worry, we'll go to the main beach, we'll just stay on the outside or whatever. Sure enough, there's a million people out there and I'm all up in my head about not getting in anyone's way. So of course I manifest that very experience and I drop in on a wave and I, I accidentally, there's a guy in my blind spot and I, you know, without meaning to, kind of cut him off and our boards collide, I go under and then the fin just like slices my hand wide open, you know, like, and it was literally like, it was exactly what I told Ben I was trying to avoid.

• 2:01:04Simon Hill?

  You called it in.

• 2:01:05Rich Roll?

  That I created, yeah, for myself.

• 2:01:07Simon Hill?

  Yeah, he took me to the pass. So if anyone is familiar with that, that's, that's a crazy, chaotic.

• 2:01:12Rich Roll?

  Shout out to Ben, I love you and we'll be going surfing soon. But anyway, I think this is a good place to kind of bring this to a conclusion, but I do have a couple of quick questions. First of which is, what is the role of supplements in all of this? When we have a conversation around longevity and health span, that conversation tends to, uh, get sort of hijacked by all of these new molecules that are being studied, NAD, you know, NMN, and, and, like, all that kind of stuff, right? Rapamycin, what's going on there? This challenge is designed to look at the biggest levers with the most heft.

• 2:01:52Rich Roll?

  And while there's interesting science going on at the pointy edge of longevity, what's most important are, you know, these big levers, right? So with that kind of, um, preface, like, do supplements fit into this? How does that work? When somebody gets their blood work done and they realize maybe they have a deficiency here and there, does this account for that?

• 2:02:15Simon Hill?

  My approach with, with supplements is...

• 2:02:20Simon Hill?

  I look at it from two angles. One is, I think supplementing with a particular essential nutrient to fill a gap is always a good idea. If you can't adjust your diet in a way to account for that. And the second is to take a supplement that can help optimize you for particular performance goals, outcomes. We've spoken about that previously when we, I think in the first or second episode we did together where we spoke a lot about creatine and protein. And to your point about NMN and rapamycin and metformin, some of these are supplements, some of these are pharmaceuticals, I think that space is super interesting, but I think

• 2:03:05Simon Hill?

  it's speculative. Whereas the challenge is not speculative in the sense that we do know what markers matter in terms of predicting our health and we do have science-based interventions that we know improve them. So this whole challenge was built upon that framework. Less speculation, more concrete science, maybe not as exciting to some corners of the internet. From a supplement point of view, within the PDF, there's a supplement protocol recommendation. And some of these depend on the way that someone's eating.

• 2:03:45Simon Hill?

  For example, I recommend a DHA, EPA, algae slash fish oil, depending on someone's preference, if they're not consuming fatty fish. And, and actually, Rich, I went and looked at how much fatty fish you would need to consume to get enough DHA and EPA in terms of what's optimal. And I had a whole episode with Philip Calder on this, who's the expert, or one of the domain specific experts researching omega threes and sixes.

• 2:04:19Simon Hill?

  To get one gram of DHA and EPA a day, which is not a crazy high amount, is what I recommend because I think that's where the evidence is lined with. You would need to be having three to four servings of fatty fish a week.

• 2:04:36Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 2:04:37Simon Hill?

  A very, very small percentage of the population would be doing that. And if everyone was doing that, quite frankly, it would not be sustainable. So in short, there are recommendations for supplements like that. It's not going to apply to everyone. It will depend on their diet. Omega threes, a multivitamin. There's a prebiotic supplement, which I think can be a good idea if someone is increasing plant diversity and having difficulty with that. It's coming from a diet that's been heavily restricted. Creatine and protein.

• 2:05:10Rich Roll?

  Hmm.

• 2:05:10Simon Hill?

  So it's not a crazy, long laundry list of, of supplements. Um, it's just a handful or so for people to consider. And for each of those, there's a recommended brand, there's a recommended dosage, and then some links for people to get some savings.

• 2:05:26Rich Roll?

  Right. What if somebody's blood work comes back and it's way out of range? Like they realize, like those women who realized they were osteoporotic, that they're in a dire state. Is there some, you know, kind of guidance around when it might be appropriate to, you know, call your doctor and explore the options that are available to you? If somebody realizes they're like really in the red or in a crisis state on an important blood marker?

• 2:05:59Simon Hill?

  Yeah, I think this is a great point. I think if anything is wildly out of range, then you should be having a discussion with your physician.

• 2:06:11Simon Hill?

  It might be that some people require pharmaceutical interventions.

• 2:06:19Simon Hill?

  I also want people to sit down with their physician if they have type two diabetes, if they have cardiovascular disease, if they have metabolic syndrome and they're currently taking medications. And the reason for that is that these interventions are very effective. And you want your physician or primary care provider to know that you're changing the way that you're living because that could affect the dose of various pharmaceutical compounds that you have, and they may need to be titrated along the way. So another, I guess, indicator of success of this challenge is not just shifting these

• 2:07:01Simon Hill?

  into an optimal range, but I would see for many people is reducing the dosage of some of the medications that they're taking as well.

• 2:07:07Rich Roll?

  Yeah, if somebody's on blood pressure medication, they're on statins, they're on a battery of whatever, you know, obviously that complicates, you know, the protocols, I would imagine in some regard, like, how does all that play into somebody's, you know, day-to-day program?

• 2:07:27Simon Hill?

  I think most of, you know, if not all of the 12 lifestyle habits, you know, someone with type two diabetes could do, but I want their physician to be aware that they're doing it. And the primary concern that I have there is not whether they can do these things, it's how it's going to affect their physiology and therefore how that will affect the medications that they're likely taking.

• 2:07:54Rich Roll?

  So when you did this retreat with Drew, you sort of proofed this or tested out some of this, but it wasn't a 12-week retreat, so I'd imagine you had some kind of compressed, reduced version of this?

• 2:08:06Simon Hill?

  So we still have people going through now.

• 2:08:08Rich Roll?

  So you kind of initiated it there and you stayed in touch with those people?

• 2:08:12Simon Hill?

  Yeah, and we were, you know, I guess, one of the benefits of a retreat versus the challenge is you can work on an individual basis a little bit more with regards to the specific interventions that they should focus on based on those 10 truths, gives you a little bit more flexibility there. But otherwise, we took them through, you know, essentially the same kind of protocol and That was only in October. So people are sort of six or eight weeks into that process now. I've had a lot of emails from, you know, from our, our guests who have already done, you know, blood tests.

• 2:08:57Rich Roll?

  They just, they couldn't wait.

• 2:08:58Simon Hill?

  Couldn't wait.

• 2:08:59Rich Roll?

  They had to go.

• 2:09:00Simon Hill?

  And, and this is the thing that it doesn't take 12 weeks to, to change all of these biomarkers. They, some of these change on different sort of time courses, like bone mineral density takes a lot longer than APOB. You can reduce your APOB in many instances, um, within, uh, you know, a week of changing your diet. In the long run, what we're hoping to do, and I see this very much as kind of version one point O. You know, each year we, I want to be reviewing the calculator, the ten truths, looking at new evidence that's emerging. Do we need to tweak things in there in terms of how we're scoring it?

• 2:09:41Simon Hill?

  And then over time accumulating data from people that are going through the challenge so we can see the typical outcomes. And then, you know, that way you can, you know, before someone decides to sign up to this and, and commit to 12 weeks, they can kind of understand what benefits are, are up for grabs.

• 2:10:02Rich Roll?

  Hmm. I'm trying to, uh, put myself in the shoes of the contrarian who's watching this or listening to this and thinking, do I really need to do all this? Cause when I look at the blue zones folks and what Dan Buettner has to say, these people lived a hundred and beyond. They're all fit and seemingly doing great and they don't worry about any of this shit. They're not counting their calories. They're not doing beep tests or shuttle tests. They're not checking their email. They're not worried about how many plants they're eating every day. They're living their lives and, uh, they're, they're rocking it out. So can I just get like blue zones adjacent and call it a day, Simon?

• 2:10:45Simon Hill?

  I think you can, if you're prepared to move to Okinawa or perhaps a certain part of Costa Rica. But short of changing your environment to their environment.

• 2:10:59Simon Hill?

  Unfortunately, I think we have to be intentional. The environment that we live in is very different to their environment. And I think I've heard Dan Buettner argue this before. It's not willpower that separates us. Centenarians and Blue Zones don't, aren't born with crazy amounts of willpower. They just live in an environment that's conducive. Their environments are conducive to those choices. Yeah, and I think the best way to kind of visualize this is to think of the difference between a maze and a labyrinth.

• 2:11:35Simon Hill?

  You know, a labyrinth is

• 2:11:40Simon Hill?

  kind of designed for you to find your way.

• 2:11:46Simon Hill?

  You don't have to make choices along the way. There's only one path and eventually you'll get to the middle. In fact, some of these labyrinths are designed to be, you know, useful for the purpose of mindfulness or meditation. That's the point of them. Whereas a maze is really designed for you to get lost. And so a Blue Zone is more like a labyrinth.

• 2:12:13Simon Hill?

  The environment is set up for them to succeed. They don't have to be intentional. They can just walk through that environment and they're going to be very likely to enjoy good health and get to the center of that labyrinth, find their way out of it. Whereas in Western countries where we're exposed to a different food environment, food marketing is different, we have a different way of living that results in a more sedentary lifestyle.

• 2:12:44Simon Hill?

  It's more like a maze, designed for us to get lost. So the challenge and, you know, the information that I put out on my show and all the information that you put out on your show with, with guests with a health and wellness sort of background.

• 2:13:06Simon Hill?

  I see those as, you know, acting as a voice so that as people are walking through the maze, you get to a point where you have to go left or right.

• 2:13:16Rich Roll?

  Yeah, don't go that way.

• 2:13:17Simon Hill?

  Yeah, so it's a little whisper, you know, and, and so, you know, with that, coming back to where we started this conversation, in that maze, giving people more confidence, empowering them so that they, you know, they feel confident that the, the energy and the time that they're putting into certain things is going to pay off, there is going to be a return on investment. And I think we're super lucky, I'm incredibly grateful for all of this science that we have that allows us, it informs us so we can come at this in an environment that, let's face it, it is designed for us to fail. We live in a

• 2:13:59Simon Hill?

  maze, but we do have information that allows us to be intentional so that we can still enjoy good health despite the environment.

• 2:14:10Rich Roll?

  Well, I think it's a laudable thing that you've created. And I think that what's great about it is that amidst the acrimonious discourse that you find online and on social media around diet tribalism, most of those arguments take place on the margins of what we know and don't yet know, and overlook the pillars upon which we agree upon and truly understand to be most potent and important in terms of, you know, as we said at the outset of this, moving the needle on the biggest things that impact our health and

• 2:14:55Rich Roll?

  our wellbeing. So we can argue about, you know, I don't know, you name it. Seed oils, whatever. But we know that most people die of heart attacks, heart disease, right? And what are the interventions that we fully understand are going to put us in a position to avoid those pitfalls? And focusing on that seems to be, you know, the responsible choice here. And then down the line through the various, you know, 10 truths that we talked about. I love it. I like that it is all inclusive and that it isn't contingent upon your affiliation with any particular dietary tribe, per se.

• 2:15:40Rich Roll?

  And it's easy to understand, easy to adopt, and it is like placing a labyrinth on top of this maze to create a structure and a foundation and an environment where somebody is whispering so you don't make that wrong left turn. And, and you can kind of get on board with these habits, which are not, you're not asking that much. It's not a super heavy lift. It's very gentle and I think it provides people with a warm introduction and welcome into a new way of being in relationship with themselves and their daily habits. So I commend you. I'm excited to do it.

• 2:16:16Simon Hill?

  Well, thank you for, I mean, you've played a big role in pushing me, I guess, to kind of pull all this together. And, you know, I want to reiterate, I'm just a synthesizer of this information. The, I've been so grateful for all of the guests that I've had the privilege of being able to sit down with.

• 2:16:36Rich Roll?

  How many episodes have you done?

• 2:16:37Simon Hill?

  It's coming up to 300. I've been doing this for six years now. I started actually in Venice, that Airbnb where you came over the other night. That's, that's where this started.

• 2:16:48Rich Roll?

  Oh, that was the original OG Airbnb?

• 2:16:50Simon Hill?

  Full circle. Uh huh. But I'm so grateful for not only the conversations that I've had, but the relationships that I've been able to build with. Different academic scientists, domain-specific experts, that's allowed me to have ongoing emails and phone calls and to really lean on people to help decipher all of this and make sense of it and then be able to translate and communicate it to my community and other communities, to me. You know, I'm just very grateful for that. And obviously to people like Drew Harrisburg that have played a huge role in sort of building out this challenge as well.

• 2:17:32Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, I think it's the evolution of this medium. Like, you've had so many conversations, but they're long and it's a lot. And if you're somebody who's new to this world, you can't ask somebody to go listen to 300 episodes of your podcast. How do you synthesize that information, deliver it in a package that's organized around a protocol or a series of protocols, a program, if you will, that's doable? And that's what you've done, you know? And I think they've done a great job. I mean, this is like not an easy task, you know, especially when you can get caught up in the weeds, you know, and go down these rabbit holes like it's an endless, you know, black hole or whatever.

• 2:18:16Rich Roll?

  Because it's hard, like nutrition science, man, it gets super complicated. We want to be reductionist about it and make it binary or black or white. And it's not quite that way. And for somebody who appreciates and understands like the complexity and the level of nuance, to be able to still nonetheless, plant your flag, here, here, here, here's what's important. I'm sure that was arduous for you.

• 2:18:37Simon Hill?

  That was hard, but I've had to lean on a number of soundboards, I guess, in my life, people that can give me honest feedback to pull me out of the weeds and say, "Simplify that. That doesn't make sense."

• 2:18:53Simon Hill?

  But as you, you know, as you say, you can't point people to 300 episodes. So I feel...

• 2:19:01Simon Hill?

  I guess proud is the word that comes to mind that now when someone says, and this happens all the time, just tell me what to do.

• 2:19:10Rich Roll?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:11Simon Hill?

  I can just say, well, go to theproof.com/livingproof.

• 2:19:14Rich Roll?

  Finally, you have an answer. Yeah.

• 2:19:16Simon Hill?

  And start there.

• 2:19:17Rich Roll?

  There it is. So, we are going to kick this thing off February 1st. That gives you a full month to get your blood work done and do all the testing to create your baseline. In the meantime, everybody needs to go to theproof.com/livingproof. You'll be able to download the PDF, enter your email, get on the email list. Again, this is all zero cost, no cost to you. Obviously, you have to pay for your blood work or whatever, that's on you, but the program itself is free, which, you know, that's another fantastic aspect of this. And Simon is gonna be, once February 1st starts, Simon's gonna be doing IG Lives, you're gonna be sharing a lot of stuff, making videos.

• 2:20:00Rich Roll?

  I'm gonna be in Australia for part of it, so maybe we'll do a check-in podcast, something like that, or do, create some content around this. And I'm excited, man. Thanks.

• 2:20:10Simon Hill?

  Thanks for pushing me to do this after our last three-hour deep time.

• 2:20:14Rich Roll?

  Yeah, well, maybe we'll figure out what to do with that, but you're gonna be spending more time in LA next year, right?

• 2:20:20Simon Hill?

  I am. I think I'm doing five or six months from February.

• 2:20:23Rich Roll?

  All right, so, plenty of time for you to pop in. Like, I think if we even just looked at that and did separate episodes on all of those things, we could create something a little bit more concrete and helpful to people.

• 2:20:35Simon Hill?

  Sounds good.

• 2:20:36Rich Roll?

  So, more to come.

• 2:20:37Simon Hill?

  Thanks, Rich.

• 2:20:38Rich Roll?

  Excellent, brother. Check out Simon's podcast, of course, as well, The Proof, and I have his book sitting right here, The Proof is in the Plants. All kinds of recipes, science, nutrition info, all the good stuff. And, love you, buddy, thank you for sharing, and to be continued.

• 2:20:55Simon Hill?

  Love you, man. Thanks.

• 2:20:57Rich Roll?

  Peace.

• 2:20:58Simon Hill?

  Plants. Proof.

• 2:21:05Rich Roll?

  That's it for today. Thank you for listening. I truly hope you enjoyed the conversation. To learn more about today's guests, including links and resources related to everything discussed today, visit the episode page at richroll.com where you can find the entire podcast archive, as well as podcast merch, my books, Finding Ultra, Voicing Change, and The Plant Power Way, as well as the Plant Power Meal Planner at meals.richroll.com. If you'd like to support the podcast, the easiest and most impactful thing you can do is to subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, and on YouTube, and leave a review

• 2:21:47Rich Roll?

  and/or comment. Supporting the sponsors who support the show is also important and appreciated, and sharing the show or your favorite episode with friends or on social media is of course awesome and very helpful. And finally, for podcast updates, special offers on books, the Meal Planner, and other subjects, please subscribe to our newsletter, which you can find on the footer of any page at richroll.com. Today's show was produced and engineered by Jason Camiolo, with additional audio engineering by Kale Curtis. The video edition of the podcast was created by Blake Curtis, with assistance by our creative director, Dan Drake. Portraits by Davy Greenberg. Graphic and social media

• 2:22:30Rich Roll?

  assets courtesy of Daniel Salis. Thank you Georgia Whaley for copywriting and website management. And of course, our theme music was created by Tyler Pyatt, Trapper Pyatt, and Harry Mathis. Appreciate the love, love the support. See you back here soon. Peace. Plants.