Brand New Research on The Radical Benefits of Walking for Lowering Cholesterol, Body Fat, and Glucose, and Improving Your Mental Clarity with Greg Mushen

Dhru Purohit Show

Dhru Purohit

Medicine, Health & Fitness, Alternative Health

4.7 • 3.4K Ratings

🗓️ 1 October 2025

⏱️ 78 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This episode is brought to you by BiOptimizers, Cozy Earth, and Fatty15. While the “10,000 steps a day” idea came from a marketing company in Japan, that doesn’t mean walking itself is a gimmick. Today’s guest shares why he is so passionate about walking and the research that supports this accessible habit, one that can be incorporated into most people’s lives and lead to significant results and shifts in their health and wellness journey. Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, Dhru sits down with Greg Mushen to explore the profound benefits of walking as a fundamental aspect of health and wellness. Greg shares how walking can be more effective than medications for managing blood sugar. He explains why maintaining a high step count supports weight loss and mood regulation, and highlights the critical role walking plays in cardiovascular health. He also emphasizes the importance of fiber and potassium in the diet, the influence of genetics on health, and the benefits of personal experimentation in achieving optimal outcomes. The conversation reveals why walking, one of the most low-cost and accessible habits, could be the missing link to better health and why you’ll want to hear the data for yourself. Greg Mushen is a health researcher, writer, and systems thinker with a long career in the tech industry. After years of building and scaling technology products, he turned his focus to one of medicine’s biggest puzzles: why subsistence populations largely avoid chronic disease. His approach combines anthropology with modern science, connecting lipid kinetics, gut microbiome ecology, and evolutionary biology into a systems-level understanding of human health. A lifelong builder, whether in startups, overland rigs, or new health frameworks, Greg now approaches human healthspan as the ultimate engineering problem: resilience, adaptability, and longevity. In this episode, Dhru and Greg dive into: The importance of doubling down on walking (1:10) Greg’s physical transformation through walking (9:31) Combining walking with resistance training (20:26) The link between lipid clearance, fat oxidation, and walking (26:25) Incorporating regular movement into daily life (27:45) Key comparisons between walking and running (34:08) Developing an elite VO₂ max (37:47) Vascular stiffening and endoPAT testing (41:47) Why fiber intake matters and how Greg increases intake (44:45) The role of genetics in cardiovascular health (58:43) The importance of potassium in the diet (1:08:15) Lessons from subsistence populations on chronic disease (1:14:02) Final thoughts and key takeaways (1:15:12) Also mentioned in this episode: Study on the Association of Daily Step Count and Step Intensity With Mortality Among US Adults Study on Postmeal Exercise Blunts Postprandial Glucose Excursions In People On Metformin Monotherapy Try This: 5 Things I Changed After Getting Genetic Testing Greg’s Chili Recipe For more on Greg, follow him on X/Twitter, Instagram, Threads, and Substack. This episode is brought to you by BiOptimizers, Cozy Earth, and Fatty15. Go to bioptimizers.com/dhru now and enter promo code DHRU to get 30% off any order of Magenesium Breakthrough and find out this month’s gift with purchase. Right now, get 20% off your Cozy Earth sheets and sleepwear. Just head over to cozyearth.com/dhru and use code DHRUP. Fatty15 is offering an additional 15% off its 90-day subscription Starter Kit. Go to fatty15.com/dhru and use code DHRU to replenish your C15 levels for long-term health. Sign up for Dhru’s Try This Newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Greg, a pleasure to have you here. As I mentioned, I'm a huge fan of your tweets and your approach to health and wellness.
0:05.9	And one of the reasons that I've asked you on the podcast is that over the last few years, I've had so many well-intentioned individuals come on my podcast and tell my audience about how walking isn't enough.
0:20.2	And in particular, they're talking about the importance of
0:22.9	strength training and sprinting, things that you would agree with as you've gone through your own
0:27.8	body transformation. But the unintended consequence that's happened is that I've heard from so
0:34.3	many of my community members and they're walking a lot less than they used
0:40.1	to be walking. Now, I get it. We only have so many hours in a day, so many hours in a week,
0:45.0	and we're trying to prioritize it all. And for a lot of my core demographic, that's primarily
0:49.4	women above the age of 40, they're taking care of kids. They're taking care of parents. So I totally get it.
0:55.3	But I thought being a huge fan of your work, it'd be great to have you come on the podcast and
1:00.8	talk about why you are talking about the importance of doubling down on walking and all the
1:07.7	different areas of the body that it can improve. I have been a really big fan of walking.
1:12.9	I noticed the impacts that I was having on my body and on my blood work a couple years ago when I was doing a transformation.
1:19.7	But, you know, what really kicked my interest in it was trying to understand why these subsistence
1:25.5	populations aren't getting the same diseases that we do.
1:29.3	And so I got really interested in going into like all the aspects of their lifestyle.
1:35.3	And one thing that I noticed that was incredibly consistent was how much they all walked.
1:41.4	Even if you look at, you know, populations like the Amish in the United States,
1:45.6	they are walking, you know, 18,000 steps. They have a lot less incidence of heart disease.
1:51.5	They have a lot less incidence rates of hypertension. And then a lot fewer incidence rates of
2:00.7	type 2 diabetes.
2:02.7	And this is despite, you know, eating a diet that we wouldn't, you know, necessarily consider optimal.
	...

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