Martin Pazzani, former gym executive, world-class mountaineer, and author of The Secrets of Aging Well, explains why the gym industry has failed us. Instead, he advocates a simple way to start getting fit that doesn’t require equipment, personal trainers, or technology. You can start today to improve not only your fitness but your heart health, lung capacity, and attitude.
Episode 02: Longevity, according to Martin Pazzani, has been increased by pharmaceuticals and surgery, not by the quality of life and mind. The alternative to increasing your life span is using fitness as preventative medicine —fitness can prolong the cognitive and physical decline of your body. He proposes that the simple activity of getting outside and walking can have an immense effect on mood and physiology. In this episode, Pazzani explains how the fitness industry has failed us, offers a better alternative, and explains the powerful impact of JOBO – the Joy of Being Outside.
The Fountain of Youth That’s Outside Our Door, with Martin Pazzani
Martin Pazzani You can take charge of the way you age and you can actually change the curve of your aging through fitness…
Cathleen Toomey Seniority Authority exists to answer your questions on aging, the world has changed dramatically in a generation, with more retirees than ever before living longer with more choices. If you’re an older adult, or have an older adult in your life, where do you go to begin to understand those choices? I’m your host Cathleen Toomey with over a decade of work and experience in retirement home communities so send your questions on aging to me, and together, let’s get smarter about growing older.
Welcome. I'm Cathleen Toomey and this is Seniority Authority, and today we're going to discover the fabled fountain of youth, a place and an activity that can get you stronger, sharpen your senses, improve your memory, enhance your fitness and balance, help you sleep better, increase your brain power and even improve your mood. So if that sounds interesting to you, stay tuned to the next episode.
Thank you to our show sponsor, the RiverWoods Group, northern New England largest family of non-profit retirement communities, where active adults find community, purpose, and peace of mind. Visit RiverWoodsGroup.org. Now, let’s hear from today’s guest.
Cathleen Toomey Welcome to Seniority Authority. Today, we are talking to a global entrepreneur, mountaineer and global business executive in the fitness industry who has concluded that today's gym industry has failed. He has a point, despite the fact that fitness is now a 60-billion-dollar business in the United States. We have not, as a nation move the needle on obesity. In fact, obesity has skyrocketed since the creation of the organized fitness business. So something is definitely amiss today, Speaker Martin Pazzani is also a mountaineer who's climbed one hundred million uphill steps in seven continents over 50 years, get his prescription for how to improve your health is as simple as walking out the door. Welcome, Martin Pazzani, it's great to have you here.
Martin Pazzani Great to be here, Cathleen. I'm honored.
Cathleen Toomey Well, we are really excited about this. You are not only a skilled worldwide mountaineer, a global business executive, but you've made this conclusion that the 60-billion-dollar fitness industry is not helping us with our core needs as we get older. So, you have written a book, which I have here, and I highly recommend called The Secrets of Aging Well, Get Outside. At sixty-four, Martin describes himself as an active ager and first became inspired 30 years ago on the top of Mount Washington in my home state by a 70-year-old who was running past him as he was hiking at age 30. Since then, Martin has founded a think tank, done research and lectured all over the country on hiking as the ideal form of fitness and possibly our best fountain of youth. So, you've been an incredibly talented mountaineer. What captured my attention when I read your book was not the world class hikers and not what you've scaled, but really the research that you've done in connecting, walking and fitness to our ability to age well, and to help us improve our physical health. So, for today's discussion, I'd like to focus on why this is so important for older adults, what gets in the way of us doing this, what the benefits are and how to keep going and keep motivated. So, let's talk about longevity. What's happening, in your opinion, with longevity today? And why should we care about staying fit?
Martin Pazzani Yeah, it's a great basic, broad question that I think is affecting us at a population level, what's happening with longevity is we are living longer.
In fact, lifespans have increased over the last 100 years from early 40s to many cases now over 80. And it's going up. The fastest growing part of the population is above 80 and even faster. The number of centenarians, 100 plus, is expected to accelerate exponentially as we live longer. The issue is it's not being done with quality of life in mind, and it's being done through pharmaceuticals and surgery. And there's another alternative. And the alternative is using fitness as preventive medicine, using fitness to prolong the cognitive and physical decline of your body. And in all my research and in all my travels and in all my working in the fitness business, I have yet to find something that does as well as hiking. And I wanted to write this book because my objective is to share what I've learned, but also to encourage more people that you don't have to just go into a gym to stay fit. And by the way, I have to have to embellish what you said it has. It is sort of a failed business, I say sort of, because for some people it's terrific. It's just not particularly well, it doesn't particularly do well for everybody. There are people who just will not go into gyms, especially as you age. So, the membership in traditional fitness clubs starts to plummet at age 50 and goes drastically down. That doesn't mean those people aren't interested. They need an alternative way of staying fit and hiking and training for aging is one of the conclusions I've come to that would be incredibly beneficial.
Cathleen Toomey So let's dig in a little bit about the longevity. I love the fact, and it is actually true that we are all living longer and we are going to stay alive for a longer period of time. But what's happened in the last 50 years that has made us less fit as we age?
Martin Pazzani Well, it's really simple. It's global. It's a global issue. And it has to do with the combination of technology. And, you know, it started, I think, with the television era. We just moved to us. We sit more and there's a famous quote that's gone around from the TED conference I was at years ago that is sitting is the smoking of our generation.
Cathleen Toomey Right.
Martin Pazzani And it's it's an epidemic, a sitting epidemic. And it correlates perfectly well with the more you sit, the less healthy you are. That's why you're seeing things like standing desks coming the workplace. That's why you're seeing people put more time on being outside. And frankly, particularly now, when we've all been sequestered and socially distanced and isolated, many of us working at home through the resume, that's contributing to the problem. So we have to make a conscious effort to offset our general trend towards inactivity with exercise being outside. And as you said, it kind of starts with walking. That's that's the beginning of it all. We're made to work. Our bodies evolved for walking. Brisk walking is where most fundamentally important things you can do.
Cathleen Toomey You know, I love to in your book that I left a number of quotes in your book, but one I loved was something I'd heard before, which is fitness were a drug that every doctor would prescribe it by Dr. Kaitlynn Castellitto, neurology professor at UCSF. So, explain what is walking or fitness a do for our bodies?
Martin Pazzani Well, first of all, it gets the heart rate up and that's that's a trigger for a lot of good things to start happening at an extreme level of fitness and exercise is a thing called high intensity workouts, high intensity interval workouts, and that's doing very intense workouts for short bursts to get your heart rate up. The key to being fit is essentially exercising your heart as if it were a muscle because it is and giving it the strength to operate in a broader range. That starts to trigger a lot of physiological change, not only in your heart's ability to supply blood and oxygen to your body, but it makes you feel better. You get more oxygen in your brain. It starts to trigger a lot of great physiological effects in your body. Angiogenesis, neurogenesis, all the things that prolong life, make your body healthier. It prevents you from sliding down the curves towards inactivity and your can whatever your ultimate end is, you can do that through fitness.
Cathleen Toomey And what is good for your immune system?
Martin Pazzani Yeah, well, that's part of it as well. I mean, the benefits are many, especially now we're all very hypersensitive about our immune system. But the fitter you are, the more robust your immune system is, your ability to prevent respiratory infections. And frankly, there's a lot of stuff coming out right now about how it does help you resist and minimize the effects should you get COVID and you have the ability to a stronger, leaner, more fit body is much more capable of resisting illness.
And if you should get something, you recover faster. And I think we're starting to see data come out, real data that shows that if you were less fit going into getting COVID or any kind of infection, your chances of having a bad outcome are exponentially increased. So being fit is always to the base for all kinds of prevention and preventive preventive medicine is. You mentioned the doctors point of view about this. I, I have a kind of some people think it's a radical approach to this. I think doctors have really missed the boat on this. They have they should be writing prescriptions for fitness. They should be. And I feel and this sounds more negative than I mean it, but there's there's a acceptance that the first thing you should do with a person who is experiencing symptoms of metabolic syndrome, which is hypertension, obesity, all the all the things that are comorbidities to covid, there's a there's a tendency to prescribe drugs first and well, for some extreme cases, that is great. But that's really not prevention. That's sort of diminishing or delaying or minimizing. To me preventive medicine is fitness you don't get high blood pressure in the first place, you don't have obesity to deal with you, don't you avoid these things. And it's a it's a hard concept for a lot of people to to really get to me to preventive medicine isn't about prescribing a drug. It's about completely preventing the symptom or the ailment from occurring.
Cathleen Toomey And that is true and our society just looks at where we have so much to be grateful for with modern medicine.
Cathleen Toomey And we are living longer because of modern.
Martin Pazzani And surgery falls into that category as well. You can you can clean out somebody's heart pretty easily. You can put a stint in. But that's not prevent some people define that as prevention. I think if you get to that point, it's not really prevention.
Cathleen Toomey So one of the things that I'm curious about is why is it that when we are in our 50s and need it most because our body is slowing down and it's harder to keep weight off, why is it that that is a time when people don't sign up for gyms and they don't get involved in fitness? Have you had any thoughts on that? Psychologically?
Martin Pazzani It is a really complex issue. I actually have researched it when I was part of the big box fitness industry and we really wanted to know what was going on there.
Martin Pazzani And some of it is a deeply seeded belief that you can't really do anything about aging and you just are on this inevitable downward slide. And so anything I do feels like unnecessary, maybe painful. Maybe you don't know how to do it. Maybe, you know, there's alternatives. Maybe you are waiting for the magic pill, which seems to never it will never come. I don't think so. And some of it is just fear of the unknown about what will happen. And that's why that term used active ager's. That's kind of the other side of the coin is people who believe that you can take charge of the way you age and you can actually change the curve of your aging through fitness. And it's not just the physical part that is important here, because to me, fitness above 50 is all about brain health. And I'm one of my think tank is all about figuring out ways to increase brain health, which to me is more important than your body, because really, the way you look at it is if you put your brain first, the body follows the kind of exercises, physical exercises you do to keep your brain sharp and and to prevent cognitive decline. The the byproduct is a healthier, stronger body. And so they're interconnected. You can't separate them. And to me, we should be focusing on brain health. And most of the traditional fitness industry doesn't even that's not on the radar at all. And most people aren't aware that you can actually delay the way your brain ages through exercise. It's it's an amazing thing. You know, you can build brain cells in any age through exercise. And we were all taught people of our generation that you were born with a finite number of brain cells and all they do is decline as you age. No exercise builds new brain cells. It's great.
Cathleen Toomey It is. And in fact, one of our future guests on the podcast, Dr. Maureen O'Connor from Boston University, who directs the Alzheimer's Education Center there. Her recommendation for how to reduce your chance of getting significant memory loss are three things sleep, exercise and socialization. Not brain games, not a certain diet, but those three things. So, this is actually true that if you exercise more and I love the way you put it, you put your brain first and your body will follow. So, you're doing all of these things. Now, what I love about your recommendation is that I think many people who are older and are not fit and perhaps didn't have an exercise regime maybe since college or high school, I think they're intimidated by gyms and they're intimidated by going online and finding some kind of a class. And so we all know how to walk. And that's what I love about your suggestion. It is very achievable for most people and not everyone who's listening or watching this podcast can walk. There are a lot of people who have challenges and are walkers and wheelchairs. But if we were talking, the vast majority of people who are older, who are seeking to get in better shape, what's your prescription for them? What do you recommend they start doing now?
Martin Pazzani You know, I know when someone who's never worked out or never done hiking or walking here, is that they think I can't do it, but everything starts with just one single little step, so you just break it down into pieces. I have a friend who was recently recovering from some severe heart problems, and the doctor actually did tell him, oh, you have to do is walk 10 minutes a day to start with 10 minutes a day, go out your front door, walk around the block twice and your body starts to respond. And so really, it's these small steps, small goals at the beginning, and almost everybody can walk twice around the block. So, you start doing that, you start feeling better. It starts putting more oxygen and nutrients into your muscles and brain. We naturally want to grow from that. And so then you walk three blocks, then you walk half a mile, then you walk it faster, then maybe throw in a little jog every hundred yards. Then you wind up your body responds to that gradual increase, those gradual stresses. You respond physiologically to that. And as I was doing the research for the book, I can't tell you how many people started out as thinking they could not do anything. And then the mind said, I can't do it, but it turned into I can't do it yet. And that thought that you can eventually get there kind of pulls you to try a little harder, get a little harder. And so many people that I talked to in the book started out very physically diminished and are now hiking the 48 tallest mountain in New Hampshire on a regular basis over a two, three, five year period. They completely changed their health, their physiology, their mindset. They became more confident. And it all does start with a single little step that you can achieve. So many people are just fearful of not being able to, you know, to do a mile that they just shut it off.
Cathleen Toomey Right.
Martin Pazzani If you're if you tell yourself, I can't do it now, but I'll be able to get there if I just start small. So it's all about starting small. Anything is about starting small, learning to play the piano, learning to be a pro tennis player. You're all you've got to start at the beginning and the beginning as these little steps that give you the confidence to take the next step. So it's just human nature. I think that you just have to get over these little hurdles and then it becomes kind of addictive. You know, I walked 3000 steps yesterday. I got to do 3500. I'm going to do 5000. And now you can measure that. So, you know, part of it also is I recommend getting a fitness tracker or an Apple Watch or something where you can measure your own progress because it starts to happen really fast once you get into it.
Cathleen Toomey I love that because now you have a goal. So now you have a prescription, all of the listeners and viewers from Martin Pazzani that start ten minutes every day. And have your mantra be, “I can't do it yet,” so set as a goal, 10 minutes walk around the block and we all have access to these fitness trackers, you can track your steps. Would you say getting really granular here? They need people need to do this and do it three times a week, four times a week. I don't want to set people up for failure and know sometimes...
Martin Pazzani I think you have to start with what you're capable of. For some people, it might be once a week. For me, a walk or a hike once a week isn't enough to make progress. I, I get antsy if I only get out once a week. And I think physiologically you need to fit in two to three walks a week, I think in order for your body to start to respond, because it does take a little while to get into this groove. But it's not a, it's not a hurdle that is impossible to get over. I mean, three short walks a week can lead to four short walks a week can lead to then too long walks and one short one. I mean, you just there's no real prescription for you just have to start with you're capable of and then gradually increase it. And that will come naturally once you start doing it. And not only will it be physically possible, but really the chemistry of your brain starts to get more confident and starts to feel better about things and you start to want to prove it to yourself.
Cathleen Toomey Right, right. And so that's a good that's another good suggestion. Start two or three weeks a week and pay attention to your body and keep going, keep pushing it and keep moving to it faster. Start incorporating some uphills. Another element that I was very intrigued about in your book is the concept of JOBO. So we've all heard of FOMO, the fear of missing out. And Martin has coined the term JOBO, the Joy Of Being Outside. I want to talk about this in relationship to exercise. So we have exercise. We talked about the benefits that exercise and having this basic fitness will do for your brain and your body and your immune system in your heart. But tell me about the impact of doing that outside.
Martin Pazzani Yeah,
Cathleen Toomey I've spent a lot of time on in your book.
Martin Pazzani Yeah. You can get a what's called a runner's high or exercise high by being in a gym. But to me it's exponentially better to do it outside for a variety of reasons. First of all, there's actually more oxygen outside. You can really get better quality air and that's the better the air, the better your brain feels. So that contributes to the joy of it all. But, you know, there's a couple of great studies out that show that as little as two hours outside per week in the sunshine has a profound effect on your mood and your spirit. And that's because it increases serotonin levels, which is a mood enhancer. And so when you start to get addicted to the feeling outside, that's where the joy starts. The but the real joy of being outside for me is getting somewhere through the process of being outside a nice destination. And frankly, the more difficult that destination is for you, the more joy there is in achieving that destination. For some people, like I love this, you know, where you are in New Hampshire, there's so many great opportunities to get outside. There's a very unique spot called Mount Major in New Hampshire, which isn't a particularly difficult hike. It's achievable by a lot of people. But the payoff at the end is this incredible view. So your heart rate is elevated. You're a little bit tired. You may have had several moments of I don't think I can do it along the way, but then all of a sudden you emerge onto this big rock ledge and you see Lake Winnipesaukee and most of the state of New Hampshire beneath you. And it's kind of a rush. You get a perspective, your your your eyes, instead of looking at a screen, are looking at infinity. The sky is blue, the birds are chirping. It really does affect you at a physiological level. And, you know, it doesn't have to be, you know, for some people, they need to get to the top of Mount Block in order to get that high. But really, for for most human beings, a little hike like that'll do it. And it doesn't even have to be near the top of Mount Major, which might take a little while to get to if you haven't done anything. There's so many great places that have great payoffs. There's a place called Artist's Bluff in Franconia Notch. That, by the way, is where the cover shot of my book is taken. That is a fifteen minute hike. But when you get there, you to have this expansive view down the whole Franconia Notch. And and that's why it's called Artist Bluff, artists just take a quick walk up there and be inspired by the colors and the views and all that. So, yeah, the joy of being outside is the process of exercising to achieve something. And and then when you get there, there's this magnificent payoff. And and then kind of tie it to where the fear of missing out comes in, and then you can post a picture of it on social media. So joyful.
Cathleen Toomey That we can't even go to social media. That's a whole other conversation.
Martin Pazzani I know it's a it's a two edged sword. There is actually a whole lot in the book about that. And that's one of the reasons I do recommend getting outside of it, is because we're looking at screens too much. It's it's saps your energy. It saps your time it is the reverse of of of what we need to be doing more of.
Cathleen Toomey I, I couldn't agree more. And we've had a personal experience of Mount Major. My team did that this summer and hiked Mount Major, there's two ways to go up an easy way and a hard way, we went the hard way, not intentionally. And we really appreciated the view when we finally got it.
Martin Pazzani If you if you push yourself a little bit and you look up and you go, I don't know if I can do that, but then you do it, there's a feeling of satisfaction. And that's part of this joy of being outside. I did it.
Cathleen Toomey Yeah. And I think during this time of COVID, it's even more important for people to get outside. I know that a lot of our listeners and our viewers are going to say that's fine in the summer and in the beautiful fall, but we're heading into winter and it's messy and it's slippery, and I hear a lot of concern from older people about I don't want to go outside because it's too icy and slippery and I think that's while it's a legitimate you don't want to slip and fall. I also feel like it's kind of too easy an excuse not to go out. Do you have any particular tips for how to stay motivated during the winter weather months?
Martin Pazzani You're right. It is. There's no question about it. Winter is more risky for a lot of people. It's more risky for for me. I mean, and everybody can slip on ice. There's creepers you can get to prevent that from happening. There's confidence you can get from getting yourself fit before winter. There's, you know, there's all kinds of equipment. And then there's also always the opportunity to to walk and hike on flat ground where it's much less likely you're going to slip and fall. But, you know, there's something interesting. We talked about prevention. And one of the things I didn't mention, which is a little bit subtle for most people to understand, you probably know this one of the biggest risks we face as we get older is injuries from falls. And the older you get I lost my mother to a broken hip, so I'm really sensitive to this. I lost an aunt to a broken hip. So from simple falls on ice in both cases. But one of the things you can do to prevent falls is to get more fit because most falls occur from your inability to react fast enough to rebalance your body. And so being fit actually is the best fall prevention technique there is, because not only you can, your core is stronger, your reaction time is better. Your muscles react faster, but your bones are actually denser if you're fit. So instead of falling and breaking something, you bounce. The muscles protecting the bones are stronger and the bones themselves are stronger. So not only is fitness a great prevention to falls, if you should fall, it maximizes the chance you won't really be injured. And I have to tell you, I've taken some spectacular falls in the last five years. No broken bones, just bouncing. And I know this is more of an issue for women, but truthfully, being fit, the sooner you get fit and strong and your reflexes are increased, you you're more resistant to falls. And then then you feel more confident going out in the winter because you don't think you're going to get hurt if you slip. I have a spectacular video myself, I was training for a big hike last year and I've got some home security equipment and I was running up and down my driveway and I just spectacular fall on video. And a lot of people thought I got really hurt. But no, I just got up and I kept running. So you not that that's any great accomplishment, but seriously, you do get your falls aren't as scary if you're fit and winter is it is scary.
Cathleen Toomey Yeah. And I think I think that's good advice to to get the to have the right footwear and have the little grips on your shoes. You don't get the little.
Martin Pazzani Micro spikes on your shoes, they're cheap and they help you immensely.
Cathleen Toomey And get a pair of walking sticks of that helps.
Martin Pazzani You know, I'm glad you brought that up because that's another great issue for winter. I always use hiking poles, always winter and summer, but particularly in winter, because instead of having two points of contact with the ground, you have four. So if one foot slips and you've got your poles out, you're probably not going to fall.
Martin Pazzani It's much safer to hike in the winter with poles and flat or steep.
Cathleen Toomey And I also think we had talked earlier about there's a whole network of rail trails which are nice, flat cleared spaces. Find a place, go and go to your local high school, walk on the track.
Cathleen Toomey And just I think the key is to be outside.
Cathleen Toomey And if you read Martin's book, he also talks about the impact of being outside and what it does to your brain, not just with the increased oxygen, but if you're outside and you're walking in the woods, you are paying attention. So your brain is engaged. It's not like your brain is connecting to your foot. You're looking at rocks and sticks. And so it's much more engaging activity mentally than walking on a sidewalk are staring at a screen.
Martin Pazzani But 90 percent of the walking we do, especially like a treadmill in a gym or just walking down the sidewalk, walking around your house, you're on automatic pilot. Your brain is not necessary. It's almost unconscious. But again, outside you have to focus on am I going to trip? Is that rock slippery? Is his trail, whatever. And so your brain is constantly recalculate how to move through space. That proprioception that occurs creates cognitive stimulation, that cognitive stimulation is a brain exercise. We call it dual tasking. When you're using your brain and body together and challenging them both at the same time, it's the best possible exercise because you work in your brain, your body and your you're building new neural pathways, new brain cells that control the way your body moves, which prevents cognitive decline. It's a it's a marvelous new science. And I don't know if people know about it. That was one of the reasons for writing the book.
Cathleen Toomey I am thrilled that you're able to have this conversation with us today. We learned really about the fountain of youth going outside, starting small, saying, say, I can't yet pushing yourself, walking through the seasons will help increase your brain power, bring more oxygen, help you get healthy, resist falls and injuries. Is there any last piece of advice that you would want to give to our listeners?
Martin Pazzani Well, I could go on forever about this. I would say this. You're never too old to start a fitness program. There's great science now that even in your 80s, late 80s, starting a program of walking and then hiking can have immense longevity benefits and and mood benefits. And so you're never, ever too old. But also, I do want to say that I find it very important to constantly be making plans for the future. The idea that you're going to be able to do things. I have a top 10 list. My latest top 10 list is actually in the book, but I constantly change it. I constantly have what do I want to do next? What's my goal for next year? What's what mountain do I want to hike two years down the road planning trips? I think the planning process keeps you young and keeps you feeling like there's a future. And so in addition to getting fit, get your mind in the space of what's next, not I'm done, which to me is just some people just, you know, they figure they're done.
Cathleen Toomey That is so encouraging. And I do we all know that research proves that when you're planning something, when you're in the process of planning and anticipating a vacation or something, you're getting positive endorphins. You actually get more positive endorphins in the anticipation of an adventure as opposed to the reflection upon the venture. So I think that's great success. I feel like you've given us a tremendous guide to how to stay fit no matter what age or stage you're at. I would highly recommend if you haven't picked up Martin’s book, please do. It's a very, very practical it's motivating and you can get it on Amazon and on get outside. You'll find the place in the show notes and also on our website. Martin, I want to thank you so much. You've been really encouraging and inspiring to talk to and I encourage you, if you have questions for Martin, go to our website, SeniorityAuthority.org and if we've got enough questions and suggestions, we'll have Martin come back and tell us more about his adventures and his recommendations as we conclude our episode. I want to thank Martin for being here. He's author of Secrets of Aging, Well, Get Outside. The book is for sale on Amazon and on his website, which is www.GetOutside.online. Thank you for helping us get smarter about how to stay fit as we get older.
Martin Pazzani My pleasure. Thank you for having me. Good luck, everyone.
Cathleen Toomey Thank you to our show sponsor, the RiverWoods Group, northern New England largest family of non-profit retirement communities, where active adults find community, purpose, and peace of mind. Visit RiverWoodsGroup.org. That's our show for today. Did it spark a question? If so, send us your questions at SeniorityAuthority.org and we’ll track down the answer. Meanwhile, don’t forget to subscribe, like us on Facebook, follow us on YouTube, and rate us on your favorite podcast platform. Until next time, let’s get smarter about growing older.