AMA #19: Deep dive on Zone 2 training, magnesium supplementation, and how to engage with your doctor

**Peter Attia** (0:11)
Hey, everyone, welcome to a sneak peek, Ask Me Anything, or AMA episode of the Drive podcast. I'm your host, Peter Attia. At the end of this short episode, I'll explain how you can access the AMA episodes in full, along with a ton of other membership benefits we've created. Or you can learn more now by going to peterattiamd.com forward slash subscribe. So without further delay, here's today's sneak peek of the Ask Me Anything episode.
Welcome to Ask Me Anything. I'm once again joined by my head of research, Bob Kaplan, in this episode, aka Ron Tugnut. In today's episode, we go really deep on zone two.
We touch on exercise a little bit more broadly than that, and we get into a few other tangents outside of zone two, like what is FTP, zone five, some of the anaerobic stuff. But mostly this is a super deep dive into zone two from a practical level. So if you've heard the Inigo Sanmilon podcast, you'll have obviously an understanding of what that is. If not, don't worry, because we revisit it. But more importantly, I think we kind of get into the how to do it.
What's the dose, what type of exercise, what type of machines, the frequency, what if your numbers look like this, all of that kind of stuff. So I hope by the end of this episode, you'll really understand how to bring zone two in as one of the four pillars to your exercise program. The other two things we get into in this episode are a kind of low down on magnesium. So we had a great question about, hey, Peter keeps talking about this type of magnesium, that type of magnesium, this type of magnesium. Can you give us the skinny on that? And so we get into that. And then we close it out with a short discussion on the how do you actually talk to your doctor about some of the stuff that we're getting into here. A couple of weeks ago, actually a couple of months ago now, we had a newsletter that talked about early screening or more aggressive screening on colonoscopy, which is a sort of point of view that I have.
And there were many questions from listeners saying, hey, look, sure, that'd be one thing if you were my doctor, we could have this discussion, but having this discussion with my doctor was actually much more difficult. And so I try to offer as many insights as I can into how one would go about doing that without being off putting and obviously trying to get the best care you can. So without further delay, I hope you will enjoy.

**Bob Kaplan** (2:39)
Hey Peter, how you doing?

**Peter Attia** (2:42)
Ron Tugnut, how are you?

**Bob Kaplan** (2:45)
The one and only, I'm doing pretty well.

**Peter Attia** (2:47)
I feel like our AMAs have turned into basically a game of hockey obscurity where every time we meet on video, you've got a different 1980s slash 90s goalie as your ID.

**Bob Kaplan** (3:01)
That's right. Growing up, just loved the Bruins and hated every other team, but I had a lot of respect for Ron Tugnut.
Boston Bruins saved 70 shots in a 3-3 tie. It's just absolutely unbelievable. It's on YouTube. Check it out. Just some of the saves that he was making was just unreal.
It's a great game.

**Peter Attia** (3:20)
Yeah, Mr. Tugnut actually is from my home burrow of Scarborough, Ontario, a little crappy outpost of Toronto.

**Bob Kaplan** (3:29)
I remember that. We've got a nice Easter egg, if anybody cares to look in the Studying Studies series. If you go to, I think it's Studying Studies Part 2, and I think it's Figure 2
It's about chimney sweeps. Check out that figure caption. It's pretty impressive.

**Peter Attia** (3:47)
I forgot about that. Thanks for reminding me.

**Bob Kaplan** (3:50)
Yeah, you approved it. So it's there.

**Peter Attia** (3:54)
What do we have on my docket today for Ask Me Anything?

**Bob Kaplan** (3:58)
We have a lot of questions related to exercise in Zone 2
We also have a few questions around magnesium. And then we got a lot of follow-up questions on a couple of weekly emails, which were, I think the earlier one was how to find a good doctor and the questions that you should ask of a doctor. And then we also had a weekly email on colorectal cancer and colonoscopy and a lot of questions that you should ask your GI doc before getting a colonoscopy. And we had a lot of questions around, how should I approach my doctor with these questions? Is there a way to do that that's most effective?