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Legendary Life | Transform Your Body, Upgrade Your Health & Live Your Best Life

662: The Power of Walking: How 15,000 Daily Steps Impact Longevity and Heart Health with Greg Mushen

Legendary Life | Transform Your Body, Upgrade Your Health & Live Your Best Life

Ted Ryce

Health & Fitness, Fitness

4.8848 Ratings

🗓️ 16 February 2026

⏱️ 69 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Most men over 40 focus on lifting weights and dialing in their diet—but still overlook a major driver of long-term cardiovascular health. 

In this episode, Ted speaks with Greg Mushen about why subsistence populations rarely develop heart disease, how walking influences glucose and lipid clearance, what genetics reveal about individual risk, and why daily movement may matter more than extreme workouts. 

If the goal is to protect arteries, improve metabolic health, and age with resilience, this conversation offers a practical, research-driven framework worth listening to. 

Today's Guest 

Greg Mushen 

Greg Mushen spent his career in tech but has maintained a lifelong interest in health, growing up in a medical family. He became deeply focused on longevity after becoming a father at 40, studying subsistence populations and examining how their lifestyle patterns map onto modern mechanisms of disease prevention.  

Connect to Greg Mushen 

X:  @gregmushen 

Substack: Dark Lab 

You'll learn: 

  • Why walking throughout the day may improve glucose and lipid clearance more effectively than a single workout 

  • What subsistence populations like the Tsimane and Maasai reveal about heart disease and arterial health 

  • How genetic differences influence lipid clearance and cardiovascular risk  

  • The concept of "flux" and why matching intake with output is critical for metabolic health 

  • And much more....

 

What Ted and Greg discuss: 

(00:00) Introduction 

(03:55) Meet Greg Mushen: From Zone 2 to 15K Steps (Why Walking?) 

(07:28) Walking for Nutrient Partitioning, Glucose Control & Mitochondria 

(15:25) The Amish "Natural Experiment" + Clearance Genes  

(18:48) Genetics Meets Lifestyle: APOE4, Saturated Fat, and Personal Risk 

(24:58) Diet vs Movement in Context: Maasai vs Tsimane and the 'Flux' Framework 

(35:35) Athletes, High CAC Scores & Why Risk Can Still Be Low 

(36:58) From Tech to Primary Research: How Greg Learned to Read Studies 

(46:49) Calories, Appetite & Why Tracking Still Works (Even If You Hate It) 

(57:23) Genetics, Methylation & Targeted Supplements (B12, Folate, Creatine, TMG) 

(01:05:18) Final Thought 

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

One thing that was very common was the amount of steps that they took, the amount of activity that they did,

0:10.0

and in particular kind of low level activity.

0:13.0

And it was really interesting to me because it seemed like, you know, once you got above this threshold,

0:19.0

and it's called PAL, which is physical activity level,

0:22.4

and you could, it's a ratio of total energy expenditure, so how many, how much energy you're

0:27.7

burning during the day over your base mode metabolic rate, which would be, you know,

0:32.3

kind of how much you would burn if you're, you know, laying on the couch or in the hospital or

0:36.6

something. And once that achieved, too, would see chronic disease just kind of vanish.

0:43.3

Hey guys, it's Ted here.

0:44.6

Let me ask you something.

0:45.8

You've got the money, the success, the career.

0:48.7

But when you look in the mirror, do you see a tired out of shape guy staring back at you?

0:53.0

And you're tired of the weak body, the way your clothes fit, and your lack of confidence about

0:57.5

the way you look.

0:58.7

This can end now.

1:00.5

In my program, Lean After 40, I've created a four-phase system that helps high-achieving

1:06.3

men lose 20 pounds in just 10 weeks while building muscle, while getting you to feel 10 years younger,

1:13.5

and here's the kicker. It's only going to take you two hours a week in the gym.

1:17.3

This plan is fully customized to your situation. And if you don't know me, well,

1:21.9

I've worked with guys like Robert Downey Jr., Ricky Martin, Sir Richard Branson,

1:25.9

plus thousands of CEOs and business leaders worldwide.

1:29.3

But here's the deal. You need to earn at least 100K annually because my program, it's a premium

...

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