Why Rituals Exist Everywhere & The Exercise Paradox - SYSK Choice

We know that smiling is a universal human expression of happiness. Everyone smiles - in fact, even babies born blind smile. What is the purpose of smiling? So, what does smiling do for you? Why are we attracted to a person’s smile? Listen as I begin this episode with a brief look at smiling. https://www.livescience.com/5254-smiles-innate-learned.html We have all kinds of rituals. There are religious rituals, family rituals, holidays rituals, personal rituals – rituals are everywhere. By definition, rituals don’t actually do anything really. They are just rituals. So why do we have them at all? It appears we have them because they are important and necessary according to my guest, Dimitris Xygalatas. He is an anthropologist and cognitive scientist who runs the Experimental Anthropology Lab at the University of Connecticut. He is also author of the book Ritual: How Seemingly Senseless Acts Make Life Worth Living (https://amzn.to/3Pq7U4b). We all know exercise is important for our health. Still, a lot of people hate it. Why is something so vital to human health so despised and avoided by so many? Maybe we never really evolved to exercise – at least not the way exercise is done today. This is according to Daniel E. Lieberman. Daniel is a professor of biological sciences and a professor of the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University. He is also the author of the book Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding (https://amzn.to/3hoPQea). Listen and you’ll never again feel guilty the next time you decide you really DON’T want to go out and exercise. Salt is bad for your blood pressure – that is common knowledge. But is it true? Does eating salt actually elevate blood pressure and does reducing salt help to lower it? Listen as I reveal some of the science regarding salt and blood pressure and why potassium is also an important player in this story. https://healthyeating.sfgate.com/relationships-between-salt-potassium-6609.html PLEASE SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS!!! INDEED: Get a $75 SPONSORED JOB CREDIT to get your jobs more visibility at https://Indeed.com/SOMETHING Support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Terms & conditions apply. AURA: Save on the perfect gift by visiting https://AuraFrames.com to get $35-off Aura’s best-selling Carver Mat frames by using promo code SOMETHING at checkout! SHOPIFY: Sign up for a $1 per-month trial period at https://Shopify.com/sysk . Go to SHOPIFY.com/sysk to grow your business – no matter what stage you’re in! MINT MOBILE: Cut your wireless bill to $15 a month at https://MintMobile.com/something! $45 upfront payment required (equivalent to $15/mo.). New customers on first 3 month plan only. Additional taxes, fees, & restrictions apply. HERS: Hers is changing women's healthcare by providing access to GLP-1 weekly injections with the same active ingredient as Ozempic and Wegovy, as well as oral medication kits. Start your free online visit today at https://forhers.com/sysk DELL: It's your last chance to snag Dell Technologies’ lowest prices of the year before the holidays! If you've been waiting for an AI-ready PC, this is their biggest sale of the year! Shop now at https://Dell.com/deals PROGRESSIVE: The Name Your Price tool from Progressive can help you save on car insurance! You just tell Progressive what you want to pay and get options within your budget. Try it today at https://Progressive.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Mike Carruthers?

  Gifts mean more when they have the power to give more. They can inspire more discovery, give more confidence, and unwrap more of who you are. This Black Friday, give a gift that goes beyond the box. The Dell XPS 13 Laptop. With a beautiful design and cutting-edge performance, it helps you unlock more possibilities. It's the thinnest, lightest XPS laptop yet, with touchscreen, a backlit keyboard, and long-lasting battery life to power you through your day. Built with a durable aluminum chassis, weighing just 2.2 pounds, and Intel Core processors,

• 0:42Mike Carruthers?

  it's fast, reliable, and portable enough to keep up wherever you go. Visit dell.com to explore the possibilities with XPS. While shopping, you'll also find great perks like Dell Rewards, fast, free shipping, premium support, and financing with flexible payment options. Plus, you can find great deals on monitors and accessories. That means you can score a whole new setup now for less. This Black Friday sale is one you don't want to miss. Head to dell.com/deals. That's dell.com/deals.

• 1:28Mike Carruthers?

  Today on Something You Should Know. Being happy certainly makes you smile, but does smiling make you happy? Then rituals. We all have them. They don't really do anything, but they're so important. In fact...

• 1:44Speaker 01

  As far as we know, there is no culture, whether past or present, that has no rituals. In fact, when we look at our own cultures, we will see that the most important moments of our lives, like birthdays and weddings, all of these moments are shrouded in ritual.

• 1:58Mike Carruthers?

  Also, does eating salt really raise your blood pressure? And the science of exercise. The benefits are greater than you may realize.

• 2:07Speaker 02

  We focus too much on weight. I think, you know, your health is what really matters, and there are so many other benefits of just being fit. And so, even if you're not losing weight, you're still getting all kinds of wonderful benefits.

• 2:21Mike Carruthers?

  All this today on Something You Should Know.

• 2:26Mike Carruthers?

  I imagine most of us shop for clothes online at least some of the time. And there's always that little mystery. Is what shows up at your door actually going to look like what you think you ordered? We've all had that experience. I know my wife has ordered dresses that look beautiful in the pictures, but when they arrived, eh, not so beautiful. Cheap looking, disappointing. And that's one of the reasons we've become such big fans of Quince. When we order from Quince, we are confident we're going to get something really nice. The quality is consistently good and the prices are surprisingly reasonable. I've bought their cashmere sweaters, which are gorgeous,

• 3:09Mike Carruthers?

  and they start at just $60 for cashmere. My wife buys tons of stuff from Quince and we keep coming back. Quince works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middlemen, offering prices 50 to 80% less than similar brands. And with the holidays coming, that's a pretty compelling combination. Beautiful clothes and gifts without spending a fortune or wondering what's really going to show up at the door. I really do recommend Quince. It's one of those companies that has earned our trust. Give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com.

• 3:52Mike Carruthers?

  Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, please let them know it was Something You Should Know. It's the best way to support the show.

• 4:22Mike Carruthers?

  Hi, and welcome to Something You Should Know. We start today with a question. Does smiling make you happier? Or does being happy make you smile? Well, clearly, being happy makes you smile. But smiling, according to the latest research, might make you a little bit happier, but it's not going to make you a lot happier. Here's what we do know about smiling. Everybody smiles. It is universal. People are born with the ability to smile. They don't copy the expression. Even babies who are born blind smile. Women smile more than men. Younger people smile more than older people.

• 5:05Mike Carruthers?

  Males with high testosterone smile least of all. A smiling person is judged to be more pleasant, attractive, sincere, sociable, and competent than a non-smiling person. Babies reserve a special smile for family members, and a newborn baby shows a preference for a smiling face over a non-smiling face. And that is something you should know.

• 5:35Mike Carruthers?

  I guess we all have little rituals we take part in. Around the holidays, there are millions of rituals. But all year long, we participate in rituals because... Well, actually, I'm not sure why we participate in rituals. I guess it makes us feel good, but there has to be more to it than that. So, let's find out why this apparently universal practice of rituals seems ingrained in so much of human behavior. And here to discuss it is Demetrius Zygoulatis. He is an anthropologist and cognitive scientist who runs the Experimental Anthropology Lab at the University of Connecticut. He's author of a book called Ritual: How Seemingly Senseless Acts Make Life Worth Living.

• 6:21Mike Carruthers?

  Hi, Demetrius. Welcome to Something You Should Know.

• 6:23Speaker 01

  Hi, it's a pleasure to be with you.

• 6:26Mike Carruthers?

  So what is a ritual as you study it and define it? What is it?

• 6:30Speaker 01

  Rituals are regularly repeated sets of actions that feel special, they're not ordinary, and yet they have either no stated goal, or even when they do have a goal, that goal is not causally related to the actions themselves. I like to give the example of brushing your teeth, which is not a ritual. And the reason it's not a ritual is that it has a very specific purpose, and the actions we undertake to achieve that purpose are causally related. So I move my brush up and up and down, and that helps me remove food from my teeth, helping me make them clean. Now, if I woke up every morning and I waved my toothbrush in the air

• 7:16Speaker 01

  with the belief that this will help me clean my teeth, or for that matter, without any belief at all, now that would be an example of a ritual.

• 7:25Mike Carruthers?

  So it's really, it's really something that does nothing, and yet it has meaning anyway?

• 7:31Speaker 01

  Exactly. And that's why it's such a fascinating topic to study, because people consider their rituals deeply meaningful, and they put a lot of time, resources, and effort into those rituals. Some of the rituals that I studied even involve very painful, even excruciating things, like walking on fire, having your body pierced with needles and skewers. And people consider these rituals very, very important in their lives. And yet, when I ask them why they perform these rituals, and I've asked hundreds, if not thousands of people that question, they have a very hard time explaining why they're important. Most of the time, they'll just look at me and they'll go,

• 8:13Speaker 01

  "What do you mean? These are our traditions. That's what we do. That's who we are."

• 8:19Mike Carruthers?

  Does everyone, or at least every culture, have rituals? Has there ever been a culture that didn't have any?

• 8:27Speaker 01

  As far as we know, there is no culture, whether past or present, that has no rituals. In fact, when we look at our own cultures, we will see that the most important moments of our lives, whether these are personal moments, like birthdays and weddings, or collective moments, like presidential inaugurations, all of these moments are shrouded in ritual.

• 8:52Mike Carruthers?

  Why is it so universal? If, in fact, rituals don't really do anything, why are they so important to everybody?

• 9:01Speaker 01

  This is the big question that my research has been asking. Now anthropologists have long pointed out that rituals, although they have no practical impact on the world, that is not to say that they have no impact at all. So they've pointed out that rituals can have important psychological and social effects. But these theories remained untested for a very long time. And it's only in recent years that we were able to put them to the test and bring scientific measurements into anthropological research in order to be able to understand what these rituals actually do for us. And what we're finding out is that they can play very important functions for us.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  They help us find comfort, help us find connection and meaning in life, and they help shape our sense of who we are as a person and as a member of the various groups that we belong to.

• 9:57Mike Carruthers?

  There are rituals, though, that I can think of, pretty benign rituals, but rituals nonetheless of, you know, rubbing a rabbit's foot or, you know, for good luck kind of thing. And it doesn't work, yet people still do it. And even, and if it did work, then it wouldn't be a ritual, would it?

• 10:17Speaker 01

  True, but even those actions that seem utterly pointless, we are finding that they might have important functions as well, important psychological functions.

• 10:29Mike Carruthers?

  Why?

• 10:29Speaker 01

  For example, you mentioned good luck rituals. We're finding that if you were to search for places or situations in which individual ritualization takes place, things like superstitions, for example, the best places to look for that would be things like a casino, or a sports stadium, or perhaps a hospital, or war zones. All of these situations, that's where we see that people spontaneously engage in all of those ritualized actions. And what all of these situations have in common is that they involve a lot of uncertainty and a lot of anxiety. So anthropologists have theorized a long time ago that perhaps engaging in rituals is

• 11:13Speaker 01

  an attempt to overcome this anxiety. Now, how exactly this works, we didn't know. Recent research provides evidence about how this exactly might work.

• 11:23Mike Carruthers?

  And that evidence is?

• 11:25Speaker 01

  For example, in my own research that I've done with my colleagues, when we bring people into a lab and we stress them up, we see that their behavior becomes more ritualized, their movements become more repetitive. And we take this research into the real world and we go into religious temples and we measure people's anxiety before and after they perform their cultural rituals. And we see that performing those rituals helps them reduce anxiety. We can see this in their heart rate variability, in their cortisol levels, and even at the subjective level, they feel calmer. How does that exactly happen? In other studies in the laboratory, we see that when people engage in those repetitive

• 12:08Speaker 01

  movements that are very common in rituals, even if they're stripped of any kind of meaning, that in itself helps them deal with anxiety. And the reason for that is that it is related to the way our brain works. Our brain doesn't just passively absorb stimuli, it makes active predictions about the state of the world all of the time. Before I even finish the sentence that I'm about to say, you have certain expectations about what's going to follow. Our brain does this in all kinds of domains. And when we don't have this ability to make predictions, where we don't know what's about to come, uh, that's when we feel stressed. And that's where ritual comes in.

• 12:49Speaker 01

  Because if ritual is anything, it is structure, it is order, it is ritual is very predictable. When we engage in a, in a familiar ritual, we know exactly what's going to happen. We know exactly when it is going to happen. And we know exactly how it's going to happen. And this gives our brain a sense of control. And it doesn't really matter whether this sense of control is real or illusory. All that matters is that it actually works. And this is what we're finding in our studies. People who engage in those repetitive rituals, uh, they're better able to cope with anxiety.

• 13:26Mike Carruthers?

  But you mentioned at the beginning here that you study rituals of, of cultures that, that do incredibly painful things as rituals. How does, how does that help your anxiety? Seems like if you came at me with a needle, I don't think I'd be less anxious, I'd be more anxious.

• 13:44Speaker 01

  That is an excellent point. In fact, some of the rituals that I've studied, they, they involve unbearable pain. Some of the ceremonies that are studied in the, on the island of Mauritius, for example, they are Hindu ceremonies that involve piercing the body with hundreds of needles and even skewers and rods through the cheeks. And walking barefooted on the burning asphalt under the midsummer tropical sun. And all that is happening as people are carrying these very large shrines that can, can weigh a hundred pounds. And, and when they reach the, their destination, which is six hours later, they have to climb this hill, carrying these burdens up to the, to the top of the hill where the, the temple of Murugan lies.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  So this is really a, a full day of self-imposed torture. And even in this context, we have done studies that show that they, uh, might offer tangible benefits to those people who do them. So in the context of these rituals, we look at people's physiological reactions. And of course, we see that during that day, they are extremely stressed. Orders of magnitude more stressed than they would be in their everyday life. And we see this in things like their electrodermal activity. So their skin conductance, which is a measure of stress. Now, when we measure the health outcomes of those rituals, we see that a month later,

• 15:09Speaker 01

  those who have engaged in those rituals, they have better subjective well-being and quality of life than those who didn't. And within the group that does the ritual, we see that the more they suffer on the day, the more pronounced these effects.

• 15:25Mike Carruthers?

  Is there any indication, though, that someone who, say, pierces themselves with sharp needles or walks on hot coals and does these very painful things, that they get more of an internal benefit from those rituals because they're so painful and involved, compared to someone who just rubs a rabbit's foot because that's their ritual? Or can you get the same from any ritual if you believe you get the same from any ritual?

• 15:57Speaker 01

  Yes, and here's where meaning comes in. We know from psychological research that we intuitively attribute meaning to effort. So if you think of some of the moments in our lives that we consider to be the most important to us, and those are the things that fundamentally shaped us as a person. So they changed our personal autobiographical narrative. Those moments will very often include times of suffering. The time perhaps we climbed a mountain, or the time a woman might have given birth. The time we survived a car accident, even some of these traumatic moments. We come to consider them significant in our personal narrative. We attribute meaning to them.

• 16:42Speaker 01

  And the fact that rituals involve...

• 16:46Speaker 01

  This type of suffering, that at least in the rituals that I study, is self-imposed. So the fact that you chose to do this ritual, the fact that you chose to put so much effort into it, also makes it a much more meaningful experience in our mind and in our memory.

• 17:02Mike Carruthers?

  Rituals is our topic today, and I'm speaking with Demetrius Zygolatus. He is an anthropologist and author of the book Ritual: How Seemingly Senseless Acts Make Life Worth Living. If you listen to something you should know regularly, you know we talk about sleep quite a bit here. And one of the things I've learned from those conversations is just how important a good night's sleep is. And I've always been someone who loves his sleep. So I was intrigued when I heard about Beam Dream. It's a delicious nighttime drink formulated to help you fall asleep faster, stay asleep, and wake up refreshed.

• 17:42Mike Carruthers?

  It contains ingredients like reishi, magnesium, L-theanine, epigenin, and melatonin. They have lots of great flavors. I tried the cinnamon cocoa flavor, and I love the idea of having something warm and delicious as part of winding down at night. And it's less than 20 calories per serving. Dream has improved more than 30 million nights of sleep, and they back it up with a 30-day money-back guarantee. If you don't sleep better, you get your money back. And right now, there's a terrific offer. Go to shopbeam.com/sysk. Use code S Y S K and get 50% off during Beam's cyber sale.

• 18:26Mike Carruthers?

  Only available while flavors are in stock. With this incredible discount, that means you'll pay just 83 cents per night for the best sleep of your life. So seriously, think about it. I mean, how much would you pay for a truly great night of sleep? Beam is just 83 cents per night. So go to shopbeam.com/sysk now. That's shopbeam.com/sysk.

• 18:54Mike Carruthers?

  Well, here's something you should know about your bones. We all hear about calcium and vitamin D, and they're important. But there's another ingredient in healthy bones that hardly anybody talks about: collagen. Think of your bones like a building, right? Collagen provides the framework, while minerals like calcium help give it strength. Here's the problem, though. As we get older, our bodies naturally produce less collagen. That's why I was interested in Native Path Bone Health Collagen. It's not just ordinary collagen. It contains a specialized form called Fortabone. And there's some interesting research behind it. In a study of 131 post-menopausal women,

• 19:38Mike Carruthers?

  researchers saw improvements in bone mineral density after 12 months, up to 7.7% in an important part of the hip. Native Path gives you the same 5 grams of Fortabone used in that research in an easy-to-mix daily formula. I just got mine, because bone health is something I'd rather pay attention to now than wish I had later. And here's a great reason to try Native Path Bone Health Collagen right now. You can save up to 48%, get free shipping, and it's backed by a 365-day money-back guarantee. Now, that's a pretty compelling offer if you've been thinking about doing something

• 20:22Mike Carruthers?

  to support your bone health. Go to getbetterbones.com/sysk. That's G-E-T betterbones.com/sysk. So, Demetrius, in these cultures where they engage in these elaborate rituals that are very painful, doesn't anyone ever stop and go, "Hey, wait, wait a minute. Wait, why are we doing this? Couldn't we do something else that's perhaps a little less painful?" Or do they just... "We just do it. It's just what we do."

• 20:59Speaker 01

  That's what people say when I ask them why they perform their rituals. The most common answer I get is that it's just what we do. So as human beings, we tend to do as the Romans do. Now, this is very important for us because we are a hyper-social species. So most of the things we learn in life, they actually come from other people, whether it's through intentional instruction or just by observing them. So we have evolved to imitate what others around us do, and especially imitate what people of our group do, and particularly influential individuals in that group. So if everybody in your group does it, if the most prestigious individuals in your group do it, then you end up doing it as well.

• 21:44Speaker 01

  And by doing this, you also reap the benefits of doing it. We see, for example, that people who engage in very painful rituals, that gives a boost in their reputation. So there are studies conducted in India by an anthropologist called Ellie Power. And she's finding that performing these very painful rituals just once a year is the equivalent of going to the temple every single week in terms of how you're perceived by others. People who perform these rituals more frequently or who pay a higher price to perform them, they're seen as more trustworthy. They're better able to call upon others when they need things like borrowing money

• 22:27Speaker 01

  or help with taking care of their children and so on and so forth. So those social benefits are very real.

• 22:37Mike Carruthers?

  But those social benefits are not why they do it, or is it?

• 22:42Speaker 01

  At least it seems that at a reflective conscious level, they are not why they do it. So people, even as people recognize that by taking part in that ritual, you feel bonded with each other. I don't think anybody has ever told me, "I do this ritual to boost my status." Now, at the back of people's head, that might be there, of course. And at some level, we're conscious that by virtue of engaging in those rituals, that changes the way people see us. But I don't think that's the primary motivation. I think the primary motivation is just to fit in.

• 23:18Mike Carruthers?

  Well, getting away from the painful rituals, because we don't really have a whole lot of those here in the West. I mean, it doesn't seem like that's all that popular, that our rituals tend to be much more benign and, you know, like, and this time of year, Christmas has a lot of rituals where people do things and decorate in certain ways. They don't do any other time of year because it's Christmas and they do it because that's what we do, but also because I think it makes people feel good.

• 23:52Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I tend to see rituals as social technologies. They are successful social technologies because they're able to harness all kinds of different mechanisms, the psychological mechanisms. So it is not just pain and suffering that they can recruit in order to make an occasion seem more special. They can recruit things like emotional arousal. They can recruit things like sensory pageantry. And that's where what you see with holiday celebrations, they're bursting with pageantry. They're full of colors and smells and sometimes literally bells and whistles. So they stimulate all of your senses. And because the most

• 24:36Speaker 01

  important moments of our lives are related to extravagant ceremonies, weddings, graduation ceremonies, birthday parties, whenever we see an extravagant ceremony, immediately in our brain, that signals that this is an important moment. And this is an important moment, this is a moment to pay attention to, this is a moment to look forward to, this is a moment to fully embrace.

• 25:00Mike Carruthers?

  Is there any sense that rituals are on the rise or on the decline, or it's pretty steady, or does it go in waves or anything like that?

• 25:11Speaker 01

  The way I see it is that ritual has always been part of our nature, and it's just as much a part of our nature today as it has always been.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  Sometimes we might get the sense that ritual is in decline, just because in parts of the world, in the West in particular, we see that membership in at least the major religious organizations is declining. But that is not to say that people are abandoning ritual altogether. In fact, what I see is that the more people stop performing some of the more traditional rituals, perhaps related to the church in the American setting, the more they seek the same kinds of experiences in other domains of life. So you can find collective rituals, for example,

• 26:01Speaker 01

  in the context of musical concerts, or sports stadiums, or events like Burning Man, or Coachella. You can find them in politics, you can find them in all of our secular institutions. You can find them in the courtroom, you can find them in university graduation ceremonies, and so on and so forth. So ritual has always been there, and it's still there. The context in which it is performed might often change, but our need for ritual remains the same.

• 26:32Mike Carruthers?

  And so many of those rituals that you just mentioned in the courtroom and at graduation, I'm thinking of those kind of things that, you know, why do we do them? Well, that's just what we do. It's just part of the, it's part of the ceremony, it's part of the pageantry, it's just what we do. Like, you're almost not supposed to question it.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  That is true. That is what it feels like to people. It's just, we're not supposed to question certain traditions. And ritual traditions are particularly the kinds of traditions that feel this way. There are studies that actually show that when you suggest to people that certain of their most ritualized public holidays, things like Thanksgiving, if you were to change those holidays, people get morally appalled by this. They find this offensive, that somebody would suggest making changes to those rituals. They're not supposed to change, even as they do change. Because Thanksgiving actually, in the past, was moved.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  It was moved by a week earlier, so that the the holiday period would be extended, and people would spend more money.

• 27:51Mike Carruthers?

  And people didn't like that.

• 27:52Speaker 01

  People didn't like that. Most states actually refused to enforce this. And recently, so now nobody remembers this anymore. But recently, there was a study that asked people this question. How would you feel if if the government wanted to move Thanksgiving by a week? And and people really felt that this would be offensive.

• 28:12Mike Carruthers?

  You know, as you're talking, I'm thinking, you know, back to 2020, when we were all locked down. And one of the things that happened was that for the class of 2020, at every grade level, at every school, there was no graduation. And people were talking about that, that how how sorry we felt for members of the class of 2020, because there would be no graduation, which is just a ritual. It doesn't do anything other than recognize a passage in life. But people felt really bad about that, because graduation is so important.

• 28:50Speaker 01

  It's very important, and we know this. We know we all we've all heard people, at least half heard people, say that because their university didn't didn't have a graduation ceremony, they felt that their degree was diminished. And we saw people go to great lengths to to offer this ritual experience to the students. So in India, there was a university that created avatars for every student and had a virtual ceremony and invited famous guest speakers for the commencement address. And they had their own avatars. In other parts of the of the world, we saw that schools might have socially distant

• 29:30Speaker 01

  graduation ceremonies in all sorts of innovative ways, including somewhere a ski lift, so they could they could maintain social distance. So our institutions recognize this need for for ritual.

• 29:44Mike Carruthers?

  Well, after listening to you, I think it's clear we all recognize that need for ritual. It's important to all of us, to one degree or another. Demetrius Zygoulatis has been my guest. He is an anthropologist and cognitive scientist who runs the Experimental Anthropology Lab at the University of Connecticut. And the name of his book is Ritual: How Seemingly Senseless Acts Make Life Worth Living. And there's a link to that book in the show notes. Thanks, Demetrius.

• 30:12Speaker 01

  Thank you, Mike. It's been a real pleasure.

• 30:15Mike Carruthers?

  This episode is sponsored by Vinted. You know, I remember interviewing an organizing expert who offered this really clever trick for figuring out which clothes you should get rid of. You go to your closet and you look at the clothes hanging there. And chances are, the ones toward the middle are the clothes you wear most often. But the clothes pushed way over to the left or the right, some of those you probably haven't worn in years, and yet there they hang, taking up space. But here's the thing, you could turn those clothes into money. That's where Vinted comes in. Vinted is a secondhand marketplace app where you can sell clothes you no longer wear and make some extra money.

• 30:58Mike Carruthers?

  Listing on Vinted is so quick and simple, and when something sells, Vinted creates a prepaid shipping label for you. And here's what I really like, Vinted charges no seller fees. So whatever you earn from selling your clothes, you keep. Think about that. Clothes that you aren't wearing, taking up space, could be putting money back in your pocket. So here's my suggestion, take five minutes, go look at the far ends of your closet and see what's hanging there. You might be surprised. Download the Vinted app for free and start listing. With no seller fees, you keep every dollar you earn. That's Vinted, V-I-N-T-E-D.

• 31:41Mike Carruthers?

  So here's the problem with drinking water. You can't tell if it's clean just by looking at it. A glass of water can look perfectly clear and still contain things you definitely don't want to drink. In fact, three out of four US homes have toxic chemicals in their tap water. An ordinary refrigerator and pitcher filters, they do little to remove many of these contaminants. Which is why Aqua True is different. Aqua True is a countertop water purifier with a patented four-stage reverse osmosis system. It's tested and certified to remove 84 contaminants, including chlorine, lead, forever chemicals,

• 32:25Mike Carruthers?

  and those microplastics. And there's no plumbing, no installation, you just put it on the counter and you get pure, great tasting water. You can actually feel good about drinking. Aquatrue was even named best countertop water filter by Good Housekeeping. Look, if you're gonna drink water every single day, and you probably should, well, why guess what's in it? Go to aquatrue.com now for 20% off your purifier using promo code S Y S K. Aquatrue even comes with a 30-day best tasting water guarantee. That's aquatrue.com, A Q U A T R U dot com, promo code S Y S K.

• 33:12Mike Carruthers?

  You often hear phrases like, "The human body was designed to move." "Exercise is good for you." And you can often hear people talk about how much they enjoy exercising. But for a lot of other people, exercise is hard. It's hard to start exercising, and even harder to stick with it. So why is it something supposedly so necessary and natural for our health is such a challenge to do? Here to discuss that and to offer some suggestions on making exercise less of a struggle is Daniel Lieberman, professor of biological sciences and a professor of the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard University.

• 33:56Mike Carruthers?

  He's author of a book called Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do is Healthy and Rewarding. Hi, Daniel, welcome.

• 34:05Speaker 02

  Thank you, I'm pleasure to be here.

• 34:07Mike Carruthers?

  So why is it, if if exercise is so critical for our wellbeing, why is it so hard to do routinely?

• 34:16Speaker 02

  Well, that's a good question, and to understand the answer to that, it's important to make a distinction between physical activity, which is moving, right? Doing anything, right? You know, sweeping the floor, buying groceries, you name it. And exercise, excuse me, which is a discretionary voluntary physical activity for the sake of health and fitness. And we evolved to be physically active, but we didn't evolve to exercise. And the reason for that is that until recently, people had to be very physically active, but they were also energy limited. And And when you're energy limited, doing unnecessary discretionary physical activity is crazy, right? Like, so, for example, I ran five miles this morning, which cost me about 500 calories. You know, when you're struggling to get enough calories, wasting

• 35:01Speaker 02

  500 calories on a completely useless run in the morning is a really terrible idea. And so it's an instinct not to, you know, it's an instinct to avoid unnecessary physical activity, which is exactly what this exercise is.

• 35:15Mike Carruthers?

  So this is really all part of our mechanism for survival, right?

• 35:20Speaker 02

  Life is really just about, you know, food in, babies out, right? And the reason we eat food is for nutrients and calories, and calories is a unit of energy. So, so until recently, people struggled to get enough calories. It takes, you know, about 2,000 to 3,000 calories to, you know, to run a human body for a given day. And, and if you're a farmer or, you know, or a hunter gatherer, you know, getting those calories is, is not easy. And, and, you know, you also have to pay for the, pay for your children's caloric needs, you know, their brains and all that sort of stuff. And, and so you're, you know, you're struggling to get enough calories. And, and so spending it on a, you know, treadmill to spend even more calories, right, is a, is a very odd, modern thing.

• 36:06Mike Carruthers?

  And yet, there are plenty of people who do exercise and claim to love it. You ran five miles today. You didn't do it because you hate it. You did it because either you see the reward in it, or you get pleasure from it, or both.

• 36:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I mean, it's, it's, it's a paradox, right? We evolved to be physically active, and we have all kinds of mechanisms that reward it, right? So, one of the reasons I exercise every day is that I have a, I'm addicted to it. I have a dopamine, you know, dopamine is the molecule of more. It's the chemical, you know, the neurotransmitter which says, do it again, right? And when I, I have lots of dopamine receptors in my brain that are thirsty and hungry for more dopamine. And, and when I exercise, they get that dopamine hit. And if I don't exercise, they're, they make me crabby and unpleasant. But if you, the thing is, if you're unfit... And or struggling with your weight, those dopamine receptors are going to be fewer in number and possibly even impaired in their function.

• 37:06Speaker 02

  And so people who aren't already exercising a lot or being physically active don't get the same reward. So it's a very strange mechanism. And the reason that you might ask, why is that work the way it does is that in the past, nobody ever was physically inactive. That just wasn't possible to be active every day in order to hunt and gather or farm or whatever. And so we never evolved to cope with persistent physical inactivity.

• 37:34Mike Carruthers?

  I remember speaking with you some years ago, and I remember you telling me about other cultures where, you know, exercise is like, why would you do that? Tell that story.

• 37:47Speaker 02

  I was doing research in actually northern Mexico among the Tarahumara, also who call themselves the Ramari. And I know they're famous for long distance running, right? They have these incredible races where they sometimes run, you know, 50, 60 miles, right? And I was being a good anthropologist and I was going around and talking to folks and asking them about their running and about their training. And of course, the idea of training is when you like run to get, you know, prepare yourself for a race. And when I was asking all these folks about training, like the word didn't even exist in their language. I was working through a translator. And so I was like explaining how, you know, this guy, you know, here, you know, the translator

• 38:30Speaker 02

  was explaining that I like ran every day in order to get ready for races. And the guy looked at me and I didn't even need a translator to figure this out. And he said, why would anybody run if they didn't have to? And that for me, actually, that was the beginning of the book because I suddenly had this realization that my exercise habits are really weird.

• 38:47Mike Carruthers?

  For them, yeah, but maybe that explains why exercise is so hard because.

• 38:54Mike Carruthers?

  Because to do it artificially, to exercise for the sake of exercise is not something humans did. We exercise to survive and to thrive, but not to exercise just to exercise. I don't imagine too many, I don't imagine any other animals exercise just for the heck of it.

• 39:14Speaker 02

  Well, it's not entirely true. So there's a very famous paper, one of my favorite papers, let me put it that way. There's a biologist in the Netherlands who, who puts mice on treadmills and, and she noticed that she had mice in her backyard. And one day she thought, you know, what, what happens if I put a, put a tread, you know, a little, a little running wheel in my backyard. So she put a running wheel in her backyard and put some cameras on it, night cameras, went to bed. In the morning, when she woke up, she, she looked at the camera feed and to her astonishment, wild mice in her backyard had gotten on this little running wheel and had run for a while. In fact, other animals had gotten on it too. I think a frog got on it and even a slug had gotten on the, on

• 39:55Speaker 02

  the, on the wheel. So, you know, other animals do physical activity and why they do it, you know, well, nobody knows, right? And mice are really interesting because mice will naturally run, you know, several kilometers, right? They're a little bit unusual, but it's certainly part of their behavior. They're wired to do it. But the vast majority of animals avoid unnecessary physical activity and humans are no exception, except we now live in this very strange, modern world where we've got elevators and shopping carts and, you know, electric can openers and you know, you'd name it, right? And, and so basically now we don't really need to be physically active anymore, but yet our bodies require physical activity in order to, to turn on a whole variety of repair and maintenance

• 40:40Speaker 02

  mechanisms that, that keep us healthy. And so we've had to create in the modern industrial or post-industrial world, this really weird behavior called exercise.

• 40:50Mike Carruthers?

  Which people resist like crazy.

• 40:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, and there's nothing wrong with them, right? It's normal. I mean, I think one of the problems with the way we think about exercise is that we make people exercise about exercise. We make them confused and anxious and feel bullied and shamed about it, right? But it's a fundamental instinct not to do physical activity unless it's rewarding or necessary. And so we need to be more compassionate towards our fellow human beings who are struggling to, you know, do something really weird, like get on a treadmill and, you know, run for five miles and get absolutely nowhere. And it really kind of, you know, let's face it, a very unpleasant kind of context.

• 41:29Mike Carruthers?

  Is it that exercise is so good for you, or movement is so good for you, or lack of movement is so bad for you?

• 41:38Speaker 02

  Uh huh, that's exactly the point, right? Which is that we evolved to be physically active, you know, not a crazy amount, you know, two to three hours a day, basically. But that's a normal part of our environment, right? And when you remove that, then all of a sudden, all kinds of natural mechanisms which our bodies mount get turned off. And so, and so we often say that exercise is medicine, but a really more accurate statement is that the lack of physical activity is really, it makes us more vulnerable to disease and accelerates the aging process. So, so exercise isn't really actually medicine, it's the lack of exercise that causes problems.

• 42:22Mike Carruthers?

  And yet, when people exercise, when they, you know, especially when they exercise a lot, they get injured, they get hurt, they get chronic, you know, joint problems and all that. So, so that may be going too far.

• 42:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think we sometimes exaggerate that stuff. I mean, look, if running was that dangerous, you know, then there could be no runners left, right? You know, I think we sometimes exaggerate injuries and that sort of thing. I mean, it is true that people, exercise has trade-offs, everything has trade-offs, there are costs and benefits to effort, everything. And so injury is always a potential there. But again, remember, our ancestors weren't like running marathons.

• 43:03Speaker 02

  You know, they were, you know, occasionally running, they were mostly walking, they were carrying, they were doing things that don't cause injury. A lot of the stuff that we do today that causes injury is because, you know, you get weekend warriors who aren't really all that fit. They're, you know, they're, they're, they're, they're not, you know, prepared for the stresses that their body then encounters. And then, of course, they overdo it and then they get injured. But that's, but that's again, a kind of weird, modern way in which we exercise.

• 43:28Mike Carruthers?

  And so what is your general prescription for exercise?

• 43:32Speaker 02

  I think we can say a few things. The first is that always some is better than none. You know, if you just get just a little bit of physical activity every day and you just look at the, at the outcome of that, it has enormous effects on people's health. It increases people's longevity, it decreases their vulnerability to a wide range of diseases, and that curve continues, right? So, for example, on average, for most people, if they exercise about 20 minutes a day, which is 150 minutes a week, and it can be just like walking, it doesn't have to be, you know, running, that can decrease your overall life history, you know, your longevity by about 30%, and reduce your vulnerability to a wide range of diseases enormously. And then the curve continues to go down, and

• 44:17Speaker 02

  then eventually it kind of tails off. And so if you do anything more than an hour a day, you're not going to get any more benefit from doing an hour and 10 minutes a day, or two hours a day, or whatever. So, so basically, the answer is that some is better than none. More yields greater benefits, but those benefits begin to tail off. And then, of course, there's variation in the kind of exercise that you do. I mean, you know, are you running? Are you walking? Are you doing strength training, you know, weights, et cetera? And the answer is, you know, mix it up, right? You know, it's good to do a little bit of strength training, especially as you age, but it's also, you know, aerobic physical activity is really important for kind of your base core, your, your, your fitness.

• 45:01Speaker 02

  You know, some kind of mix is always kind of important, but there's no one prescription, there never will be.

• 45:06Mike Carruthers?

  But does, you know, you go to any suburban Town around the world. And you know, four or five o'clock in the afternoon, you see lots of people out walking that are clearly not athletes. They're just, you know, people out for their afternoon walk. And my guess is that most of them think that they're walking because that's good for them. Is there some real benefit to that walk? Or is that, like you say, some is better than nothing, but how much good is it doing?

• 45:35Speaker 02

  Oh, absolutely, there's a benefit to it. There was no question about it. I mean, if you look at, I mean, there are, there are maybe a hundred of studies by now, epidemiological studies, which show a dose response curve to like, like, for example, steps per day and various kinds of outcomes, like cardiovascular disease, or diabetes, or just, you know, how long you live. And so, for example, let's take steps per day. You know, for most studies, if you look at that curve, the more steps you take, the better the outcome, up until about seven or eight thousand steps a day, and then the curve begins to start leveling off. Again, those are big epidemiological studies. There's a variation from person to person. But sure, there's no question that that's physical activity has important benefits.

• 46:20Speaker 02

  And importantly, we understand a lot of the mechanisms behind it, right? Because when you're physically active, your, your body produces antioxidants, your body produces enzymes that, that repair proteins and repair your DNA. Your body produces all kinds of, turns on all kinds of genes that, that, you know, work on your brain and your, your liver and, you know, I mean, every system of the body, pretty much, is affected. Your, your immune system. People who exercise 150 minutes a week were shown in a study to be 2.5 times less likely to die of COVID. This is before the, before the vaccines were, were produced. So it affects every system of your body.

• 47:00Speaker 02

  And so, yeah, those folks who are out there walking are doing, doing themselves a real benefit, absolutely.

• 47:07Mike Carruthers?

  I remember hearing some time ago, and I don't remember where it was from, that, that there is a difference between exercising like, On a treadmill versus exercising out in nature or something that that is there is it seems to me that exercise is exercise.

• 47:25Speaker 02

  Well, for one, exercising on a treadmill is boring, in my opinion, you know, I mean, I, you know, if you, you wanna, I mean, I have a hard time exercise and I put people on treadmills for a living, right, I just find them really hard to do. But apart from that, there are, it's like, if you just compare running on a treadmill versus running over ground, the treadmill is a little bit different because after all, the ground is moving underneath you. So it's actually pushing you in a slightly different way. So a lot of people, for example, put the treadmill at a, at a 1% incline to equal the, to kind of compensate for the fact that the treadmill belt is moving. Of course, the other thing that's different about the treadmill is that every step is exactly the same. Whereas when you're in

• 48:09Speaker 02

  the real world, you know, every time you land, your foot's at a slightly different angle, there are, you know, rocks and inclines and, and, you know, and turns and all that sort of stuff. So, you know, I think treadmill running is, you know, makes people much more susceptible to repetitive stress injuries. But you know, if you like running on a treadmill, if you like listening to a podcast on a treadmill, or, you know, watching a movie or whatever, all power to you. That's, there's nothing wrong with it. I think, you know, I think we should be, you know, whatever works for people is, is good.

• 48:39Mike Carruthers?

  But for whatever reason, people try to exercise and fail and give up. And well, I think I, I know the reason, and I think it has to do with the failure to lose weight, that people think they're gonna lose a lot of weight when they exercise. And when they don't, they say, well, see, and they quit.

• 49:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, I mean, I think part of the problem is that we've tied so much, we just, we focus too much on weight. I think, you know, your health is what really matters. And, and the, the reason to exercise is not solely to lose weight. There are so many other benefits of just being fit. And so.

• 49:20Speaker 02

  Even if you're not losing weight, you're still getting all kinds of wonderful benefits. And, um, and look about thinking about, you know, it doesn't have to be exercise in the gym. Like, how many, how many people think of dancing as exercise? But, you know, go dancing with some friends for, you know, people go often will dance for hours. We don't think of that as exercise, but it's darn good for you in all kinds of different ways. Or playing a game of soccer, or playing a game of tennis, or going for a walk, or hiking with your, with a friend or something. You know, the point is that physical activity has all kinds of benefits. And weight loss is a component, but it's not the be all and end all. And what we should really be is promoting people's health and wellbeing.

• 50:02Speaker 02

  And if that helps them lose weight, that's fine, but it's not the only reason to do it.

• 50:07Mike Carruthers?

  So give people some, some motivation, give people a reason to do this because, you know, it's going to be the start of the year. People are thinking, ah, I need to exercise more, but they probably won't. So how about a little motivational talk?

• 50:23Speaker 02

  Average everyday human beings are really extraordinary athletes and, and can do amazing things. And, and, um, and you don't need to run a marathon. You don't need to, you know, be able to run to the top of the, you know, the, you know, the Empire State Building or, or, or whatever, to get the benefits of just moderate levels of physical activity. And it, and it affects every single system of your body. It affects your immune system. It affects your, your brain. It affects your metabolism and prevent, helps prevent diabetes and heart disease. You know, we talk about, you know, breast cancer, cancer, for example, right? The number one cause of death in the United States is heart disease. The number two cause of death in the United States are cancer.

• 51:06Speaker 02

  And both of them are majorly affected by physical activity. Women who exercise 150 minutes a day or more can have 30 to 50% lower lifetime risk of breast cancer. How many people know that, right? And we're not talking a huge amount of, of physical activity. Physical activity is the number one way to help prevent a heart disease. If you care about Alzheimer's or dementia. Again, physical, nothing, nothing comes remotely as close to physical activity as a, as a preventative form of Alzheimer's. Now, will it guarantee that you won't get Alzheimer's? Guarantee that you won't get heart disease? Guarantee that you won't get cancer? No, of course not. But nothing really comes as close. And you get all kinds of other mental health benefits. You get,

• 51:49Speaker 02

  you know, a dopamine reward, you get serotonin reward, you get all your brain turns on all these wonderful chemicals that, that affect mental health. Physical activity has been shown to be as effective as any known medication for, for, for treating depression. Now, again, will it mean that you'll never get depression? Of course not. But all of these things together mean that, you know, there's really a lot of positives. But at the same time, I think we should also acknowledge, you know, it's also completely normal and natural to avoid it because after all, we evolved to have to work and have to do all kinds of stuff. But we also evolved to take it easy when we could. And so our inclinations to avoid physical activity are also deep and innate and normal and functional. And we shouldn't

• 52:35Speaker 02

  shame people and make them feel like they're somehow they're lazy for wanting to take the escalator instead of the stairs.

• 52:42Mike Carruthers?

  Well, I think that's a really important message because in, in all the talk of the importance of exercise and you're supposed to move and you need more activity. Is this idea that if you don't, there's something wrong with you, that you are lazy or there, there's just, you know, there's something wrong with you. And clearly that's not the case. I've been talking to Daniel Lieberman. He's a professor of biological sciences and a professor of the Department of Human Evolutionary Biology at Harvard. The name of his book is Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do is Healthy and Rewarding. And there's a link to that book in the show notes.

• 53:26Mike Carruthers?

  Everyone has heard that eating too much salt can raise your blood pressure. And that statement is actually based on research that was done in the 1940s that showed that people who had high blood pressure could lower it by reducing their intake of salt. As a result, it became this common advice to reduce salt in your diet to control your blood pressure. But in the last 25 years or so, research has shown that it's not just eating a lot of salt that can elevate your blood pressure. It's also not eating enough potassium. When you eat salt, it increases the amount of sodium in your blood, which causes you

• 54:06Mike Carruthers?

  to retain water, which increases your blood volume and therefore your blood pressure. Potassium regulates your blood pressure by stimulating your kidneys to excrete more sodium, thereby reducing blood volume and decreasing your blood pressure. So if you don't want to cut down on salt, you can simply increase the amount of potassium you consume. Foods high in potassium include spinach, broccoli, and beans. And that is something you should know. Hey, would you do me a favor and just take a moment, wherever you're listening to this podcast, there's a place probably where you can leave a review, or at least a rating. And just take a, just a few words would be great, and preferably a five-star review would be great.

• 54:51Mike Carruthers?

  It really does help us in ways we don't completely understand, but it really does help us. So please, a rating and review would be appreciated. I'm Mike Carruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know.

• 55:05Speaker 03

  Shop Black Friday appliance savings and get up to an extra $1,250 off select appliance purchases like GE Profile. Plus, free delivery on appliance purchases of $398 or more. Make life easier with the fridge that doubles as your personal kitchen assistant. Or upgrade your laundry room with the UltraFresh Vent System Plus Front Load Washer, so your clothes stay fresh after every single wash. Shop Black Friday appliance savings with fast, free delivery at The Home Depot. Offer valid November 4th through December 2nd at participating stores and at homedepot.com. U.S. only. See store online for details.

• 55:37Speaker 04

  Are you ever shopping online and suddenly a discount that helps you save pops up? It makes your day, sometimes even your week. Want that feeling month after month? Well, new customers who save by switching their home and auto insurance to Progressive, save hundreds. Cue your happy dance. Get your quote today at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company affiliates and other insurers. Not available in all states.