Ep. 44: The Year in Review

COVID-19Science
Written By Christopher Shulgan

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What a time to debut a wellness podcast! Host Shaun Francis wanted to break down the latest advice from scientists, MDs and academics in terms everyone could understand. In 2020 we explored nutrition, fitness and mental health—as well as a little virus known as COVID-19. This year-in-review session sees Shaun and producer Christopher Shulgan look back on Eat Move Think’s first 43 episodes, using the show’s 10 best moments to explore highlights, lowlights and fascinating exchanges in one of recent history’s most eventful 12 months ever.

OUR TEN-BEST MOMENTS

In (mostly) chronological order…

And that’s almost it for 2020! Next week: The start of a series pegged to New Year 2021 on how to approach behavioural change!

The Year in Wellness final web transcript

Christopher Shulgan

Welcome to Eat Move Think. Christopher Shulgan here, executive producer of the show, with a special year-in-review episode that looks back on 2020. Our debut happened right at the year’s beginning, as the first reports were showing up in media about an unusually aggressive virus in Wuhan, China—a city few North Americans could then locate on a map.

Christopher Shulgan

Eat Move Think happened because Medcan CEO Shaun Francis saw the need for something new—a mechanism that took the scientists and MDs and other health professionals defining the future of wellness, and made their thinking accessible to laypeople. That was how we started, anyway. And then, just a few shows in, the virus leapt to Europe, then North America, and the year in wellness became defined by COVID-19.

Christopher Shulgan

We interviewed experts who thought pandemic restrictions weren’t strict enough, and experts who thought the restrictions were too strict. We heard how to fix relationships in the pandemic, how to eat in the pandemic, how to exercise when gyms were closed and why exercise was so important when gyms were closed. The commonality among it all was wellness. How to secure it. How to promote it. How to think about it.

Christopher Shulgan

In retrospect, it seems incredibly appropriate that Health Canada just approved the vaccine, at year’s end. Hopefully that signals an end of some sort. A bookend, maybe. So what was the book like? At the end of a frenetic year of contradictions and reversals, perhaps it makes sense to pause, to take a look back and examine the route we travelled.

Christopher Shulgan

To do that, we reviewed the 43 shows we made, and selected 10 of what we thought were the most interesting moments. Host Shaun Francis and I then sat down to discuss what they said about a historically eventful and unusual year. We hope you enjoy the show.

Christopher Shulgan

Shaun Francis, how are you today?

Shaun Francis

I'm doing great, Chris. Or as well as you can do on a wintry Toronto day during our second lockdown.

Christopher Shulgan

So this is a different show for Eat Mood Think. This show is our best of the year. This has been a historically interesting year. I mean, what do you think of that statement?

Shaun Francis

Well, I think that's an understatement.

Christopher Shulgan

It is interesting. I mean, aside from the episodes, which we'll get to in a minute, Medcan has transitioned a lot. There's a new line of business in terms of the safe at work system, and the Medical Advisory Services Team. There is a virtual business that, I think Medcan just past it's 10,000th virtual fitness. A lot has changed. Do you want to speak to that?

Shaun Francis

We had to rethink everything. And while we had the ability to do virtual physician visits, we weren't really scheduling our other services virtually. So, you know, you made brought up a great example of fitness. And, you know, we were doing no virtual fitness pre-pandemic. And what we noticed is that during the lockdown, some of our trainers were able to convert all of their sessions virtual. And it really showed us what the possibilities were, and that's going to be a permanent change. And rightly so, because you can then be with your trainer, train with your trainer from anywhere in the world. There's no excuse not to work out with your trainer. And similarly, we have other specialists and consultants at Medcan who previously might have been more in-person orientation, and that also now switched to a virtual visit.

Christopher Shulgan

To my mind, whether it's testing, whether it's overall wellness, like, you know, not to get too preachy or promotional, but this was the year that Medcan kind of demonstrated its value to clients.

Shaun Francis

Yeah, I had great feedback from clients. You know, what would we do without Medcan? But certainly when you're negotiating a pandemic, and regular health care is not available to you, you know, knowing that Medcan's here, that we have stayed open the entire time, is I think comforting. And not just open, but we're leading on tests, COVID PCR tests, COVID antibody testing, immunity check-ins with people that might have a fear over COVID. And, of course, just getting access to pure, great health care, because well, we forget because COVID is so in the face, but it's really—you know, globally this year, only two percent of people that will die in 2020, only two percent will be from COVID. You know, the very vast majority will continue to be from chronic diseases, cancer and heart disease being at the top. And, you know, we don't have a similar hysteria regarding that, right? We don't count cancer deaths daily, we don't count heart attacks daily. Very few of us know people that die from COVID, just to put it in perspective, yet we are myopically, single-dimensionally focused on that. So, you know, Medcan has to keep going.

Christopher Shulgan

Yeah. You know, there's this sense that we're kind of taking our eye off the ball a little bit. You tweeted today about TTC deaths by suicide have increased by one third. Like, there are all these other things that we're sort of—yeah, cancer remains the leading cause of death. Heart disease, number two. I was talking to Bob Ross, who, you know, helped create the 24-hour movement guidelines, and he said sedentary behaviour is the real pandemic. You know, I kind of feel like, yeah you said myopically-focused on the pandemic, whereas other aspects of public health are falling by the wayside.

Shaun Francis

That's absolutely true. Suicides will be up, there's no question. Drug addictions will be up. Deaths from cancer and heart disease will be up. Maybe not immediately, but over the long term, there's all sorts of data that shows increases on unemployment and decreases in economic activity, are highly correlated with your overall quality of life and health care. We're absolutely myopically focused. So much so in the first lockdown, we stopped people from getting health care. And we still are doing our best to keep people from working out. I really do think we'll look back on this, and think many of our tactics have been a colossal mistake. But I think in the heat of the moment, we just don't have the calm of mind to properly analyze it.

Christopher Shulgan

All right, so let's shift into the 10 best. So we're going to look back. We are going to look at some of the moments that illustrated the kind of year it was. We're going to look back at some of the moments that just plain were great advice, some of the moments that are funny, some of the moments that are telling about the kind of situation that we were in. So why don't we start? We're going to start right at the beginning. Our first two, number one comes from episode number one, number two comes from episode two. Russ, why don't you roll the tape for the episode one clip?

Shaun Francis

Can I ask just one question? Someone here, you know, wants to experiment for sleep or back pain? What should they do? Like, should they just go down to the new marijuana shop and talk to the clerk?

Mark Ware

I mean, listen, that's a dangerous question to try and answer. What should you do? I think it depends on why you want to try cannabis. Fundamentally—and Rakesh pointed to this, this slippery line between what's recreational and what's medical. Why do you want to try it? If it's for medical, if you want to try to improve your sleep or to improve your pain, talk to your physician. And I think that's the first thing. And the fact that the physician may not know, well, that's another problem. But that should be us that are educating the physicians how to have that conversation. But I'd do that first. Because you need to know what are your other medications? What have you tried for this already? It's not a miracle. But if you've had problems sleeping, and you're drinking four coffees and checking your emails at the time you shut the light off, maybe that's why you're not sleeping. Maybe there are other ways to manage your problem that aren't just taking some weed. So talk to your doctor, if it's medical. If it's recreational and you just want to have a good time, go and talk to the bud tender and say I'm going to watch a movie and they'll be like, "Do you want a sativa? Is it a comedy? Are you watching a horror movie?" They'll tell you what strain you want for—are you watching basketball or hockey? It's like what ...

Christopher Shulgan

So that was Dr. Mark Ware, the chief medical officer of Canopy Growth, one of the top MDs in the world of cannabis. And he was talking to an audience of CEOs and C-Suite executives at the National Arts Centre in Ottawa. And what strikes me about that is just the long-term effects of the legalization of cannabis was a trending topic around the start of 2020. And it just seems so trivial today in retrospect. And partly that's we're two years in past the legalization of cannabis, and everybody has kind of dealt with that and processed that. And we've moved on as a society. We have changed something that we agonized over and something that was illegal for so long, and it's become legal. And to me, life has not changed one iota, really.

Shaun Francis

I don't know that we know what the end result will be. I believe more people will be doing marijuana as a result of the legalization on the assumption that it's not bad for you, and if anything, it might be good for you. I'm wary of that. And in the lack of rigour with respect to clinical trials, around both its efficacy and its harmfulness.

Christopher Shulgan

So our next clip is from episode two, and it's with Felice Jacka. So Dr. Felice Jacka is the global expert in the way our diet affects our mental health. She's the author of Brain Changer: The Good Mental Health Diet. Felice Jacka is really, for nutritionists, for registered dietitians, she is a legend in her field. Shaun, you spoke with her and did just a great interview with her. Let's hear that clip. And then we'll talk a little bit about it afterwards.

Shaun Francis

It's amazing that the same food that helps us prevent cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and Alzheimer's appears also to improve your mood. Are these all connected?

Felice Jacka

Yeah, completely. And I mean, if you get back to the root cause of the root causes, if you like, we're starting to really believe now that it sits in the gut. You know, the gut has long been recognized as our second brain because it has its own completely independent in many ways nervous system, and that there's a strong bi-directional communication between the central nervous system and the gut. But now we understand that the microbiota, the bacteria, with which we have co-evolved since the beginning, play an incredibly important role in our health. So very simply speaking, what bacteria in the gut do is they digest dietary fibre. And if you look at the incredible rise in allergic disease around the globe, particularly in Western countries over recent decades, we think that this is linked back to poor diet in the gut. Because simply speaking, the gut can't do what it's supposed to do without dietary fibre. And because of our terrible diets, we don't eat anywhere near enough dietary fibre. And this leads to all sorts of really problematic changes that flow through to the health of the body, right the way through the system, including the brain.

Christopher Shulgan

So what I think is interesting about that is the way that Felice Jacka's research suggests that it's all connected. To a certain extent, her research proves the thesis of Eat Move Think, which is that eat and move and think and your overall wellness are all interconnected. And that's what I love about your interview with her, that that's what that showed.

Shaun Francis

Yeah. Well Chris, I don't think it's, given all—you know, everything we've done in this journey, both with Medcan and seeing emerging literature in our book, Eat Move Think, you know, none of it's a surprise that it's interrelated. If you just eat properly, right? And we even talked about working out as well but, you know, if you eat properly, you're mitigating your risk of all the major things that are going to impact your length of life and your quality of life. So whether that's cancer, heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer's, from a living longer perspective, but also your quality of life, right? So if you can have more effective use of your mind and your body as well, whatever length of life you have, you're going to enjoy it more.

Christopher Shulgan

Okay, so next episode, we're number three, is in episode 10. So this is Parenting Through the Pandemic. This is your former Wharton Business School professor, Stew Friedman. This interview happens just as the pandemic is starting. Okay, so here's a clip from Shaun Francis's interview with Dr. Stew Friedman, the co-author of the book, Parents Who Lead.

Shaun Francis

How much of this is time? I think the current generation of parents is better at the time element, but I'm not sure they're better at the coaching element, right? Because previous generations never—you know, I never went to school games. It was very much, you know, you're more on your own, right? So how do you reconcile that? To what degree do you need to be there? Or is it more having a lot of impact in the time you have?

Stewart Friedman

It's absolutely about quality, not quantity. And I've done some research on this, others have as well. I'm pretty confident in—I mean, within limits. If you're never there, you know, that's one thing. But one of the things that we know, and this is especially true in the digital era, that if you're physically present but psychologically absent, which is to say, on your phone, you know, while you're with your child, no matter what the age, but especially when they're young, they know it, they feel it, and they are hurt by it, generally speaking. I mean, they might say, "Oh, I'm used to that. Everybody does that." Not true. I mean, yes, it's true that everybody does that, and we've become inured to the hurt of being rejected, essentially. But just being physically present is not the answer. There's a lot of really interesting research on this now of how it's parents being on their devices that's causing problems with their children, not so much their kids being over-invested and addicted to their, you know, devices, I mean, that's a different issue, but the key is to be connected on the stuff that really matters. And to find even small ways of engaging in the kinds of conversations that we've been talking about here that help your children to know that they're the most important thing to you in your life, and that you'll do anything you can to help them in any way that you can, given the limits of the resources that you've got available to you.

Christopher Shulgan

What I think is so fascinating about that clip is that very early on in the pandemic, Stew was nailing a problem that becomes a preoccupation with parents who are working from home, and who are struggling with the problem of being present when you're around your kids, when you're physically around your kids, but also feeling the demands of work. I thought about your interview with Stew so often through these past eight months as I was doing work and the kids were home, and they were—you know, they were demanding my time, and I just wasn't there for them. And I thought about that and I tried to get better each time. So that was just wisdom for me.

Shaun Francis

You know, Stews quite right. I mean, we are so surrounded by technology, and I'm one of the biggest culprits, You know, your phone's in your hand all the time. It's an appendage, right? And we sort of live in this virtual physical world now. And just being having that downtime where you do have that connection with your children. I mean, one of the tactics, you know, we try to do is have mealtime without devices. Ever a struggle, but we do manage to do it. And as my boys get older, we still hold that time sacred. So, you know, really looking for those opportunities to have those connections is super important. Of course, too, if I do any athletics or work out with them or go skiing with them, I mean, these are also times that are device free. So, you know, finding opportunities to have that quality time, I think is paramount, and Stew's quite right.

Christopher Shulgan

Fantastic. So let's move on to the next clip. Episode 12: Super Spreaders Explained. So this is with Jonathan Kay, who is a journalist who wrote a fascinating article on the science of super spreaders that draws on his background studying fluid dynamics during his master's degree at McGill. Russ, can you roll the tape? And he'll talk about this a little bit.

Jonathan Kay

My article looks at so-called super spreader events. What were the activities these people were doing when they spread the disease to lots of people? And what I found was that often—not often, but the vast majority of instances, the activities broke down to a very narrow set of activities. It tended to be singing clubs, densely-packed funerals, densely-packed parties, cruises, meatpacking plants, aprés-ski environments, both people playing sports and also watching sports, especially environments where they were closely packed, and they were screaming and cheering and in each other's faces. All of these super spreader events that I was looking at tended to be clustered around a certain type of human behaviour, which was people in an agitated respiratory state, either sneezing or coughing, or grieving or screaming or singing or yelling, in very close proximity, face to face in a way that permitted ballistic transfer of large particles from one person's mouth or nose to another person's mouth or nose. This was the overwhelming type of activity represented in the samples that I looked at.

Christopher Shulgan

What I love about that clip is that he very early on identifies the fact that this is droplet transmitted. That was at a point where people were still talking about, oh, is it airborne? You know, is it spread through these, like, mists, and can it travel through HVAC systems and stuff like that? And Jonathan Kay gets it in a way that is just very intelligent, and he breaks it down so quickly, at a point where that was still controversial, where people didn't really understand that.

Shaun Francis

Chris, you're quite right. And Jonathan was on this early. And I think we continue to see that in the kind of guidance that we're getting on lockdowns, which of course is, you know, no to bars, no to parties, sporting events, etc. Though interestingly, we're still getting the cases, right? So we haven't figured this out totally yet. But it's definitely a big contribution to how we're thinking about it.

Christopher Shulgan

Well, John Kay's clip exists in parallel to a clip that we come to—so what, so that was Episode 12. Then 12 episodes later, so three months later, we interview Queen's University Medical School infectious disease chair, Dr. Gerald Evans. Russ, why don't we roll that clip? This is Medcan Chief Medical Officer Dr. Peter Nord's interview with Dr. Gerald Evans.

Peter Nord

Dr. Evans, we've heard and read so many headlines over the past months about droplet versus airborne, surface contagion, and even most recently, 200 scientists signing a petition to the World Health Organization about transmission distances. In your view, what are some of the main myths regarding COVID-19 transmission?

Gerald Evans

I think the the biggest myth at the moment, or at least one that that's really having a hard time getting put to rest is the issue of what the contribution is from airborne or what's sometimes referred to as aerosol transmission. We've got some fairly substantial good epidemiologic data which tells us that the primary route of transmission, the most effective and the dominant route of transmission is actually large respiratory droplets. And we know that because we know that if this was actually an airborne or aerosol-transmitted virus dominantly, we would be seeing easily 10 to 20 times as many infected people around the world that we are currently seeing. You know, we know a lot about the reproductive number of viruses that are transmitted through an airborne route. And those are typically, you know, reproductive numbers around 15 to 18. Measles is 18 as an example. And this virus really has a natural reproductive number of about 2.3 to 2.4. So it really is behaving a lot like a droplet virus, much like influenza is. And that's where it really tells us that if airborne transmission's occurring, it's occurring extremely uncommonly, and it is certainly not the dominant form of transmission for this virus.

Christopher Shulgan
Essentially Shaun, what Dr. Gerald Evans says is that we know it's not airborne transmitted, because if it was airborne transmitted it would have a reproductive number up around where measles is. And so what you have is this infectious disease chair confirming this journalist's theory from three months earlier.

Christopher Shulgan

So this next clip is Episode 28. It's The Best-Ever Protein Explainer with Professor Stu Phillips. It features registered dietitian Leslie Beck, the director of food and nutrition from Medcan.

Leslie Beck

So when it comes down to maintaining our muscle strength, our muscle mass, slowing down age-related loss, what's better: animal or plant protein?

Stu Phillips
Yeah, great question. So there's probably two answers to the question. One is that everybody has a choice, and I realize that a lot of people are making choices to consume more plant-based proteins based on ethical and environmental issues, which I'm not fully equipped to speak to. But let's say that you make that choice. And what I would say is, I think that's a very healthy choice to make. It would be wrong for me to disagree with vegan, or lower animal-based protein consumption, whatever the reason for you making that choice is, if it's a health based choice as well. I probably would have said 10 years ago that I think that there's a strategic advantage to animal protein. The data that we're generating now—and not just our lab, but many others—is probably showing that, I think plant-based protein, so long as you're getting close to that 1.6 level, it doesn't matter whether they come from plants or animals.

Shaun Francis

What I love about this clip is it's an example of us bringing together two literally global-level experts looking at the science of how to help you live a better life.

Christopher Shulgan

That's why we have this podcast. Like, that's why—you know, that's why the podcast exists.

Shaun Francis

That's right. We literally are looking at scientific literature every day, and having these discussions internally or with consultants and advisors of, you know, how does this affect our business? How does it affect our patients? What's actionable? What's ready to use? What might be too far on the horizon?

Christopher Shulgan

The other thing is that, you know, Leslie has done numerous episodes. And invariably, they're some of the great episodes that we do. I mean, you know, she's just so great. Next episode? Episode 33. So this is a clip with André Picard, who is the Globe and Mail’s health columnist, who we don't always agree with André Picard, but he has been kind of the central figure, the central media figure defining the discourse in Canada.

Shaun Francis

No, absolutely. I mean, he covers everything. And he is a great journalist and opinion leader. And he believes in evidence-based medicine. And I believe he's open minded and probably persuadable to modify his opinion as new evidence comes forward. And it's important to have someone of that prominence with that kind of platform in our country.

André Picard

But I think that is our strategy now is to kick the can down the road, and hope that we have a better response, so we have more understanding. So I think that's been the philosophy all along. It's certainly imperfect. I don't like this notion where people are essentially saying—now this is oversimplifying what you said but, you know, saying yeah, well the old people just lock them away to keep them safe. I don't think that's realistic either, nor do I think we can keep kids in the basement and out of school. I think we have to get on with our lives, but try and do it in a different way that minimizes interactions, but allows us to get on with life.

Shaun Francis

Let's run that thread down a bit. How do you live with it, and how do you kind of minimize it? I mean, because you say with some physical distancing. I know you're not talking lockdowns. No one likes lockdowns. What's that happy medium of how society actually gets going again while living with it?

André Picard

Well, I think that's the million-dollar question, is where do we find a happy medium when there's such a wide diversity of views, right? I think that's a real, almost impossibility in a democratic society is to please, I was going to say everyone, but even please half the people is impossible. I think politically, this is unmanageable. So I just don't know. I don't know how we're going to find that solution. I think we're just going to sort of putter along until we get it sort of semi right, and people can bear it.

Christopher Shulgan

To me, André Picard is right. We've never had a great strategy as we're navigating this pandemic, and we're just sort of kind of muddling through it until the vaccine comes along. So he said that, halfway through the year when we interviewed him, and now, that turns out to be exactly what we did.

Shaun Francis

What's remarkable is a few things: we’re back into a lockdown. We don't really have full transparency on the reasons. For example, as recently as this morning, I looked at the ICU capacity in Toronto, and it's unchanged since the summer. And flu is gone. And yet, that's not part of the media dashboard. So despite everything we've now known for six months about flattening the curve and getting better information, I feel like we have no better information or no more visibility into where we're at and why we're there. But we do know, it's certainly a much less lethal pandemic than it was six months ago, yet the strategy hasn't changed.

Christopher Shulgan

We've closed movie theatres. And movie theatres are not a—maybe you have to sit every other seat or something like that, but people quietly sitting in a movie theatre is not a mechanism for transmission of COVID.

Shaun Francis

Yeah, quite right, Chris. And we still are allowed to fly on planes, right? Which is much closer proximity, with masks, and take them off to eat. And yet sitting every other person in the cinema—not eating, even masked—is not allowed. The big joke is you could go to Costco, get in line, and yet you can't go into a boutique with two other people all masked. There is no consistency. We really don't know where we're at and why we're there.

Christopher Shulgan

So I think André Picard has done a great job of sort of showing that the emperor has no clothes. I think you and I don't always agree with his recommendations, but he's been apt and adroit in his criticisms: the fact that we're just kind of muddling through this.

Shaun Francis

We're muddling through.

Christopher Shulgan:

Next episode is Episode 36. This is Wearable Technology with Amber Mac. She's one of the top tech analysts out there. And what we love about this one is that she comes up and talks about a bit of technology that I think has really gone under the radar. And that's the WHOOP band. Have you looked this up since you talked to her about this?

Shaun Francis

I know about it, and I know of a few people using it.

Christopher Shulgan

And what do they think of it?

Shaun Francis

Oh, they think it's great, right? But I don't know that they're still using it, right? So I think a lot of people have tried wearables, but only a small number do it consistently.

Christopher Shulgan

So this is Amber Mac talking about wearables.

Shaun Francis

Now are you a user of the health apps?

Amber Mac

Well, you know, I'm glad that we're having this conversation, because I have been using a wearable for the past two months called WHOOP. And it's a WHOOP band, W-H-O-O-P. And I absolutely love it. And here's the thing, and I've been thinking a lot about wearables in this space, especially knowing that we're doing this call and having this conversation. I think that as much as Apple is at the forefront of innovation when it comes to health tech, they have a bit of a weakness in their strategy. And in my opinion, that weakness is the battery life of the Apple Watch. I think the real killer app or the killer tech in health and wellness has to be a piece of technology that you never take off, because how else are you going to get an accurate representation of someone's health if you know they're taking it off every night to charge it? So what I love about the WHOOP band, if people aren't familiar with it—and I have no official relationship with them, but I love the idea, you never take it off, and once a week, you are able to simply add the little battery pack onto the band and charge it. And it doesn't take long at all. And that's just a weekly thing that happens without removing the band in the first place.

Christopher Shulgan
So that was Amber Mac talking about wearables. Well, let's look into that a little bit. Some people would have said 2020 was the year of the wearable. Actually, you know, in 2019. Of course, it didn't turn out—it turned out to be the year of the pandemic, but so you don't think we're there yet?

Shaun Francis

Look, I think we are there in that they're somewhat ubiquitous, there's major organizations in it. There's more actual insights and relevance for us than there ever has been. I do still think it's a small amount of the population that uses them consistently, even Apple watch. Like, how many people really are checking in on their ECG daily or their sleep? I mean, I've tried most of them. And it's interesting to know how well I sleep, but again, on our show, we interviewed one of the world's leading sleep experts.

Christopher Shulgan

Jean-Philippe Chaput, yeah.

Shaun Francis

Yeah. And he was ambivalent really about its efficacy. It was interesting, he said, but not reliable. So why would I then rely on it enough to look at it daily if in fact, the data was flawed? I think, you know, it's directional. Like, what time did you go to bed? What time did you wake up? But I'm not sure I need a wearable device to tell me that.

Christopher Shulgan

Yeah. Like, you know whether you had a good night's sleep last night. You don't need some readout on a device to show you that oh, you got to get to sleep.

Shaun Francis

But there is a small percent of the population that wants to track that. And then there's a large part of the population that will never track it. And then there's another segment that will do that for a little while and then go okay, that was cool. And I'm done with that now.

Christopher Shulgan

Okay, next, our ninth one, the ninth of the 10. Our penultimate clip comes from episode 41: How to Live Well in One Single Episode. So there's a lot of great stuff in this one. What I love about this—well, let's just play it. So this is a clip from Dr. Jonathan Danson, talking about mental health.

Jonathan Danson

So as an example of how powerful social media can be, and how little insight can help in the moment, I was once at a friend's cottage, he brought a bunch of their friends. There was two people ended up being there who were real-life social media influencers. And I don't mean that people who just, you know, on weekends, like have a bunch of—you know, build up their followers and post nice pictures. I mean, people who make it their career. So these are lovely, really great, really kind, and of course, beautiful people, as most people are required to be if you're going to be a media influencer. And we ended up playing this game outside called spike ball. It was okay. It was a rainy day, we were cold, we kept falling in the mud. It was fun, but it wasn't that fun. I'm gonna just throw a number and say it was a five out of 10.

Jonathan Danson

But of course these media influencers, they have to take pictures of things they're doing, and they were doing that throughout. So game ends, we're all inside, we're drying off. Again, it was fun, but it was not that fun. Few hours later, I'm on social media. And of course, I'm looking at the profiles of these two great new people I met earlier that day. And what I find is a video that they posted of them playing this spike ball game. I caught myself watching this video and saying things to myself, like, "Wow, what a nice life. Like, that looks so fun! That looks so exciting. They're so lucky." And of course, when I caught myself, I realized I was there. It wasn't that fun. I saw them taking those pictures. They were cold and wet and muddy. So my point in this story is: I was there, I had every bit of insight you can possibly have into the fact that these videos were small snippets of a broader picture. But even with all that insight, I found myself sitting there wishing I had their lives.

Christopher Shulgan

I love a lot about that episode, and I love Dr. Jonathan Danson’s bit in that, which I think provides mental health—like, technique after technique after technique to secure your mental health and to promote your mental health over time. But what I love about that is that that's a problem that we all deal with, probably over-consumption of social media. And, you know, he's suggesting, the psychologist deals with this too. So I just love that he's falling prey to the same problems that we all have. Sometimes knowing what to do, does not mean that you can do it.

Shaun Francis

Are you saying that in that sense that, you know, knowing that you shouldn't be on social media as much as we inevitably are? And/or misreading the situation?

Christopher Shulgan

So, like, I know that I should not be scrolling through, for example, Instagram at 10:30 at night. That I should be, like, going to bed. And yet I remain on Instagram at 10:30 at night, scrolling through, just wasting time, as a time-wasting thing.

Shaun Francis

Well, that's what it's designed to do, right? It's designed to cater to that human instinct, right? The voyeur, you know, images that are tailored to you. Social media companies, I mean, if you didn't spend more time on them, then they couldn't charge what they charge for the advertising.

Christopher Shulgan

You know, so the "think" portion of Eat Move Think is maybe the least explored, or the least one that you talk about. You talk about "move" a lot, and "eat" a lot. Do you do, like, think stuff?

Shaun Francis

The most I do on "think" is try to get seven hours of sleep minimum, right? I mean, that, to me is the foundation of sleep. Sorry, of "think," which is sleep. If you aren't getting what you need, you are going to be more irritable, more depressed, you're going to eat more, you're not going to have high energy, you won't get tasks done. So that to me is the foundation. So if I do anything, I really make it a priority to get to sleep, and I'll prioritize that even over my workout. So for example, if I have an extremely busy day and for whatever reason I need to be out late, I'm not going to go for the five hours' sleep to get my workout in. I don't think that's beneficial. So that to me is my investment. And there's all sorts of tactics too that I think I probably employ more casually about, you know, not letting things bother me that maybe I would have years ago. But sleeping being probably my number one priority.

Christopher Shulgan

So sleep well, basically is your "think" tip. And then so Dr. Jonathan Danson gives a bunch of other tips in that clip, which I think is just probably, in terms of the highest-value four minutes. If you're going to listen to four minutes from our season, that is probably the four minutes to listen to throughout. Okay, so now we're at the number 10. We're at the final clip of the show that we want to talk about. And this comes from episode 21, What's The Best Sport For Your Health? And this is triathlon historian Bob Babbitt talking about his case for triathlon being the single best sport that you can do for your health to ensure long term health and fitness.

Bob Babbitt

That day, it proved that you couldn't just be a one-sport athlete to win the Ironman. You needed to be a triathlete. You needed to be good at all three. The best endurance athlete is someone who has, you know, the ability to swim, bike and run. If you want to win the Ironman, you'd better be well-rounded and you better be able to do all three.

Shaun Francis

So it's all of them together.

Bob Babbitt

I'm no scientist, but I do look at our sport is the fountain of youth.

Shaun Francis

And when you look at Bob's lifestyle, you can see why he feels this way.

Bob Babbitt

Oh my God, I've probably done north of, God, 300-400 triathlons. I usually race, you know, 25 to 30 times a year, triathlons of all different distances. But I'll do usually one 70.3 a year. But most of the stuff I do is sprint and Olympic. And I love racing, so I race pretty much every weekend. I mean, I'm 68 years old, I'm swimming as well now as I swam 15 years ago, I'm riding probably better.

Shaun Francis

Bob Babbitt is one of those people who sets the template for the way we all want to age.

Bob Babbitt

What triathlon has done, it's allowed people to see that wait a second, I can still run a fast marathon, I can still run a fast 10K or 5K by keeping my running quality, but by using some of those hard spin class or a swim workout, to basically give me that oxygen uptake that I need to continue to go fast.

Christopher Shulgan

The guy's 68 years old. Like, that's pretty crazy. The reason that we're putting that last is because I feel like Bob Babbitt doing 35 to 40 triathlons per year in a tough year for everybody is this goal that we can all aspire to.

Shaun Francis

Well, you know, that's what we talk about, right? Eat Move Think. I mean, you want to have the longest, highest-quality life, and having that mental attitude that you're not really aging, right? So he doesn't—it doesn't sound like he believes there's any limit in terms of what he can do. He doesn't put any constraints there. And then he uses his mind and his body really to its utmost potential, right? So I think it's a virtuous cycle, which is no constraint in terms of, am I going to die? And focusing on that. And in fact, channelling it into the very positive, which is using your body, you know, resistance training, cardiac training, and the mental training, right, to be able to complete triathlons, right? Which also means he needs to have enough sleep. I mean, all those things that we talk about, you know, he would be employing. But maybe most importantly, not having any constraint on how long you're going to live, right? You just keep going and keep pushing and keep doing all the things you would have done as a young person as you age. And maybe that's one of the keys to staying young.

Christopher Shulgan

So that was the year that was. That was 2020. Don't let the door hit you on the way out. And next week, we're going to be talking about behavioural change. We're starting a little series on behavioural change. And we're looking toward the future. All right. 2020? See you later.

Shaun Francis

See you later.

Christopher Shulgan

That’s it for this episode of Eat Move Think. We post episode highlights and full episode transcripts at eatmovethinkpodcast.com.

Christopher Shulgan

Eat Move Think is produced by Ghost Bureau. Senior producer is Russell Gragg. Social media support from Emily Mannella. Editorial direction from Chantel Guertin.

Christopher Shulgan

Remember to rate and subscribe to Eat Move Think on your favourite podcast platform. Follow host Shaun 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.


Christopher Shulgan
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