Welcome to the Dr. Gundry Podcast. The weekly podcast where Dr. G gives you the tools you need to boost your health and live your healthiest life.

The best exercises for supporting overall health and longevity, they're actually simple.

A lot of people are under the impression that in order to stay healthy they need to lift really heavy weights of the gym or run miles a day.

The truth is this is a bunch of baloney and there are much simpler exercises out there that can provide more benefits for your health.

Take it from me. I used to run every single day at least three miles, 30 miles a week and I was still overweight, grossly obese.

As so many of my patients can tell you running can be bad for your knees.

What about jumping rope? We used to jump rope as a kid and did it hours at a time. Interestingly, 10 minutes of jump rope burns the same amount of calories as running 30 minutes on a treadmill and jumping rope is a lot more fun than running on a treadmill.

But here's the thing, if you look at super old people around the world, if you look at blue zones, if you look at other areas with super old people.

One of the things that jumps out at you is they're not gym rats. They're not spending time in the gym. They're actually doing chores of daily living.

They're walking. They're gardening. They're doing housework. There are multiple studies that show that vacuuming of floor, scrubbing of floor, doing the dishes is good exercise.

There's great studies that doing gardening, actually without the use of power tools, is one of the better exercises you can do.

Just think about picking flowers, bending, and picking vegetables. There's a lot of deep knee bending that goes on.

And that's what these societies have done.

Interestingly, so many of these societies are farm based. They're herders. They heard goats and sheep. And they spend significant part of their days walking, walking up hills, walking down hills, walking for groceries.

The other benefit that these people get is that they are actually forest bathing. And that's a cute term to describe immersing ourselves in nature.

And however we do that is going to benefit us walking in nature is a whole or running in nature is a whole lot better for you than getting on a treadmill. It has a completely different effect.

The other great thing that these people do is they're not using just one set of muscle groups. And that's the important thing to remember.

There are great exercises like yoga and Tai Chi. But just doing that doesn't activate all of your muscle groups.

That's why I do Pilates. And I also do yoga. But we get a big kick at Pilates classes when we'll see a muscle bound gym rat come in with just incredible physique of muscles.

And they are challenged to do some of the basic routines and Pilates. And they're sweating and we're sitting there going, wow, what's wrong with that guy?

Because they haven't been using all of their muscle groups in a different way. So, branch out, don't do the same thing every day.

And take time with friends, you know, it's football season. During the commercial breaks, during half time, don't watch the band on the field, go out and throw the football around in the yard.

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