The Muscle Growth Doctor: "The Anti-Ageing Cure No One Is Talking About!", "Exercising At Night Is A Terrible Idea!", "Your Grip Strength Predicts Chronic Diseases!" - Andy Galpin

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Andy Galpin** (0:30)
I've never seen a single paper that shows you can't lose weight, you can't get stronger. All of it can be done, but you're paying attention to things that just do not matter.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:38)
Dr. Andy Galpin, one of the most highly respected exercise physiologists in the field today.

**Andy Galpin** (0:43)
He is the director of the Center for Sport Performance, and he's a coach to many professional athletes. I'm going to talk about how do I lose weight and how do I improve my performance, move, sleep, but you want to live as well as possible for a long time. It comes down to a couple of things. Number one, you can't not pay attention to grip strength. And in fact, we can actually predict Alzheimer's and dementia risk via grip strength testing. And then leg strength and VO2 max, those things will out predict how long you're going to live more than almost any metric. And I'm saying leg strength because one of the most significant issues that we face during aging, it's our falls. If you look at the risk of dying after a hip break in those are over 60 years old, there is a 70% chance of death of the max 15 years.

**Steven Bartlett** (1:22)
What is VO2 max?

**Andy Galpin** (1:23)
Your maximum ability to bring in and utilize oxygen. There was actually a study with 750,000 people and found smoking and diabetes had a 40% increase risk of dying. VO2 max is 300%.
Comes down to a couple of things. If you can do this stuff consistently, you're going to be just fine.

**Steven Bartlett** (1:40)
First of all, But why do you care?

**Andy Galpin** (1:43)
Most people will go through challenges at some point in their life. This is going to give you the ability to not be in those situations anymore.
Sorry, I need to collect myself a little bit here. Just a lot of part of my story that the world doesn't know.

**Steven Bartlett** (2:07)
Quick one, quick favor to ask from you. There is one simple way that you can support our show, and that is by hitting that follow button on this app that you're listening to the show on right now.
This year in 2024, we're trying really, really hard to level up everything we're doing. And the only free thing I'll ever ask from you is to hit that follow button on this app. It helps this show more than I could probably articulate, and it allows us, enables us to keep doing what we're doing here. I appreciate it dearly. Okay, onto the show.
Dr. Andy Galpin, if someone's just clicked on this podcast right now, and if you were to speak freely about the things that you care about the most, what exactly is it that they would walk away from this conversation with in terms of value that would positively impact their life?

**Andy Galpin** (2:59)
I've done hundreds of podcasts, and I have never had that question.
And I certainly never had it coming right out the gate. So I love it.
The way I would have captured it would be, I want to enhance human performance.
And when I say that, I want to make sure that you're not hearing sport performance. That means sport to you, fine, that's great. But I really break that down into three categories.
People want to look a certain way. Whatever that means to you, I don't care. People want to feel a certain way, and people want to perform a certain way. You set the ground rules. You want to look this way. When you say perform, when you think perform, that means X to you. When you say you want to feel, that means Y to you. Great, let's establish all that. And then my goal is simply to help you achieve all of those goals. So you want to be bigger and stronger and have more energy throughout the day. Great. You want to think more clearly. You want to be a better leader, athlete, spouse, parent. That's great. You want to be out of pain. You want to have a certain functionality and a certain... All those things are on the table. So when I say perform, I mean cognitively, physically, in whatever area of department that matters for you. All those are on the table. We analyze all that. We break it down and we say, okay, this is the targets we're going after. And then my mission is just to help anyone I'm working with, but really broadly, the world get better at that. I don't think I've ever seen any paper that has shown any genetic combination that shows you can't grow muscle. I've never seen a single paper that shows you can't lose weight. Never seen a single indication of any physiological marker that says you can't get stronger.