S05E142 Unpacking the 2024 CrossFit Health Summit: Fitness, Science, and Pursuit of Longevity
Discover the transformative power of fitness for both body and mind as co-host Sam Rhee @bergencosmetic takes host David Syvertsen @davesy85 through his enlightening experience at the CrossFit Health Summit @crossfithealth. It's not every day that you get a front-row seat to the convergence of cutting-edge science and grassroots wellness, where professionals and enthusiasts alike gather to redefine health paradigms.
From the potential of VO2 max as a longevity predictor to the intriguing idea of 'exercise snacks,' this episode unpacks a treasure trove of insights. You'll hear from CrossFit-adjacent experts like Drs. Rhonda Patrick @foundmyfitness, Tom McCoy @vitalhumandoc and Chris Palmer @chrispalmermd who are trailblazing a path for how we approach mental health, physical training and community.
Gear up for an exploration into the muscle-centric philosophy of Dr. Gabrielle Lyon @drgabriellelyon as we debate the nuances of high-protein diets and the crucial role of resistance training. The summit may have tested the physical limits of its participants with an old-school workout before the conference, but it's the mental takeaways that we hone in on, discussing strategies discussed by experts such as Graciano Rubio @wallstreetweightlifter for elite competition preparation and the underrated importance of recovery.
We delve into the societal shifts post-COVID-19, touching on how health trends could inform treatments for mental disorders. Whether you're a seasoned CrossFit devotee or simply curious about how metabolic health intersects with mental well-being, this conversation is poised to challenge and inspire your approach to wellness.
@crossfitbison @crossfittraining @crossfit @crossfitgames #crossfit #sports #exercise #health #movement #crossfitcoach #agoq #clean #fitness #ItAllStartsHere #CrossFitOpen #CrossFit #CrossFitCommunity @CrossFitAffiliates #supportyourlocalbox #crossfitaffiliate #personalizedfitness #crossfithealthsummit
S05E142 Unpacking the 2024 CrossFit Health Summit: Fitness, Science, and Pursuit of Longevity
TRANSCRIPT
David Syvertsen
Host
00:05
Hey everybody, welcome to the Herdfit Podcast with Dr Sam Rhee and myself, Coach David Syvertsen. His podcast is aimed at helping anyone and everyone looking to enhance their healthy lifestyle through fitness, nutrition and, most importantly, mindset. Alright, welcome back to the Herdfit Podcast. I am Coach David Syvertsen. I'm here with my co-host, Dr and Coach Sam Rhee, and we are going to Sam, show us your sweatshirt for all of our 68 YouTube views. Crossfit Health Summit. Sam was actually in Austin, Texas, a couple weeks ago at the. Is it an annual, once a year? I don't know.
00:46
This was the first one. I think they've had. Yeah, they haven't had one in a long time, and under new leadership. This probably is the first one CrossFit Health Summit, and this is oh, you tell me, Sam, who is this for?
Sam Rhee
Co-host
00:56
This is for anyone interested in health and also CrossFit. So it was actually about almost two 300 people, but only about 30 doctors. Apparently Don't you need to be a doctor to go.
David Syvertsen
Host
01:08
No, you don't. Okay, Most of them were. You used to be something like that right, Like a level one or something where you had to be a doctor to go.
Sam Rhee
Co-host
01:15
There was an MD level one which was for physicians, but that, or I mean healthcare providers, but that was just for, like, a medically oriented L1. This one was for anyone who was just interested in health and CrossFit, but I actually was under the impression you had to be MD. No, no, but I did get CME credits, you know, continuing medical education credits for it, which you have to do, which I need. So it was great, so I could write it off as a business expense. Oh, that's awesome.
David Syvertsen
Host
01:44
Great. So first class five star hotel, all right, that's awesome. Okay, why'd you go?
Sam Rhee
Co-host
01:51
And yeah, yeah, you know I was a little skeptical. Honestly, I've seen some CrossFit science and some of it's good, some of it's not so good, just like all sciences really but I wanted to see how CrossFit would present what they felt was health Okay, and just from my perspective. So I have done research and I'm only going to talk about this, not to brag, but because we do have actually now a fair number of listeners who are not within our gym and they might not know my own background in this. Yeah, let's give your background and so that I can talk about this. So when you hear my perspective, you're not like, oh, this guy is just like whatever. So this is my 10th year CrossFitting, so I am a real CrossFit guy and I coach here at CrossFit Bison. I am a plastic surgeon and I do mostly cosmetic surgery now, but I once was a real doctor. I do.
02:45
I did research as an undergrad in medical school and my surgical training. I did spend two full years in residency in the lab, full time studying bone biology and mechanical force in an orthopedic research lab, and I am a co-author in 12 papers and four book chapters. Wow, so well, that's not that many actually compared to most More than me, so I understand what research is and what good research is, bad research is. I know Glassman's really on a huge kick about bad research, but I understand it's. These are human beings, just like they are anyone else. They're not any better or worse. So listening to what they said it was really interesting, because you can't go too deep into the weeds on this stuff. But I wanted to hear what they thought the cutting edge concepts were about health because truly speaking in medical school and they pointed it out nutrition, longevity. You know preventative medicine is given like almost nothing.
David Syvertsen
Host
03:40
Yeah, you've said that before.
Sam Rhee
Co-host
03:41
Yeah, and this honestly, most of what I've learned about these topics has been through my experience with CrossFit, at CrossFit Bison, and so I wanted to see what would the scientists say about these topics.
David Syvertsen
Host
03:57
And it's interesting because you are one of several doctors that we have at the gym. We have a lot of nurses at the gym, there's a lot of medical professionals within the bison community and then the global CrossFit community as well, and I always feel and all of them here especially they're humble, they're modest about it. I always feel like their interpretation on health, how it relates to CrossFit and our nutrition and reset, is so valuable, like whenever they talk about anything health induced. I remember listening to Kathy and talk about God health one time and I was just like I could listen to her talk for hours, just talking about that, that realm of it, and that's just one part of it.
Sam Rhee
Co-host
04:36
Yeah, I love all our physio, our nutrition people, everyone here. I learned so much from them. This is not the stuff you would normally get at your PCP office, or something like that.
David Syvertsen
Host
04:47
Explain the logistics of it. How long was it? Was it morning, night, break, intermission, how many days? How long were you out there and what was the day-to-day flow like?
Sam Rhee
Co-host
04:57
Yeah, it was Austin, texas, it was one. I mean, the actual conference was one day. It was on a Saturday, from like nine to five. Basically, I got in early because they did have a workout programmed if you wanted to do it and sign up with the day before, the day before, on Friday. So I flew out Friday morning, got there, went to CrossFit Central, which is in Austin it's a big time, jim, yeah, chase Ingram's there, those guys, adrienne Bosman ran it and it was a pretty good workout. I mean, I will tell you this, we talked about the old school versus new school. You know what old school is. I will say it in one word uncompromising. These guys don't cut corners. And I will say this because the workout now, think about it, these are not elite athletes, right, these are people showing up for a healthcare conference. Well, could be anyone, anybody, yeah. So this was the workout Four rounds like Fight Gone Bad.
05:54
One minute dumbbell step ups they already had it out 20 inches, 35 pounds dumbbells, two of them. One minute max cal row. One minute barbell snatches, one thirty five, ninety five whoa. And one minute rest of the row. Yeah, and I'm telling you, dude, I, it was packed in there, there were. It was packed.
06:15
And so for ballas men to say you know what we're doing? Snatches like you would not program that in a really crowded gym with all these people. And he was like, don't drop on other people. And then he was like all right, teams of three, go find people that have the same snatch weight as you. So instead of like okay, who can snatch 85, who can snatch 95? My blood's boiling right now. Right, right, like. This guy's like old school. Yeah, like, and figure it out yourself. Yeah. So I'm like running around looking for the skinniest, weakest people because I don't want to do 135. And and so I find two guys and I'm like are you guys like okay with 95 or 105, maybe 150, like what, whatever? Dude? Yeah. And so then we get together and then they do the whiteboard, talk real quick, and then these two guys sandbag me and they're like let's just do 135, that's the. And I'm like no, and so so you know we have. But thank, thankfully we had been doing snatch work, right. So so all I did was say, good way for you.
David Syvertsen
Host
07:17
Yeah, let me just try it and the good thing about that workout is it's okay if you get four reps and so you know some guys can get 14. You know it's a, you're not, you don't have to cycle it back and forth.
Sam Rhee
Co-host
07:28
That is correct. So you only have one minute and so I just thought like, quick hips, get that barbell straight path, all those things. And I managed to get out of five per minute. That's awesome, which, after a max cal row, I'll tell you, yeah, I'll take that getting off the row and then getting over there. So, so those guys.
07:44
So basically and Bosman is uncompromising so you watch one guy and then they count your reps. So you go back and forth, right, like the whole workout, and then you flip and then you count reps for the. For the first thing, okay, it's so that you can get twice the number of people in. Did you beat the other guys? The guy actually did 95 pounds off, yeah, so, okay, I didn't know, so like so. But Bosman comes in like deep into the third round and the guy is, like you know, not like kind of pressing out just a little bit and he's, like you know, catch it in the receiving position with arms locked right and I'm kind of like he just did like 90 snatches and I kind of set it under my breath a little bit. I don't know if Bosman heard me, but he just totally ignored me and was like it doesn't matter like these guys are hardcore and that's why it's always like a breath of fresh air when you're around.
David Syvertsen
Host
08:38
Those guys like level one, level two, level two, level two, research it's a great word to uncompromise, oh.
Sam Rhee
Co-host
08:44
I mean forget about, like you know, cutting anyone a break. These guys are right there with it. And that was the same with Nicole Carroll when she opened. It was like an old school revival preacher. So you know, again, I always I actually kind of think of it more and more like a religion. So you know, you have the. You go to a service and maybe they're they're playing really like like nice ethereal modern music that you sing. These guys are singing old school hymns out of the hymnal that was probably like 75 years old, like they aren't doing anything. New age this is old school.
09:20
She pulled out the definition of fitness, you know work capacity over broad. You know time, modal domains she quoted the hundred words. She put them right up there like this ain't no, like I love it. New definition across fit, like you talked about old school, new school, none of that you know. And she said like experiment on yourself and of one you know, observe and measure talked about you know the party bus. She said I, when I retire, I want to go around and grab people and put them in a bus and get them to start CrossFit.
09:52
It really was like fire and brimstone. Yeah, and that's the thing about these old school guys, and that's why I wonder we talk about the survival of CrossFit or how it's going to go. Yeah, old school guys are fully in the camp. They trained under glassman, they rose up with glassman and that's their mentality until they die. Would you even use the word stubborn? Yes, yeah, yeah. That's why I said uncompromising, right, because I don't know, stubborn has a negative ethos behind it. Yeah, so, anyway, that's how they feel. So, nicole Carroll opened it off.
David Syvertsen
Host
10:27
Do you know? I mean, do you have a number of how many people went up there and spoke and about how long they were speaking for?
Sam Rhee
Co-host
10:31
yeah. So there were like maybe five, six speakers. Is this a straight shot? Nine to five? Give you a little intermission, some breaks and a lunch and all that. And yeah, so the first speaker. They all spoke maybe about 20, 30 minutes.
10:45
Rhonda Patrick she's pretty popular with a lot of women. She has some website or something called found my fitness. She's like a longevity health and wellness guru, phd. Her three concepts were exorcist and I'm just going to rip through them because I'm not going to talk about there just throughout the concepts, not any of what they justified it for exercise, muscle mass and heat exposure. So she basically said VO two max correlates with life expectancy and I had a lot of questions about that, because if all you care about is VO two max, you know that raises a lot of questions. Right, about training, lifting lips and that and snatching all sorts of stuff, right.
11:23
But you know she talked about a Norwegian four by four interval training protocol, a four minute max intensity to increase your VO two max. It sounded very hinshaw, actually, okay. And she talked about the benefits to your heart, the how lactate that's generated an exercise works as a singling model molecule for neurotransmitters and glucose regulation and all this stuff. And then I think the most interesting thing was actually two interesting things was exercise snacks. So if you're like sitting in an office all day, three days, three times a day, just get up and do like one or two minutes of exercise, like she made us get up and do 30 seconds of high knees, okay, as far as hard as we could, okay, and it was. You know what? It wakes you up.
12:04
Huberman's talked about that well so these are very common types of tricks. The other thing she said was that you should have at least 1.6 gram per kilo of protein for skeletal muscle maintenance. Okay, which I'm just throwing it out there, not even going to talk about it. Right? Omega three fatty acids she said four to five grams a day to help stop age related atrophy. I currently take two. Okay, so I'm like, hmm, I'm gonna look into that. Talked about how, as you get older, you still need to continue resistance training, but it's not so much about the load capacity, how heavy your loads are, but it's to failure. So, like, which makes sense? Like, if you can't bench 225 for reps, then just bench 135, but just go to absolute failure, right, and then that's safer. You know, works for people Like. I believe that Interesting. Yeah, which works for CrossFit too, because if you scale a workout and you're not going heavy but you're still going to failure for yourself.
David Syvertsen
Host
13:03
Yeah.
Sam Rhee
Co-host
13:04
You're getting benefit.
David Syvertsen
Host
13:05
Yeah, I agree with that. I would 100% agree with that behind amount of volume and amount of work that you're trying to output here. Yeah, should you ever go for a one-right max in general? I think that's going to be another topic that is debated. Right, I do think there's value in that. It just should not be every time you lift.
Sam Rhee
Co-host
13:22
And the thing is but if you do scale a workout, you still need to go to failure, right? You can't just be like, all right, I'm going to scale and take it easy. No, right, it's about your intensity, right? Um, the heat thing. I know Huberman. Huberman has a great podcast about heat and how you need to get pretty hot, like 170, 80 degrees. You need to get your heart rate up to a certain degree to get benefit. Uh, yeah.
13:42
I like heat. I'll take that over a cold plunge. Um, gabriel, that come up at all. What Cold plunging. They did not, and thank God, because I didn't want to hear good evidence about it or that would have made me like feel guilty. Or about avoiding a cold plunge.
13:59
Um, gabriel Lyon, is she's this really jacked? Uh, doctor, functional medicine physician, she does muscle centric medicine. She's very aggressive. Uh, she basically talked about muscle is good, like muscle centric. So she talked about it's the largest organ of our body. It helps us metabolize glucose, oxidize lipids. It's our amino acid reservoir. Um, she said we don't have an obesity epidemic, we have a lack of muscle epidemic, and that's kind of an interesting top, you know, way of thinking about it. Um, okay, so, so it's very simple. What? Basically? A prescription through cross fit, like resistance training, high protein, low carb diet. Um, she talks about taking even more protein, like two to three grams a kilo. So those two are kind of running into each other a little bit, a little like there's a little bit. None of these guys are actually cross fitters. These are, these are all independent contractor types.
14:52
Yeah, they just have their own sort of health space that they're, and they were invited to come. I respect that. Yeah, I do. It was interesting and um, and she didn't like it was so funny because she opened with um. I mean, you know, cross fit probably started in a garage gym or something, didn't it Like?
15:08
she didn't know where cross is. That Like she's just talking, and so you realize they don't know much about cross fit. But maybe that's not so bad because this stuff is cross fit adjacent, it runs parallel. Um, she talked which was interesting about protein intake. Most of us take most of our protein at the end of the day, like we take a little at breakfast, maybe a little more at lunch, but our big protein intake is in our dinner, yep. And so she thinks protein cycling bigger in the morning, big, uh big in the morning and at night, and then pretty light in the middle, helps with protein absorption. So so she has all these concepts about that, which isn't bad. Also, you only get 130 grams of carbs a day. You're only allowed to eat more if you earn it through exercise, okay, and you can't eat more than 40 grams of carbs a meal.
David Syvertsen
Host
15:57
Did you bring up four? Okay, Does that bring it? It's funny because I'm in a low carb state right now. Yeah, fat, low carb, and I'm loving it. Um kind of upset that I didn't do it throughout the fall, but um, because of legends. But um, when she said, brings up numbers like that, is that like an average number for based on size, or like you know what, if, what, if you, me and Susan can't eat Right the same?
Sam Rhee
Co-host
16:21
Right, I don't know. Okay, uh, I'm just throwing it out there. Okay, like I'm.
David Syvertsen
Host
16:25
I was writing down as fast as yeah, we're both of these people low carb centric pretty much. Yeah, yeah, they all, they're everyone. No, it's such an interesting debate to me. Yeah, because so many performance nutrition coaches are all about high carb. Like they get offended sometimes when so the performance part of it.
Sam Rhee
Co-host
16:45
There was a panel and they talked about carbs and I'll mention that. Okay, okay, yes, um, tom McCoy, who you mentioned, he's opening up a clinic with proven at their new Nashville medical. Yeah, so he talked about the power of community. He's a co-owner of chagrin falls CrossFit in Ohio. Um, he's a doctor.
17:00
He just he gave examples of different people who use CrossFit and the power of community to help either with their recovery as substance abusers, um, people with PTSD, like military people, the one who founded Valor fit, troy, yep, and how isolation and loneliness are significant risk factors. Um, in terms of your life, and how he quotes, maximum happiness is found in groups of 100 to 200 people, which he parallels to a CrossFit Interesting. Yeah, like that's. That's where your max networking sort of capability is Very interesting. And the reason why he's opening these integrated health clinics with affiliates he has one now in Nashville at proven and Northeast Ohio is because there's very, um, there's a huge burnout of primary care providers. There's no value placed on preventative counseling, so putting them into these, uh, gyms will help with that.
David Syvertsen
Host
17:54
I'm really intrigued by that. Um, so I've looked into a for, into what proven's doing on a few different levels for a few different reasons. Yeah, and I heard their CEO, Nick Johnson, talk about it when he was with a coffee pods and wads um, who episode with Hiller. Really good, listen, If anyone wants to go into those guys and listen to him talk to Hiller and coffee pods and wads Sorry, I forgot the guy's name. Um, that that could be a huge future part of CrossFit is being partnered up with a. What would you call that kind of medical practice? More like preventative care, or is this something different in the medical industry?
Sam Rhee
Co-host
18:31
Yeah, like a wellness clinic, I'm sure something like that. I mean, I don't know the finance stuff and they talk about it a little in one of the panels like would Medicare cover CrossFit, like what? If you, you know, how do we get physicians to prescribe CrossFit and have that financially work Cause? Can you just get a patient to say, hey, try CrossFit, it's 200 bucks a month.
David Syvertsen
Host
18:50
250 bucks a month, they're going to be like what we have some members that their health insurance, those, yeah health savings account. Health saving accounts you could pay for membership. So basically you could pay. You know your untaxed income can pay for. We're saving some people money through that, yeah.
Sam Rhee
Co-host
19:07
So there are ways of financially dealing with that on some level On a state and federal level in terms of coverage. They were going into the weeds on that, and that was really complicated. That's where I can't follow that stuff anymore. Neither can I. So then they had a panel called Simple, Not Easy. One of the street parking founders was on there, some other people. They talked about what hard challenges in life was, and I would say the biggest takeaway for me is, for us as Crossfitters, working out is no longer hard, Like it's hard, but like for some people, getting your taxes done on time is hard, Like that's the hard thing, or whatever else you have at home. And so it was talking about using that mental capacity that you've built up at home or at the gym to tackle the stuff you keep procrastinating and not doing at home. And that hit home for me because there's so much stuff I'm like, oh yeah, I can go in and kill myself on a wad, but then I have a task that I've left for like two weeks Same doing same.
David Syvertsen
Host
20:11
So it's like a pile of mail sitting on the counter.
Sam Rhee
Co-host
20:13
Right. So like why are we Crossfitters if we're not doing the hard things, which are the things we don't want to do, the things we avoid? And then the recovery people there were some people who deal with substance use disorders and manage recovery with Crossfit is that it's like fitness and health is like being in recovery. It's forever Like you don't stop. You never stop being in recovery and you never stop working out or trying to stay healthy. The minute you stop, it's not like you become fit and you're done Right. And I've heard that from many other places. They talked a little bit about glucagon like peptide agonist. Those are the GLP1 ozempic. They never mention ozempic, they don't even say it, they just say GLP agonist. I've seen so many commercials for ozempic.
David Syvertsen
Host
20:58
How do you A new story?
Sam Rhee
Co-host
21:00
I will not get into it right now, but they have philosophies about like is it good, is it bad? There's no doubt it's a really powerful tool. How it's used, the manner in which it's used, can it be abused? Yeah yeah, the long-term consequences. These are all issues. I have many close friends who are on them. I've seen great benefits. I've also seen lots of great benefits. It's like a very, very complicated issue.
21:24
Okay, basically, there are two sides on it. Like the McCoy guys. Like never prescribed it too powerful. I tell a patient listen, you want to try this, give me 60 days of exercise and diet and then, if you still want to try it, I'll put you on it. He said I've never had a taker Interesting. And then there was someone else I think I forget who was like well, it can be useful, like in conjunction with other stuff. So there's a lot of different philosophies about it. Okay, the thing that I think you would have found most interesting was the performance versus fitness panel At Grasiana Rubio.
22:00
Who's the Wall Street weightlifter guy? Great Instagram, follow Wall Street weightlifter. Oh my God, his last post. He was doing 335 strict press for reps, for reps. So ridiculous. And the dude spoke so well, so well and I talked to him afterwards. He called me for like 30 minutes oh my God, he's a good talker and he was like are you going to the after party? And I missed him at the after party but he would have talked to me. I mean, he looks like a meathead but he speaks like Einstein, yeah.
22:34
And basically it's about people interested in the performance or competitive side of fitness and they talked about sustainable training over years. So they're like what is your program? Do you want to make the game in two years, five years, seven years, like your programming and your ramp up totally different? Do you want to stay healthy? If you want to go for the games in two years, that's very unhealthy. Your training will be so unhealthy. Yeah, we've talked about that a lot. It's insane how unhealthy that is. It's going to be too much bad with your pain and injury.
23:03
That's the way it's going to have to be, though. So they talked about sustainable training versus not sustainable training. They also talked about opportunity costs. To make the games, what price will you have to pay? There were people who looked at people's programming and literally like high level coaches, and they said you're going to get divorced in a year with this programming, like it's not going to happen. They said we should have recovery coaches, like we have strengthened conditioning coaches, and injury happens because. So it's funny. They talked about how runners, like orthopedists, will see runners, and you know what they say only amateurs get stress fractures. So if you're a pro and you know how you're training, your injury risk is much less likely than someone who is just going for it. Got it? So pro athletes.
David Syvertsen
Host
23:55
What's the difference between pro and someone that's going after it? Recovery tactics Ramp up, yeah.
Sam Rhee
Co-host
24:01
Cycling, all that. And the other thing is and this was Rubio's point, which is so true more training is not better in CrossFit, better training is better. So he said, a highly intense fran is better training than two medium intense frans. So if you didn't, so don't. That's a great point. Don't do it multiple times, just do it once and kill yourself on it.
David Syvertsen
Host
24:27
Don't keep doing it over and over again. Cross it open is coming up. Guys, give it your all on that Friday. Don't come back on Sunday trying to do it again. Give it everything you got.
Sam Rhee
Co-host
24:36
He says we understand why people want to do that. It's fun, right? Yeah, right, they want to be in the gym, they want to be social. But that relative intensity is what is important. He's so important. It's so important. And he said that's why you see these guys who do CrossFit one hour a day. They come into class. They get incrementally better Only on an hour a day. How is that? Because their intensity relative is pretty high, so they don't have to train two or three hours a day. If you take that one hour and you max out your intensity for that day, you are going to get better.
David Syvertsen
Host
25:08
That's a great point. Yeah, I mean I would have been nodding my head so hard.
Sam Rhee
Co-host
25:11
Dude, that's what I was doing I was like.
25:12
Rubio, you're speaking to me, yeah. And then they talked about the glucose, Like how does Chandler Smith eat Snickers or whatever during a comp? And he said basically, first of all, elite athletes need very nutrient dense foods. It's really hard to take it during a competition cycle, All of the stuff that you need. So he's eating that stuff because it's on top of what he normally eats. He said I bet you if he watches dinner it's going to be really healthy. He's not replacing other foods in his diet with the Snickers. He has to eat it on top of what he's normally eating. That makes sense.
David Syvertsen
Host
25:48
So these people just see them eating sugar stuff and so that they can feel better about eating sugar stuff.
Sam Rhee
Co-host
25:55
But it's like no, you're replacing other foods with that. Don't do that. And if you're at that level and training at that level, then yes, you might consider that.
David Syvertsen
Host
26:05
Did they go into macros at all with performance? They did not. Yeah, just higher carb.
Sam Rhee
Co-host
26:11
Yes. So again, that was just questions thrown out from the audience. Yep, the last couple were pretty quick. There was a guy from the ICU I can't even pronounce his name Quadwo, kaya or Manteng, okay, basically talking about how COVID was really horrible for everyone. You were socially isolated in your home, you had to stay inside. All the gyms were closed. He said when he ran the ICU for COVID he never saw a healthy patient in the ICU. All the people in the ICU had obesity, metabolic disorders, some sort of problem. And he said it's $52,000 a day for a COVID patient to be in the ICU. And he said if you're on a ventilator, you lose 2% of your muscle mass a day. Oh, jesus, yeah. And so he's like don't you know? Make sure you prevent yourself from going to the ICU, don't go to the ICU.
27:05
Yeah, one of the more interesting talks was Chris Palmer. He's an assistant professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He talked about how autism, adhd, bipolar depression is like skyrocketing Yep, 400% over 40 years. A lot of treatments work, like medications and psychotherapy, but there's treatment resistance in 20 to 60% of people where they don't really respond well, okay, and they don't know why these mental disorders are occurring, just risk factors and all of these mental disorders seem to. They're sort of the same, like if you have ADHD you're more likely to have autism, if you have bipolar you're more likely to be depressed, like they all kind of are one big global issue, okay, and it's really hard to tease out. Like you don't have pure autism, pure ADHD, like they're all kind of a conglomerate, okay. They all are linked to obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer's. So if you have diabetes, you're more likely to have one of these mental disorders and vice versa. So if you go to a diabetic clinic, you're more likely to find people with depression, bipolar autism and all that.
28:12
So he feels like all of these disorders are metabolic disorders. One of them are metabolic disorders of the brain, the other ones are metabolic physical disorders. But they all have a central mechanism which is in common, because the brain is an organ, a tissue. If you have a metabolic disorder of the body, you're gonna have it's the same part of the body, it's just the brain. So they think well, he to distill it all down. He thinks that it's in the mitochondria, which is the powerhouse of the cell. That's what they say, but anyway, so the upshot was exercise alone does not seem to improve mental health in all cases because of insulin resistance.
28:57
So if you have a metabolic disorder like diabetes or obesity, you are insulin resistant. Exercise may not alone be sufficient, so it's gonna have to be. You gotta kind of break that cycle, and some of that might be diet, like a ketogenic diet. So he was really big into the. Ketogenic diet might be helpful for depression, alzheimer's schizophrenia. They use it for alcoholics and detox. It was. It's probably the only diet that's been thoroughly researched, cause they use it for epilepsy treatment and they still do so anyway. That really threw me for a loop and I was like, hmm, I might look into ketogenic a little more, might look at this link between mind and body for disorders and start thinking about that for people, cause that was pretty interesting stuff that is interesting.
David Syvertsen
Host
29:44
Yeah, that's always there. That ketogenic, high-fat, low carb.
Sam Rhee
Co-host
29:48
It's always there and I feel like, and it's been around for a long time too- the last two were the Phoenix, which was a sober, active community model treating substance abuse with CrossFit type.
David Syvertsen
Host
30:03
Those are always cool stories.
Sam Rhee
Co-host
30:04
Yes, and it was all about social connection, and so that really made me think more about if you just go to a CrossFit gym and you just work out and go home and you don't make any connections, you're probably losing out on a potentially huge benefit Because they keep talking about it throughout the course of the day, like connection, social interaction. All those things are super important. And then the last thing was Tommy Wood future-proofing your brain, basically talking about how brain is like a muscle, you have to raise your peak performance because as you get older it declines, just like with athletic performance. Right, if you start by being able to bench 300, when you get to 75, as long as you keep working out, you probably can bench more than if you started at a lower number. And so get to a higher peak. Get to your higher peak While you can Right, and then avoid the dips.
30:53
And the dips are at least for the brain stuff where you're not using it, like retirement for a lot of people. Boof, right, you know not doing things Right Like. So exercise is huge because you're learning new skills. So this is why and I'm going to be telling people, if you just do single unders your entire life in the gym and you never try to learn double unders, you're missing out on neurologic growth. Yeah, that's a great perspective. You should, you should, you should always be trying to learn new skills.
David Syvertsen
Host
31:23
What movement are you teaching this upcoming Thursday?
Sam Rhee
Co-host
31:26
Wait, double unders, double unders, Right Muscle ups and bar muscle ups. So learn new stuff, learn new skills, exactly so that skills-based movement that's why Peloton will never work as well as skills based movement, because you're working more parts of your yeah, because of that. Beat yeah, don't beat yeah, it's infinitely adaptable. So, anyway, to sum it up, actually I was sitting next to Sean Rockin, who I didn't even know. He's the CrossFit physician, the games guy, and he talked about, you know, brook Wells when he was there.
31:59
The most interesting thing, because I asked him, I said hey, listen, when you're at the games and people have injuries, they don't know you from Adam probably, and it's really hard to get by. And if they have an injury and you're giving them recommendations, and he said, yeah, one of the hardest ones was Roman Krenikov, Because it's not, you don't have to get the trust of the athlete when they're injured, you got to get the trust of their coach, but in this case it was coach translator and Roman, and when you're telling them maybe you shouldn't keep going, and they're like, can I keep going? And he's like I'm not really recommending it. Rock Wells actually gives a huge shout out to Sean Rockin and her book about when she dislocated her elbow on that snatch. And he's a really cool laid back guy, really liked him.
David Syvertsen
Host
32:47
That's sweet. So, yeah, that was a really good rundown. That was a great rundown of who was talking and what was talked about and I think there's enough in there what you just said. That immediately I almost wanted to start writing things down that you were saying, just things to look into, perspectives, to try and get to that are going to give you this full picture all in better health, better fitness, better performance and longevity. And I even liked that you just said would you play around the keto-genic diet? Because I do think we should all be looking into new things.
33:23
You could apply that to the person that doesn't want to do double unders. You're going to challenge yourself to learn something new and maybe even try the skill or act of a keto-genic diet or different movements or having a different perspective. When you walk out of there after that weekend, did you have that kind of like CrossFit high that a lot of our coaches say they have when they get like their level one research, level, two research Like was it like? Did you walk out like kind of fired up, motivated? It gave?
Sam Rhee
Co-host
33:50
me perspective that, yes, I have to keep trying, like the try is so important. And when you stop trying and lose your push, that's when your body, your brain, start to decline. And so it gave me a lot of motivation to keep working at it, because you can't stop, you can't be like I can snatch 115. I feel comfortable at that. No, I will always. I realize from this, I will always have to keep trying. I might not succeed, but I have to keep trying Because that's a process over result. You have to in order to push your body, in order to stave off that decline and to make sure that you are as functional and you live healthy for as long as possible.
David Syvertsen
Host
34:33
Yeah, that's something I always want to get across to people that we coach, people, that we're around, is, if you feel like I put my time in, like I'm good, if you think you're going to be neutral, you're probably going backwards. You're going backwards. So if you're no longer trying to keep your foot on the gas, it's not just say I'll stay where I'm at, you are going backwards, there's no. There's no staying where you're at. You're either trying to go forward or you're in reverse. Where do you think this future of CrossFit Health, what it can do for CrossFit affiliates and Crossfitters worldwide? Do you see something left to obtain?
Sam Rhee
Co-host
35:13
I'm interested about these integrated health clinics. I think that's pretty cool. I think that could help both providers and you know and we talked about that but if you had a nutritionist on side of physio, all these different allied health professions working together with CrossFit could be some powerful stuff.
David Syvertsen
Host
35:30
I think that's a big future component to CrossFit is making health, because right now, in my opinion, crossfit is more about working out and exercise, and if you can get the outsiders, the people that aren't in here yet into, hey, I'm going to see my doctor first, then I go to CrossFit, and I think that is a big part of their future growth.
35:51
I could see my dad doing that. That's awesome. All right, thanks, Sam, and thank you to CrossFit for putting together the CrossFit Health Summit. We will try to keep you guys posted on if and when there will be another one. Did they say anything about that? Yeah, I'm wondering if they're probably giving some internal feedback, or was this worth it? How much did it cost? Is it going to help produce more results? I would assume that you'll probably see another one come across at some point that anyone could sign up for. All right, thank you guys. We'll see you next week. Thank you everybody for taking the time out of your day to listen to the HerdFit podcast. Be on the lookout for next week's episode.
