Ep. 72: The Miracle Pill with Peter Walker

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If you could take a pill that makes you healthier and helped you live longer, would you? The good news is, you don’t need a prescription at all—you just need to move. Yet, so many of us don’t meet the minimum recommended levels of movement; in fact, 1.5 billion people around the world are so inactive they are at greater risk of everything from heart disease to cancer and even dementia. The problem? Our world—full of quick Uber trips and easy convenience with a click of the button from the couch—has been designed to discourage movement. We need major lifestyle changes, and fast. Today, journalist Peter Walker, author of The Miracle Pill, joins us to discuss how to bring activity back into our lives. (That’s him, pictured above getting active on his bicycle.)

LINKS

You can find Peter Walker on Twitter, and read his reporting for the Guardian here. 

You can buy The Miracle Pill on Amazon. Check out Walker’s previous book, How Cycling Can Save the World, over at Indigo. 

Read this recent feature by Walker, about how inactivity is an ongoing pandemic.

INSIGHTS

Inactivity is a major health issue that can leave you at a greater risk for all sorts of illnesses, like cardiovascular disease, arthritis, diabetes and Alzheimer’s. Even at the most basic level, inactivity is bad for our energy-intensive muscular system; the less we use it, the quicker it degrades. Science backs this up: Walker points to a study done in the ‘60s that put healthy university students on bed rest for weeks at a time. By the time the study finished, the students’ hearts had shrunk by about 15 percent. (Of course, because they were young, this could easily be repaired with a fitness regime.) “There are all sorts of things that start to basically shut down within your body if you don’t stay reasonably active,” Walker says. But there is some good news: “The moment you start being active, the odds start to tip in your favour once more. ” [03:55]

So what is “the miracle pill” exactly? It’s simpler than you think: Being active. Walker is careful to make the distinction between exercise — a formal, structured version of activity that people may not do for a variety of reasons, like time, cost and stigma — and general, everyday activity. In the U.K., the journalist found that 55 percent of people actually never exercise, a stat that varies country-to-country, but is likely similar in places like Canada and the U.S. “Society has basically been constructed to make it harder to do everyday movements, so a lot of people basically barely exert their bodies at all.” [05:38]

Here’s a shocking stat: Four in 10 British adults and 80 percent of children are so sedentary that they don’t even meet the recommended levels for movement. And this is on the rise in developed, wealthy countries around the world. “It’s not because people have suddenly become lazy, it’s just because the world has changed,” Walker argues. Whereas we once would have walked to a restaurant for dinner, and then strolled over to a nearby theatre for some evening entertainment, now we order delivery from an app and pull up our Netflix queue while we eat. “These things, in many ways, are great—I’m not saying people shouldn’t use them, but there hasn’t been [something] that takes their place, so it just gets built up over time.” [07:05]

We may get to the point where inactivity becomes such a big health crisis that it overwhelms our healthcare systems, especially in countries with socialized medicine. People will develop greater chronic conditions that require medication and, often, hospitalization, which will put a strain on our resources. While doing research for his book, Walker spent some time at a local hospital and asked two doctors what the impact will be if we do nothing about our inactivity problem. The answer? “Within 20, 30, 40 years, we will not actually have a viable system because we will have too many people who are ill for too long.” [08:15]

It’s important to remember that activity level and body weight are properties that are independent of each other. Also, activity level may be a better indication of one’s overall health compared to the number that shows up on your scale. “The core message I really want to get across to people is that anything is better than nothing,” Walker says. [14:10]

Walker’s intention isn’t to place blame on any individual or shame people for how they live their lives. It can be difficult to follow a healthy, lower-calorie diet. The world values convenience and actively discourages regular exertion—pointing us toward the hover-cart future depicted in the Pixar movie, Wall-E. “Governments have spent 40 years trying to load this on individual responsibility, and it hasn’t worked,” he says. It’s time for public officials to step up and think about ways to address widespread inactivity—Walker points to Scandinavian countries that have prioritized cycling and walking in their city planning as an example for what more governments should be doing. [20:03]

EPISODE 72: THE MIRACLE PILL WITH PETER WALKER FINAL WEB TRANSCRIPT

[00:00:10.11]

Christopher Shulgan: Welcome to Eat Move Think, episode 72. I'm executive producer Christopher Shulgan. Let's start with a number: 1.5 billion—that's billion with a B—are so stationary, they move so little that they're actually harming their bodies. We evolved to have some amount of movement: to lope across the savannah, to grind grain by pounding rocks together. And the absence of that movement can harm our bodies, leaving us at increased risk for everything from heart disease to cancer and even dementia.

[00:00:39.00]

Christopher Shulgan: Remember that scene in the Pixar cartoon, WALL-E? The one that shows the humans of the future, and they zip around on these little self-driving hover cars, their gazes fixed to the screens right in front of them, as they sip from these enormous drink containers, their every whim automatically catered to by technology, taking away any need for physical activity? We're not there exactly, but we're not far off.

[00:01:02.25]

Christopher Shulgan: That's what British journalist Peter Walker argues in his newest book, The Miracle Pill. Inactivity is a growing health crisis—one with the potential to eventually overwhelm our healthcare systems. But Walker points out it's not any one individual's fault. We are living in a world that actively discourages movement. We're spending more time working from our desks. Rather than heading out to the cinema, we stream content to our screens; and governments prioritize cars instead of urban planning. We used to walk to the restaurant—now we can just click a button to order a ride there, or hire a delivery service to bring the food right to our front door.

[00:01:37.16]

Christopher Shulgan: We need effective lifestyle changes—and fast, Walker says, both in our personal lives and on a structural level. This week, Walker joins Eat Move Think host and Medcan CEO Shaun Francis to discuss this growing crisis, and identify what those changes are. Here's their conversation.

[00:01:57.07]

Shaun Francis: Hi, I'm Shaun Francis. I'm the CEO of Medcan, and I'm here with science journalist Peter Walker. Peter's most recent book is called The Miracle Pill, and it explores how our world has become so sedentary that he suggests we need quick lifestyle fixes that will actually benefit our health. Thanks for joining us today, Peter.

[00:02:13.21]

Peter Walker: Thank you very much. Pleasure.

[00:02:15.29]

Shaun Francis: Before we jump into your most recent book, I know you're an avid cyclist, and so am I. You wrote a book about how cycling can save the world, and that's a pretty bold statement. Can you talk to us a bit about that?

[00:02:30.19]

Peter Walker: Well, yes. I mean, it actually ties into the second book about inactive living too, because that's one of the reasons too. In the kind of briefest terms, if you have a society where, unlike in places like Britain, Canada, US, where only a few percent of trips are made by bike, if you get up to kind of Dutch or Danish levels of 20 or even 30 percent of trips made by bike, then you suddenly have so many solutions, which are kind of there. You have less traffic in cities and towns, you have less pollution from cars, you have obviously fewer crashes and fewer people being killed. You have cities and towns which are much more kind of human-scaled, where people are able to interact much better.

[00:03:10.27]

Peter Walker: But the thing which connects to the second book, you suddenly have millions of people getting activity tied into their everyday lives. And I was completely shocked when I wrote the first book, because I didn't know much about this, about how big a public health issue inactivity is. I mean, it kills—or rather shortens—over five million lives across the world every single year, which puts it on a par with obesity, smoking, things like that. But it never really gets talked about in the same way.

[00:03:36.05]

Shaun Francis: Talk to us about the science of that. Is that because inactivity—I mean, we'll often think, okay, that means you are at higher risk of being obese, for example. But they're not necessarily correlated, meaning lack of activity is an independent variable, I think is what you're saying, contributing to mortality risk.

[00:03:56.03]

Peter Walker: Yes, that's it. I mean, again, all things being equal for your health, it's going to be probably better for you to be what's considered a normal weight than to be overweight. But whilst a lot of the risk factors are very, very similar, like type two diabetes and cancer and things like that, and whilst obesity and inactivity are connected in the sense that if you're inactive you're likely to gain weight too, they're physiologically separate things. I mean, in the most basic sense our bodies have evolved over millions of years to be active in everyday use. So at the most basic level, our muscular system, if we don't use it—it's quite a kind of energy-intense system for our bodies to maintain—so if we don't use muscles, they tend to degrade fairly quickly.

[00:04:41.21]

Peter Walker: There were all these experiments done in the '60s, which you probably couldn't get scientific approval to do now, where they took healthy university students and put them on bed rest for weeks at a time, and measured their cardiovascular systems before and after. And they found that their hearts had shrunk by maybe 15 percent. You know, this was something because they were young and fit, this could be put back with an exercise regime. But there's all sorts of things which start to basically shut down with your body if you don't stay reasonably active. I mean, it's all quite complicated, but overall, it puts you at much, much greater risk of cardiovascular disease, high blood pressure, type two diabetes, various forms of cancer, arthritis, you know, as you get older, Alzheimer's and various other forms of dementia. Basically, it's a really long list. But the moment you start being active, then the odds start to tip in your favour once more.

[00:05:33.16]

Shaun Francis: You say a miracle pill, but I know it's a metaphor for exercise.

[00:05:39.17]

Peter Walker: Well, it's a metaphor for being active. I mean, one of the distinctions I make in the book is the distinction between exercise, which is this kind of formalized and structured form of being active, and everyday activity, which is built into your ordinary life. And I don't ever want to say that exercise is bad for people, because your body doesn't care how it gets used. And if people go to the gym or run or do whatever sport they want, that's going to be really, really good for them. The problem is not enough people do that. And the statistics vary from country to country, but in the UK, about 55 percent of people say they never exercise ever. They never do any kind of formal exercise. And that just leaves activity built into everyday life. And that used to be something that people would routinely do, whether it was walking or cycling to work. I mean, back in the old days, even things like manually beating rugs, chopping the wood for the fire. I'm not saying we should go back to that, because obviously, a lot of these chores were incredibly tedious and took a lot of time. But there is this problem for the people who don't do exercise: society has basically been constructed to make it harder and harder to do everyday movements. So a lot of people basically barely exert their bodies at all.

[00:06:53.02]

Shaun Francis: You have a quote talking about four in 10 British adults and 80 percent of children are so sedentary, they don't even meet the minimum recommended levels for movement. This is on the increase?

[00:07:06.24]

Peter Walker: This is both on the increase, and it's fairly typical for most developed/richer countries around the world. Over the decades, basically, these activity levels have dropped off a cliff. And it's not because people have suddenly become more lazy, it's just because the world has changed. You know, we live in a world now where the default transport option for even quite short journeys is the car. We live in a world where even what used to be quite routine mini-activities like walking to the cinema or walking to a restaurant are now replaced by streaming films or takeaways you can summon via an app. And again, these things in many ways are completely great, and not to say that people shouldn't use them, but there hasn't been anything to take their place, so it just gets built up over time.

[00:07:54.10]

Shaun Francis: If we've been moving sedentary, and the world is getting more automated, and like you said, we're getting everything delivered to us and our entertainment. So surely, we don't want to discourage people cycling, but is there going to be some large breakthrough, do you think? Or we just have to accept it's going to be one or two percent of all movements?

[00:08:16.00]

Peter Walker: I think it's going to change quite quickly. Paris, for instance, with COVID, has built an enormous number very, very suddenly of cycle lanes. And they've also taken the quite politically tricky decision to make driving more difficult too, for shorter trips. And that's made a big, big difference. You get these kinds of social media video shots of Parisian streets, and now a lot of them are just awash with people walking with their bikes. The only thing that's going to change is politics, really. It's going to be the political will. And ideally, from a central government. They're going to say, "This is a good thing to do, so we're going to invest over 20 or 30 years." And it's been quite problematic because these are things where you only see the benefits over time, probably after the individual politician's term in office is long gone.

[00:09:02.28]

Peter Walker: But there's a couple of reasons why things might potentially change. One of which is the fact that the public health crisis from inactive living is really, really very, very great. And it sounds a bit strange, but the number of people dying young is actually less of an issue. It's more the number of people who, because of medical science, can carry on living into their 70s or 80s, but with this ever-increasing series of chronic conditions, which need medication, hospitalization at various points. And medical systems—particularly UK-style, socialized medical systems—find this incredibly difficult. For part of the book, I spent the day with two consultants, two senior doctors in general medicine, at the accidents and emergency department of the hospital closest to me. And I was asking them, you know, if we don't do something about it, what's going to be the impact on the health service in the UK as we know it? And they both said, within who knows when. 20, 30, 40 years, it will not actually be a viable system, because we will have too many people who are ill for too long.

[00:10:06.16]

Peter Walker: I think what we're saying is, if cities invest for the long term, it's possible to see an uptick in cycling, but we have been moving to a more sedentary lifestyle, which undoubtedly is going to have a severe impact on our health systems decades from now. COVID has already illustrated that our health systems can barely keep up, yet I don't think it's going to prompt them to build more capacity, let alone worry about the impending surge due to people's inactivity decades from now. We interviewed Dr. Robert Sallis a few episodes ago, and he, in studying COVID, he said the number one risk factor for mortality, other than age, was exercise.

[00:10:57.05]

Peter Walker: For COVID, this is?

[00:10:58.22]

Shaun Francis: Yeah, for COVID. And if you exercised, then you could drop your risk by 50 percent. Yes, so that's a fascinating—well, really startling statistic. If there was a pill we could take—so going back to your book, The Miracle Pill, that said we could drop our risk of severe COVID by two times, and by dying two and a half times, we'd all just be taking it every day. Like, why wouldn't you?

[00:11:23.17]

Peter Walker: I think coronavirus has an incredibly interesting element to it. Because public health experts always knew that inactivity for health services was an incredibly difficult thing. As part of the research for the book, I chatted to doctors who were saying if you don't do anything about it, then how will health services kind of cope in the future? And they were basically saying, they're not going to be able to. It might take 20 or 30 years, but they won't be able to cope. And you suddenly have this respiratory virus, where it was very, very clear that the outcomes were going to be worse, and were worse for people who led inactive lives. And I think that's going to be focusing quite a lot of minds, because a lot of governments—particularly the UK government—are realizing that they weren't prepared for COVID, which is one of the reasons why the death tolls were reasonably great.

[00:12:10.28]

Peter Walker: So I do wonder if, in the future, health ministers and prime ministers and even the public might have a different view of it. You know, because in the UK, inactive living kills an estimated 100,000 people every year. You know, that's year after year after year. So if politicians can make the case, well, hang on, we can have these interventions, which are much, much less stringent than what we did for COVID, but this saving of the death toll will be equally great, why don't we do it? I mean, I don't think we're at that stage yet, but maybe in the coming years, we might be.

[00:12:41.11]

Shaun Francis: Well, I mean, it didn't even occur to them during COVID to encourage physical activity, even outside, which has been shown to be very safe. In many jurisdictions, you couldn't even exercise outside. They haven't talked to Dr. Sallis, or really read the memo yet on how influential physical activity is on our health.

[00:13:02.15]

Peter Walker: I think it's a learning process, and I think a lot of countries are going to be having inquiries over the next year or so, both about what went wrong in terms of the specific response to this particular outbreak, but also what can be done in the future. And a lot of it is going to be obviously about test and trace systems and vaccines and social distancing. But you would have to hope that there would also be this idea that a healthy population is less likely to be one that's going to be affected quite as badly. And the statistics are really, really very clear. I mean, obesity and weight is one kind of risk factor to make your COVID outcomes worse, but inactivity is probably an even stronger one.

[00:13:42.08]

Shaun Francis: That's the real insight, which is that activity is independent of weight. So, you know, you shouldn't look at—I'll wait until I work out until I lose weight. And that's—I think a lot of people might think of it that way, or it discourages them. Or if I'm working out, I haven't lost any weight, so this is going nowhere, versus me working out is an independent contributor to my longevity. And sure, if I lost the pounds, that also would be excellent. But they're not mutually exclusive.

[00:14:11.03]

Peter Walker: That is actually really true. And there's various factors going on, one of which is the activity on its own will almost certainly not be enough for someone to lose a lot of weight, unless you have basically an all-day exercise program, which wouldn't leave you time to work. One of the experts I talked to was actually a Canadian academic called Professor Robert Ross, was saying that the message really, really should be: if you are active and lose weight, that's great. If you're active and you don't lose weight, that's still great. What is abundantly clear is, all things being equal, if you are more active then your health will in the long term become better, weighing both the short term and the long term. And one of the things that Robert Ross also said, which I think was very, very interesting, is that people get very, very hung up on this body mass index thing where you calculate your weight compared to your height. You know, so it's very, very much based on losing the pounds, but he's saying there's much, much better indicators. He says a lot of people who become more active, their waist size tends to go down, even if they don't lose weight. And that's a really good indicator, because there's certainly signs that having a higher waist size than you should is probably a worse indicator for your health than your body mass index. The kind of core message I really want to get across to people is that anything is better than nothing And the more you do is even better than that.

[00:15:31.04]

Shaun Francis: What percent of the population do you think is truly secondary? Is it 80 percent?

[00:15:37.02]

Peter Walker: I'm going to be a slight pedant here and point out the difference between sedentary and inactive—which I didn't know before I wrote the book—because they're often used in a kind of interchangeable way, but they're not exactly the same thing. Inactive is just not meeting your prescribed amount of physical movements, which you exert yourself through the day, whereas being sedentary specifically refers to people sitting down, which is also a health issue. But it is actually possible, for example, to be someone who's not sedentary at all, who stands up all day but, say, works in a shop and doesn't actually exert himself, just stands behind the counter. But in terms of both, it varies across the world, but the kind of broad brushstroke is that for adults, about two-thirds of people are not sufficiently active in the sense that they don't meet the kind of guideline of 150 minutes a week, which means their health is probably not as good as it could be. In terms of being completely inactive, it very, very much does vary from country to country, but it's probably fair to say that maybe—and it also varies by age, but maybe 20 percent of middle-aged people in places like the UK are, if not completely inactive, then they do very, very little.

[00:16:45.05]

Shaun Francis: So if you're a physician and you want to issue a prescription, you know, the activity prescription, how do you go about getting someone to take the pill?

[00:16:56.20]

Peter Walker: Well, it's quite difficult. And particularly for doctors. And so some doctors in some countries have tried to add on this kind of social prescribing arm where they have people who are not necessarily doctors, but might be nurses or trained public health people in some other way, can spend more time with the person, and talk to them about how they can integrate activity into their lives. I mean, you do sometimes literally get prescriptions for physical things, like some towns or cities in the UK have got these bike share schemes, where you can just rent a public bike and then you use it for a certain amount of time. And some doctors can actually issue a prescription of, say, a month's free membership for this.

[00:17:35.25]

Peter Walker: But it is quite complicated because, you know, one doctor described to me that if you think of the societal pressures, which kind of make it more difficult for people to be active, it's this massive pyramid in terms of this kind of—an inverted one, with the kind of massive things like the way cities are designed and the way work is built, all bearing down on this individual. And as one person, as a doctor, you can't just say to people, "Act differently," because there's all these pressures bearing on them. You have to find a way which kind of works for them.

[00:18:08.21]

Shaun Francis: What would you do? If somebody said, "Look, I'm totally or pretty inactive." You know, is it buy a gym membership? Or is it buy a bike?

[00:18:20.01]

Peter Walker: It would completely depend on their circumstances. I mean, gym membership, if they were really, really committed, and they had a gym nearby and had the time, I'd say, yes, go for it. But there are all these stats that show that a really quite high percentage of gym memberships are rarely if ever used. What I would do to this hypothetical person, I would refer to this quote in the book from a venerable US academic, an expert in physical activity, Professor Steven Blair. He's now, I think 83 or 84. And he says even now he walks 15,000 steps a day if he possibly can. And I'm trying to remember the exact quote, he said something like—you know, because I asked all the people I was speaking to are experts, you know, basically, how are you active, and how would you suggest other people get more active? And he said something like, "You know, my simple minded answer is, I would tell people find an activity that works for you and keep on doing it." And that's almost a slightly kind of circular answer, but it's almost the best one. You have to find a way to make something that fits into your life. And it completely depends on your life.

[00:19:23.10]

Peter Walker: If you live in a city like me, then you could perhaps make sure you don't get on the bus at the stop that's directly outside your home. You maybe walk three or four blocks or 15, 20 minutes and go to the next couple of stops. Or if you have to drive into work, maybe even just park at the far end of the carpark of your office building or park a few streets away, and get 2,000 or 3,000 steps in that way. If it is possible for you to cycle into work, do that. If you have a garden in your home that you've not really done much to, then maybe do it up. Just basically find something you enjoy doing that fits into your life. You don't want something where you're sat on the sofa watching TV and go, "Oh my goodness, it's that time where I have to do this."

[00:20:04.08]

Peter Walker: The public health situation in the world now isn't because there's been this sudden outbreak of greed or laziness. It's because all these social factors have been brought to bear on people, which makes it very, very straightforward to feed yourself in a cheap, but not particularly healthy and overly calorific way. And it also makes it very, very difficult for people to get this regular exertion as part of their lives. I mean, we were all told 20, 30 years ago that there would be this future where people barely had to work at all, it will be kind of automated. But in a lot of countries, people are working longer hours than they ever were. So people have less time to go to the gym or do other kinds of outside sports.

[00:20:45.10]

Peter Walker: And the other thing is, you know, just again to take an example from my own life is that a reasonably significant part of the everyday activity I get is just cycling around London on my bike. But I'm from the demographic which is most represented in urban cycling: I'm a middle-aged man. And it's because to cycle the city, you have to be—well, for a lot of people, you have to be slightly gung-ho and kind of a hobbyist, a kind of bike fan. It's not like the kind of German or Dutch or Danish thing where people see it as a kind of extended form of walking, we just get on the bike and do it. And that's because it's not a lot of fun. That's because there is a premium placed on going reasonably fast and being reasonably assertive, and being able to wave to cars to keep away. And for most sensible people, they simply don't want to do that. So this very significant part of my activity life is shut off to 90 percent of people. And there's not an awful lot they can do about it.

[00:21:39.13]

Peter Walker: So I think basically, governments have spent 40 years trying to load this onto individual responsibility, and it hasn't worked. So at some point, we have to have this point where more governments—you know, some governments do it, some of the Scandinavian countries are quite forward thinking about this—have to accept that this has to be a process which is with the collaboration of individual people. But it has to be also a top-down process. You have to create the environment in which people can do it. So people won't cycle unless there's safe cycle routes, they won't walk unless their streets feel quite nice to walk in. And again, this is outside the scope of my book, but they won't stop buying ultra-processed, very high-calorie, very cheap foods if they're still available and marketed and on every supermarket aisle, and they're the easiest things to get. And if you're overworked and you have several kids and you're quite poor, then they're the cheapest and easiest thing to do. There's all sorts of things which have built up over decades. And no one's actually planned this. No one has set out with this idea, let's make the population unhealthy. Let's make it inactive. Let's make them fat. But all sorts of interconnected decisions have kind of wrapped into this. And they have to be untangled, and that's really the work of governments.

[00:22:53.27]

Shaun Francis: And corporations, I think. Golf is a great example. Many golf courses now, you're required to take a cart.

[00:23:00.10]

Peter Walker: Are you really? Oh my goodness!

[00:23:02.11]

Shaun Francis: Yeah. Yeah, they can move you around faster. But again, you know, a great example of getting your walk in and carrying or pushing your clubs has again been automated. So the great exercise value that it could have had has largely been erased by this mentality of let's move people through faster and make it more convenient. So there's so many forces at work that we have been oblivious to. And companies are oblivious to it. I think that, you know, creating awareness, and just even the research that exercise, activity is an independent variable to mortality. They don't know that. I mean, look, even with COVID, right? That was one of the profound discoveries, and I don't think it's talked about at all.

[00:23:47.24]

Peter Walker: There was a certain amount of talk at the start of the pandemic, but yes, it's died off a bit, hasn't it?

[00:23:52.28]

Shaun Francis: It's died off a bit, and not to the extent that we're being told we have to get out and move, right? It's we resort far too easily to medical therapies, as opposed to saying, "How do we boost our immunity through ways that we know we actually can?" Psychologically, as society has become more convenient, it's a massive current in that direction. So something as obvious as getting more activity in, even though it's acknowledged, it doesn't sustain itself in the media and in politics yet.

[00:24:29.06]

Peter Walker: Well, it's the kind of whole boiled frog thing, that people don't notice these incremental changes over decades and decades. But again, experience shows that governments just telling people they need to do X, Y, Z just doesn't really work. It has to be a different approach. And some countries get it. I mean, the Finns are very, very good. Finland was one of the places I went to for research in the book. And one of the interesting things that they do is they start quite young. They have this very—you know, their education system's kind of very, very good anyway, but they have this idea that education should also be about movement. So they have this whole division of the Ministry of Education called Finnish Schools on the Move, which sends people into schools to try and find ways that students can be more active. So whether it's extending play times or having their math lesson where kids do kind of squats to a count rather than just counting, or they can stand up or sit on balls rather than being just sat at desks. I mean, one of the things this department also does is that they gave a whole series of mini-cameras to Finnish students who were cycling to and from school, and then at the end of a period of a couple of weeks, they got the kids to show the people from their local council, like, here's where we don't feel safe. We don't like this junction, we don't like this crossing. What can you do about it? So it's not so much telling people what to do, it's this central politics which gives people the kind of authority and power to be able to make changes in their own lives. And that sounds quite complicated, but in some ways, it's actually reasonably straightforward.

[00:26:01.28]

Shaun Francis: Yeah, well, it certainly is to us. We're the believers. I think that's a great opportunity to wrap up on that note, which is this is not just the individual, it's the company, it's the government. All hands really need to join on this. And just have the awareness out there. And Peter, your book is a big contribution to that, and we appreciate having the opportunity to talk with you today. And hopefully, our listeners will be inspired to, if not bike, walk a little more, take the stairs, you know, find an opportunity to get their exercise in because, as you've said, it's an independent contributor to our longevity, and something we really need to—something we can really make a change immediately with. So thank you.

[00:26:54.29]

Peter Walker: Well, that's very kind. It's been a complete pleasure.

[00:27:08.24]

Christopher Shulgan: That was Medcan CEO Shaun Francis in conversation with Peter Walker, the author of The Miracle Pill. We'll post a link to that book at EatMoveThinkpodcast.com, as well as links and a full episode transcript.

[00:27:22.09]

Christopher Shulgan: Eat Move Think is produced by Ghost Bureau. I'm executive producer Christopher Shulgan. Senior producer is Russell Gragg. Patricia Karounos is associate producer. Social media support from Andrew Imecs and Campbell MacKinnon.

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Christopher Shulgan: Remember to rate and subscribe to Eat Move Think on your favourite podcast platform. Follow our host Shuan Francis on Twitter and Instagram @ShaunCFrancis—that's Shaun with a U—and Medcan @Medcanlivewell. We'll be back soon with a new episode examining the latest in health and wellness.

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