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Episode #538 - Stop Doing These Things In Retirement
Roger: The show is a proud member of the Retirement Podcast Network.
This show is dedicated to helping you not just survive retirement, but to have the confidence because you're doing the work to really lean in and rock it.
Roger Whitney here. By day, I am a practicing retirement planner with over 30 years’ experience and founder of Agile Retirement Management and the Rock Retirement Club, and over the last 10 years, you and I have been able to hang out on this show on a weekly basis and talk about how you actually do retirement planning so you can go create a great life, not just simply to be a great retirement planner. That's my goal, obviously, but It's all about the outcomes of creating a great life. So, I'm privileged to hang out with you each week.
Today on the show, we're going to talk about probably one of the most important concepts when it comes to doing retirement planning right and still having enough time to go create that great life because your time is your scarcest resource. There are so many things that we do in retirement planning that bluntly is mostly a waste of time, not adding a lot of value. We're going to talk about some things that maybe you should stop doing in your retirement planning.
In addition to that, we're going to answer some of your questions in our rock life segment. Dr. Bobby Dubois is going to come on and talk about some studies that he's been contemplating on how we can build energy so we can show up for this great retirement.
Now, I encourage you, if you like the show, to sign up for our weekly email. Email, which will give show recaps, handy tips, and exclusive content. Our 6-Shot Saturday email will have links to things we talk about on the show. You can sign up for that at sixshotsaturday.com. With that, let's go talk about what we need to stop.
PRACTICAL PLANNING SEGMENT
The pioneering psychologist, Abraham Maslow described us as perpetually wanting animals. We constantly want more, and this is a concept that was re-introduced to me by Michael Easter's Scarcity Brain. Great book. We had a conversation with him last month, which we'll put a link to. In chapter four of that book, it's called "Why We Crave More" and obviously in material possessions and money, we grew up with such scarcity that we're hardwired to think that having more things makes us safer. But that just doesn't only apply to the material world. It actually applies to how we approach problem solving. And in the chapter, he talks about A scientist, I'm going to hopefully not butcher his name too poorly, Leidy Cloutz.
Dr. Cloutz has a bachelor's degree in civil engineering, master's in construction engineering, and a Ph. D. in architectural engineering, and he has worked for the Homeland Security, Department of Energy, National Institute for Health, and the World Bank. Really, really smart dude. One thing that he points out in this chapter telling the story of Dr. Cloutz is that when you are really smart for lack of a better word, it's easy to create blind spots and sometimes just to be plain dumb because you can't see the forest for the trees.
Dr. Cloutz had a moment with this child where they were building a bridge with Legos and one pillar holding the bridge up was taller than the other and they were trying to figure out how to fix this and Dr. Cloutz went directly to the Lego bin to add more to find Legos he could add to the other pillar to bring it up to make the bridge structure sounder. When he got back, his son had just removed Legos from the taller pillar in order to have a more elegant solution. That spurred his thinking and he wondered to himself, and I'm just looking at the chapter of the book here, do we overlook subtraction as a way to change things?
This spurred a curiosity for the doctor and he ended up doing studies on humans related to problem solving. I think they did one with Legos. They did one with how you improve a pothole was another one that he did some grid studies. Overwhelmingly, the subjects of the studies defaulted to adding things to fix the issue rather than subtracting things.
One of the takeaways he had from that study is that in the human brain, less equals bad, worse, unproductive, more equals better and more productive. So, we systematically, this is one of his conclusions, overlook subtraction. We can look around at politics and the addition of laws and regulations to our closets and all the clothes we have.
We tend to want to always add things and we overlook subtracting things. And this is really important when it comes to retirement planning and why I want to talk about it. Is that we can totally overcomplicate retirement planning and cause it to become a job rather than an exercise in order to achieve the outcome, which is creating a great life.
We end up managing the system rather than creating a great life. So, I wanted to explore. What things we should stop doing in retirement planning. I've definitely walked my own journey here, and maybe this is as I've gotten older, when I finally realized that simple does not mean simplistic. Simple can actually be very difficult to achieve, and I think it's important that we achieve that to some level in our retirement plan so we can go create this great life.
I have a list of maybe five or six things here that I think we should stop doing in retirement planning.
Number one is stop chasing precision in order to have confidence. We need to stop chasing precision. We tend to think that if we can make our spreadsheet or the retirement planning software that we're using more precise, we're going to achieve more accuracy, which is going to give us more confidence and make it all okay.
That is not going to happen. What type of things am I talking about? How does this present itself in retirement planning? I deal with this all the time in my practice, but also in coaching people in the Rock Retirement Club.
So, one way it can present itself is, this tax estimate in year eight looks wrong. How do I fix that? How do I make that tax estimate more precise so I can feel that it's more accurate? Spending countless hours on the "perfect" Roth conversion strategy. How do I dial in a great estimate for what my assets will be? In year 14 of my plan, I really need to figure out social security because I have four years before I have to make that decision and I want to get it right. What will my travel budget be when I'm 80? Let me really spend 30 minutes looking at the income and spending assumptions and tax assumptions for the year when I'm 82 years old. Let's spend a lot of time looking at that.
All of these things are symptoms of chasing precision, thinking that we're going to get more accuracy, and if we get more accuracy, then We're going to have more certainty so we can have confidence. If you start to follow that thread of why we do these things. When all of these things, whatever the estimate is for the taxes in year eight or Roth conversion strategy, or the value of your assets in 2014, whatever that says on the spreadsheet or in the software, it's all wrong.
We have no clue what it will be. So why do we spend so much time overanalyzing it, thinking that we need to make it more precise. Social Security is an example. If you are 58, you have four years until you have your first option on Social Security, right? Four years, 62. I call that a green banana. Yes, we need to assume of when you take Social Security.
But do we need to be thinking about that in detail when we're 58 years old? When we don't have an option or a decision for four years? No.
Better to make a simplifying assumption and move on knowing that you're going to have to revisit it when that option or that decision gets closer. Why? Because you have a lot of other things you need to think about.
You need to think about your work and how you're going to transition. You need to start creating boundaries so you can have a life and explore life outside of work. You need to start figuring out what you actually need to spend, where you want to live. Those are much higher priority things than what a decision is going to be four years from now. I am recovering from this after probably two decades of trying to be very precise in order to be accurate, in order to have confidence and certainty. I finally asked myself the dumb question, after all of this work, what if everything changes? Which led to, well, of course it's all going to change a million times in ways that we can't understand.
So, if it's all going to change anyway, the rules, the taxes, the cash flow, your preferences, etc. If it's all going to change anyway, why are we spending so much time on trying to be more precise in things that aren't predictable and are so fluid.
The result of stopping that pursuit is saving a ton of not just simply literal time, but emotional and intellectual energy and decreasing stress so I could refocus on things that you actually have control over, that I have control over as a planner.
For you, the more you can release trying to be precise, I'm not saying don't do planning, don't make assumptions and don't be thoughtful about it, just don't over analyze it, the more you can accept that the more you're going to have energy and time to focus on things that you can actually control and that can actually have a bigger impact on your life.
So that's number one of what we should stop doing in retirement planning, trying to chase precision about the future.
We're chasing it for a lot of reasons out of insecurity, but we need to stop it and realize we can't solve it. So now we just got to think about how we manage it.
All right, so that's number one. Number two, stop making retirement planning your new job. Related to the first, right? Overly analyzing brings us a false sense of control.
The more I look at my spreadsheet, I talk to people and look at their spreadsheets every day, multiple times a day. They look at the markets and their assets every day, multiple times a day. We remember in the Retirement Plan Live that we had in January that blew up. That was part of the gentleman's problem is he was tied to his spreadsheet.
He made retirement planning his job because the more he had his hands in the spreadsheet, the less insecure he felt in the moment. But that moment was always fleeting, so he had to keep going back and keep going back, keep going back. It can become addictive.
The point of planning is to rock retirement. Not the exercise itself. It's a means to an end and accepting uncertainty accepting that you need to do this that you can't figure it out after you get over, holy crap I really can't figure this out. That's scary. It's humbling. Some of us will never believe that so we keep going back to our spreadsheets and making this a job. But the more we ultimately accept it will give us the ability to organize how we do plan so we can check back not too often, but not too infrequently. This is the whole point of an agile retirement process is you do a bit of work on the front end. You get your retirement plan of record where you determine what you want, whether it's feasible and how you plan on making it resilient. Then you have structured check ins. Where you revisit it, revise it, and make little adjustments along the way.
Those little revisits really can be twice a year. You shouldn't have to think about this stuff much other than twice a year. Then when life happens, because you did that little bit of work up front, where you actually printed a plan of record. You said, this is my plan. And most of the time we never get there. That gives you the freedom to go live your life. And then when life happens to you outside of those check ins, you're ready for action. You have your go bag. You can go start making decisions using your plan of record as your true north and then iterate from there. That can free you from making this your job or obsessing about it.
All right, so that was number two. These are all journeys that I've been on and things that I've slowly stopped doing.
Number three is stop optimizing for returns. Now our entire financial planning industry was trained to optimize returns because everybody, meaning the vast majority of money, the baby boomers, were in accumulation mode.
When you are coming out of college, up till close to retirement, the whole game, when it comes to investing, is about optimizing returns. Meaning, for a given level of risk, what is the most efficient portfolio that can optimize returns for that given level of risk? This is the foundation of modern portfolio theory, which is the foundation of asset allocation, which is the foundation of your 401ks, how advisors invest, how everybody is taught to invest, Optimizing returns for accumulating assets, wealth creation.
It's reasonable that, oh yeah, we're going to continue to optimize returns and then just put withdrawal rules and things like that on an "optimized" portfolio. In retirement we need to stop doing that. Optimizing returns is not the correct investment process strategy for creating a great retirement.
It's going to cause more trouble than benefits, better potential returns won't necessarily make your plan better. In fact, higher return potential comes with higher risk, which is in investment terms as volatility, execution risk, et cetera, and can actually hurt your retirement. So, all of this gets flipped on its head when we're withdrawing assets after we've accumulated the assets.
A lower average return With lower volatility could actually create better retirement outcomes. What? Let me say that again. A lower average return with lower volatility could create better life outcomes. We may have to do a YouTube video on this to explain it. We talked about reverse dollar cost averaging, but the problem with volatility is it goes up and down so much, right? Markets go down if you own 100 percent equities and you went through 2008 peak to trough you lost half your money. Or if you're taking money out consistently that exacerbates that whole issue and could blow up your plan. Whereas if you have something that moves up and down a lot less, so has a lower average return over say 20 years, the fact that it doesn't have the highs, but it doesn't have the lows which are the ones we care about on a risk perspective, can actually make your plan more resilient.
So, we need to stop optimizing returns. Retirement is not about return optimization. It's about optimizing the life outcomes that you want. Sowing versus reaping. Sowing is about optimizing returns, taking investment risk, consistent dollar cost averaging. Reaping is about retirement outcomes.
Almost all advisors may say this on the surface, but they really don't get it. I think you and I, as well, I guess I'm an advisor, but you as a consumer have been taught to save and accumulate and optimize returns, and it's not going to serve you well in retirement. It's going to overcomplicate your retirement.
That's what we need to stop doing.
Number four thing we need to stop doing, and this is a newer realization for me. That is, you don't have to know what you're retiring to in order to retire. A truism that's not true that I have said often over the years is it's much better to retire to something than from something.
When you're retiring from something, meaning that you've just had enough. Take the pain away. I'll figure it out when I get there is not as good as building this vision of what you want and letting that pull you out of your job because you're so excited about what you're retiring to.
That is not true, and we need to stop thinking that we need to know what our retirement is going to look like or have some vision before we actually do it. That's not true.
I got this realization in a meetup with Rock Retirement Club members, where we had about 30 people in a room and we're talking, and I think I told the story once, there was a, I think it was a gentleman. He articulated, Hey, I'm keeping my work, my day job, my career, because I haven't defined what I want yet. Everybody tells me I need to know what I'm retiring to. I don't know what that is. So, I'm going to keep working. And the whole room was like, oh, wow. You can see the downstream implication of that "truism" that you need to know. You need to know your purpose. What's my vision, all that stuff.
We talked about it and I'm like, whoa, you don't need to know that. Don't just defer to what is until you figure it out, because you may not ever figure it out. That was a big realization for me that I actually should have had five, six years ago, whenever it was, when Shauna, I kept telling her that you can leave work, you don't have to work, she had a very high stress job in startups, but she was so in the mode of the cortisol rush of work and obligations and team building and crisis management that she didn't have the capacity to think of what she would do otherwise, because she was in the mosh pit of this kind of environment.
It only took her one little straw that broke the camel's back where she called me one day and said, you've always said that I could leave work. Are you, can I, are you serious? I'm like, yeah, and she quit that day. She put it in her notice. She had had enough. It was only until after she retired, it probably took her three, four months of detox to finally find her sea legs and think forward because she had the mental and physical energy to actually do it. But while she was in the mosh pit of her career, it was beyond her capacity because she was so mentally and physically invested in all the work. Don't let the lack of vision for what retirement is going to look like prevent you from retiring. It is okay to retire just to take away the pain.
That was my big realization. So, we need to stop saying that truism, which is actually an un-truism that you don't have to know what you're retiring to. You don't have to have a vision. You don't have to have a purpose. You don't have to have your daily schedule mapped out for the first six months after you retire.
It is okay to simply take away the pain, realize that that season isn't serving you, and then go through the work of figuring it out. So, we need to stop doing that.
Okay. Number five, Stop thinking you can wait to do what you want in life. Carpe diem is not a bumper sticker. We're always planning for the future.
In fact, when we plan for the future, it gives us momentary comfort without actually creating the life that you actually want. This can cause you to think you have all the time in the world and delay your dreams. You don't. It's true, I mean my mom did it right. This is her MO of yes, I'm overworked. Yes. I'm stressed. But when I retire, I will do this. I'll ride that train through the Canadian Rockies. I will relax. I'll be able to do these things. She kept telling herself that and giving herself that momentary comfort with everyone actually doing that in her life. In her case, she died at age 48, which was early, right? That's premature. But if you're already in your fifties or sixties, we tend to think of our future selves like our current selves.
So let me ask you a question. If you're 68-year-old, Today, will you be the same person at 74? I want you to do this as an exercise if this is something you're struggling with.
If you're 64-year-old, look at yourself in the mirror. Think about the energy you have. Think about the relationships you have and the interests you have. Now, imagine yourself at 74. Go meet a 74-year-old. Are you going to be the same person? I'm 57. I think about 67. Bobby is actually, I think, 67. He's like my 10-year self forward, but he's in much better shape than I am now.
Time becomes asymmetric. So, you need to stop thinking you can wait to create the life that you want. If you're married or have a large social network, do you think your spouse is going to be the same person? Hmm. 10 years from now, are they going to be able to do the things that they want to do? Are you two going to be able to do the same things that you want to do together?
Stop thinking you can wait. This is one of the biggest problems with retirement planning and over optimization. You can see how these things are interconnected. We focus on over optimizing and trying to get precision. We can never get precision. So, we keep on planning more, deferring more in order to feel more confident. Which is false. We make this our job because we keep pursuing something that we can achieve. We keep optimizing for returns, which gives us a lot of volatility, which makes us less confident, actually. So, we keep deferring our life.
You can't do that. You just can't. You're going to end up with lots of regrets. Don't.
Okay, last one. Stop thinking you're resigned to what is. It's not too late to pivot, to reinvent yourself, to move. To change your friends, change how you do things. It's not, you need to look at your life with fresh eyes. This is where I’m now. Let the past inform, but don't let it dictate the future.
That could be where you live. That could be how you organize your life. The things that you do, the friends that you keep, and I'm going to go there. It also could force different decisions around the foe. You know what the foe is, don't you? Family of origin. Some of us have family of origin that is not healthy for us. We keep looking to fix relationships, to please others, and keep replaying a family dynamic over and over again. We end up living a life that has nothing to do with who we really want to be, because we feel like we have some obligation to our dysfunctional brothers and sisters, or parents, or what have you.
You don't. The door is unlocked. Yes, it forces decisions that might be uncomfortable, but you can still honor those relationships without letting them dominate your life. Same thing with friends, same thing with where you live, etc. We need to stop doing that. So those are some of the things that we can do or stop doing, excuse me. See, I default to “do”. Some things that we can stop doing that we can shed, which will free us mentally, emotionally, etc. Intellectually, physically, so we can focus on things that are more important to us. It will simplify our lives, not make it simplistic. Retirement planning is really complicated. It has to be done well in order to have confidence.
But that doesn't mean it has to be complicated. It's not that complicated. It's just all this other stuff that everybody tells us we need to be doing gets in the way. All right. Soapbox put away. Let's stop doing some of these things and evaluate that. With that said, let's go answer some of your questions.
LISTENER QUESTIONS
Now it's time to answer some of your questions. If you have a question about the show, you can go to askroger.me. You can type in a question, Leave an audio question, just say hi, and we'll do our best to answer it on the show and help you take a baby step towards rocking retirement.
TURN OFF DIVIDEND REINVESTMENT IN YOUR DECUMULATION PHASE
Our first question is actually a tip from Richard.
Richard says,
"I'm still loving the show having started in the early days and 10 years in."
Holy cow, Richard, you are an OG.
Richard says,
"for Trinidad,"
who asked a question we answered on episode 530, by the way,
Richard says,
"for Trinidad, who is trying to build up cash as part of his pie cake, one thing I did that I probably got from you in the years leading up to retirement that has helped was to turn off dividend reinvestment.
Those dividends and interest can accumulate quickly, helping you to build cash reserves and suddenly shift your retirement allocation."
That's a great idea, Richard, that is one thing that we can do. You could start doing that really four or five years before retirement, depending on your asset mix, is to, especially in your after-tax accounts, but you could do this in your tax deferred accounts, like IRAs, If you plan on drawing from those funds early in retirement is turning off what's called dividend and capital gains reinvestment.
So, what happens if you own a mutual fund because you may not have even hardly seen this because you've been in accumulation mode is every year mutual funds. reinvest the dividends and capital gains that they issue to the shareholders. Usually, the default is to take those dividends and capital gains and interest and buy more shares of the fund itself so they can compound over time.
But if you own open end mutual funds, you can actually turn that off, even stocks that have dividend reinvestment. Rather than have the dividend that's issued by more shares of the same investment, you can have it just distribute it as cash into your account, either your after-tax account or your IRA account or wherever the investment is held.
As you are starting to get close to pivoting from accumulation only to decumulation or retirement, withdrawals, one way to build up cash is to not have those dividends and capital gains and interest by more shares, but just take it as cash and slowly build up cash in the accounts that you plan on using to fund early retirement. It's a way to slowly make the adjustment rather than a dramatic reallocation.
Another thing you can do Is if you are using your 401k or 403b and that's where you're going to draw assets Within your pie cake structure early in retirement You can have all of your new investment dollars your contributions go to a stable value fund Or something much more secure than what your normal allocation is.
Great idea Richard. That's a helpful hint for Trinidad and you can listen to that question.
A RUCKING COMMENT
Our next Question, feedback is actually from Karen about rucking. We're getting a lot of feedback on the episode Bobby and I did on rucking, which is just simply walking with some weight on your back.
It's as simple as that, and there's a lot of physiological benefit potential there.
Karen says,
"I listened to your segment on rucking this morning. I wanted to thank you for the push to put on a pack. I have hiked the Pacific Crest Trail, but when not on trial, I usually run for exercise.
A few weeks ago, my hips started to bother me. So, I have been doing spin bike inside, but I really miss getting outdoors. So today I threw on some weights, put on a pack, took the dog on a nice walk and listened to The Comfort Crisis. Adding some rucking to my routine will definitely help me prep for the Arizona trail this fall.
Thanks for the inspiration."
Well, that's awesome, Karen, and whether you're Karen doing these huge hikes or just taking your daily 20-minute walk with your dog. It doesn't hurt to throw on a back A backpack with a little bit of weight in it. It doesn't have to be that much. It's better to start incrementally slow.
Thanks for the encouragement. I hope your hip feels better there Karen.
ON SOCIAL SECURITY SURVIVOR BENEFITS
Next question comes from Mike related to social security survivor benefits for his wife.
"I have a question regarding survivor benefits. My wife and I are both 65. I retired about 18 months ago and I'm delaying social security at least until I reach full retirement age. It may be longer depending on our situation."
I love that, Mike, because you know it's not a ripe banana. You can make that decision when you get to that point.
"My wife worked as a teacher early in our marriage but stopped to stay home and raise our kids. As a result, she does not have enough credits to qualify for Social Security on her own. Based on my analysis, we will be in good shape with my benefit and her spousal benefit and income from our portfolio.
However, this assumes I am around to carry out the plan. We are both in good health, but a question occurred to me the other day. If I die suddenly before claiming Social Security, What will my wife's benefit be?
Thanks for the feedback and keep up the great work."
If you were to die, Mike, your wife will not be penalized on her spousal benefit for not having enough to qualify for her own benefit.
So, she's not going to be penalized there. Your wife also won't be penalized for whether or not you had started claiming social security before your death. If your spouse, widow, is at full retirement age or older, she would get 100 percent of your basic benefit at full retirement age. Your widow between ages 60 and full retirement age will get anywhere between 71 and 99 percent of your full basic benefit.
If you were to die today, Mike, and she wanted to file on your benefit, then she would get almost all of it because you're very close to full retirement age. But once you and she get to full retirement age, she's going to get that benefit, even if you hadn't filed yet.
Also important to remember that once she reads full retirement age, she should file for your benefit because she's not going to benefit from delaying social security beyond full retirement age because it's not going to increase with her delay If it's a widow's benefit.
ON INHERITED IRAs
Our next question comes from Connie in dealing with inherited IRA Distributions. She inherited an IRA from, I believe her dad a few years ago and is trying to understand what her requirements are in terms of her required minimum distributions because he passed away after 2020.
Connie, I want to direct you to our YouTube channel where I posted a video and walked through a mind map showing all the rules around inherited IRA because it can get complicated. For you because it's your dad, the one fork in the road in terms of the 10-year rule and how it applies to you is going to be did he die before or after he started required minimum distributions.
If it was before he started required minimum distributions, then the 10-year rule applies in the sense that you have to have it drained within that 10-year period. But under current IRS guidelines, it doesn't have to be every single year. If he had already started taking required minimum distributions, then you're required to do required minimum distributions based on life expectancy each year over that 10-year period and it has to get drained by the end of the 10th year. Under that scenario, don't worry if you haven't done that because the IRS has given relief for any penalties related to that, but you can watch that video and get all this in more detail. We'll have a link to it in 6-Shot Saturday.
With that, let's move on to our Rock Life segment and talk about some studies that may help us build more energy in retirement.
ROCK LIFE WITH DR. BOBBY DUBOIS
Now it's time for the Rock Life segment we're going to focus on energy building energy, so you can actually show up for your retirement. To help us do that is Dr. Bobby Dubois. How are you doing, buddy?
Dr. Bobby: I'm moving and grooving.
Roger: Moving and grooving. All right So what are we going to talk about today?
Dr. Bobby: Well, we're going to talk about moving and grooving, or at least moving. I want to group together a few studies that have come across my desk.
So, I get all sorts of summaries of scientific articles that relate to health and wellness, and this, that, and the other. I thought it would be fun to group together some that I've run across over the last couple of weeks. They are actually all touch on the same topic, which is movement or muscles. I believe each one of the articles teaches us something, and as a group of articles, I think it teaches us a bunch about how we might want to modify our lives to live long and well.
As always, I like to give a punchline so if people don't want to listen to the end, they don't have to. We've talked over and over and over again about the importance of exercise, but it's also equally important, it seems, to be active throughout the day and to avoid long periods of being sedentary. So that's the punchline, and obviously we'll work our way towards that.
Roger: We have all these heuristics that you've talked about, like, I remember you were talking about the pedometer and how the 10, 000 steps came about. Can you remind me of that?
Dr. Bobby: So, it's an urban legend, urban myth, or whatever they call where you sort of look into where did that come from?
So the 10, 000 steps one might have surmised came from this wonderful set of scientific studies. It actually didn't. It came out of this watch and clock company in Japan that decided to come out with one of the world's first pedometers. That's what we used to call them. The motion things that told us how many steps we took or how many miles we walked. The marketing of that Pedometer used a Chinese character that looked like a man.
Well, that Chinese character also represented the number 10, 000. And so that was the origin of the 10, 000 steps. No, there was no science behind it, but it's a lovely story.
Roger: It's like one of these artificial guideposts or goals that has become hardwired into society. I mean, you think of your Apple watch or other things, it's like 10, 000 steps, 10, 000 steps, which came from essentially marketing.
I don't know if that's bad or good, right? Because it's getting people walking. So, if they have a target of 10, but they always hit 7, that's probably still a win.
Dr. Bobby: Well, it's definitely a win. The average American, at least 6 or 8 years ago, uh, walked about 5500 steps a day, and literature shows us, and this, some, one of this came out of the Women's Health Initiative, that the more steps, the lower the mortality.
So, if you had 2700 steps, it was lower than if you had 4300 steps and lower again, if it was 5900 steps or 8400 steps. So, more steps are better. Of course, they didn't study much above 10, 000.
There is a slight validation for the 10, 000 number that goes beyond just Marketing, and that is if you look at the blue zones, which are those communities around the world where people are more likely to live to be 100 than elsewhere. Those people seem to walk 10, 000 or more steps. So, there's a little bit of validation.
Roger: I was thinking of this just the other day because my niece moved from Dallas where we live, Dallas, Fort Worth to a rural town in Oregon. And since she's been there, her mom just came back, my sister-in-law and she looks fit.
She was never overweight, but she had extra weight and she is a lean mean fighting machine. I was talking to Shelly, my sister-in-law, and she said, yeah, well, they go hiking. They're just right outside their door. It sounds like the fact that they moved to a place where movement is naturally part of the culture, it sounds like it's made a huge difference in their health unintentionally or as a byproduct.
Dr. Bobby: Well, I think that's the beauty. The word you said, unintentional. You know, in these other societies, they didn't teach their kids, well, you should be walking all day long. It was just the nature of the beast. That's how they live their lives. Unfortunately, our beast has gone in a different direction and we're quite sedentary much of the time. That's really the focus for today.
Roger: Where do we want to start here?
Dr. Bobby: Well, we have a few different studies and I said, they all kind of tell us something. So, let's start with the first one and that is that if you can reduce the amount of time you're sitting in this one study, your blood pressure will go down.
Roger: Full disclosure here, Bobby is sitting and I am standing. Just full disclosure.
Dr. Bobby: I did go for a run just a bit ago, but as you'll see in a moment, that doesn't matter. They had about 280 people. Now, these were people that were up there in years. They were an average age of 68 years old, and some of them had high blood pressure. Some didn't. So, they did this really cool randomized trial. You know, I love these randomized trials. They take half of the group and they do one thing. They take the other half of the group, do something else and see if there are any differences. When you randomize, you tend to get rid of some of the kind of idiosyncrasies that might mess up the results.
What they did was they took a group and they said, okay, we're going to teach you how to sit less standing desk, get up every half hour, you know, those kinds of things. Then the other group, they just had some general health guidance and then they followed them for six months and they had to where Fitbits or those kinds of things that were activity trackers and the people that were in the group that were taught, try not to sit so much. In fact, succeeded. They sat 31 minutes less than the other group. But what was fascinating, and this was one of the key endpoints they were looking at, is that the blood pressure of the group that didn't sit so much went down three and a half millimeters.
Roger: That means nothing to me. I have no clue what that means.
Dr. Bobby: So, what that means is if you had a blood pressure of 140 over 80, then your systolic might drop to 136 and a half over 80.
Now, that may not sound like a large amount, but that number of reduction is around the same as people taking a change in their diet to the DASH diet or the Mediterranean diet or having weight loss or even a lot of drugs for high blood pressure do about that amount.
It's a simple thing, and it doesn't mean you can't do other things to lower your blood pressure even further, but it was effective. That was the first thing that said, hmm, maybe I better get up and get about more often than I was.
Roger: Can I take a sidebar here, Bobby?
Dr. Bobby: Of course.
Roger: It's been explained to me many times.
I guess I just don't keep this information in my head. Can you explain blood pressure to me and what the two numbers mean and why I care about higher or lower?
Dr. Bobby: Well, let me begin with why we care and then we'll work backwards briefly into what does it actually mean.
So, one of the strongest predictors of having a stroke or heart attack is your blood pressure.
Now, it used to be in the old days, 140 over 90 was good. Unfortunately, then they did studies that said, you know, it really needs to be below 130 over 80, and unfortunately, they did more studies after that, and now there's almost no lower bound. Now it's like, well, if you can get it under 120 over 80, that's even better.
So, the numbers are very important, very predictive, very treatable, and it's something we absolutely need to be on top of. Just like kind of glaucoma testing in your eye, too much pressure, bad things happen. Same thing with blood pressure.
So, what does it mean to have an upper number and a lower number? When the nurse puts the cuff on your arm, they pump up and pump up and pump up, and at some point, the blood flow to the lower part of your arm will stop because you've just raised the pressure enough. So, they're listening as they release the blood pressure cuff. Slowly, slowly, slowly, when they first start to hear a thump, thump, thump through their stethoscope, that's the upper number, that's the systolic number, that's the high point of blood pressure with each cycle of your heart.
Then they slowly release, release, release, and they're hearing thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, and at some point, it stops, and you can't hear anymore, that's the lower number or the diastolic number. Or if you have an automated blood pressure cuff, it's doing it for you, but it gives you the upper and the lower number and I could go into more physiology, but that's a basic overview.
Roger: Okay. So, we want all of those lower because it means your heart's more efficient?
Dr. Bobby: It means it's putting less pressure on the garden hoses of your body.
Roger: Okay.
Dr. Bobby: Imagine having a lot of pressure through a cheap garden hose. At some point, it's going to spring leaks. It's going to get abraded. So, pressure is not a good thing.
You have to have enough blood pressure to get to your kidneys, to get to your brain, but too much causes problems.
Roger: Okay. All right. Thank you. That actually really helped me a lot because you didn't go into the science and I would have gotten confused.
All right. Lower blood pressure is better with boundaries around that, and we got to be moving. We got to be standing, at least, or moving, it sounds like.
Dr. Bobby: Exactly. So, moving around appears to be a good thing.
Then the next study gives us a little behind the scenes. Well, why is being sedentary less during the day help us? We know this from lots of studies that people that walk more and people that aren't sedentary live longer. But as this happened mechanistically, and again, you know me, I'm not going to get lost in science, but there was a small study that I just ran across and they took some young people. So, these weren't people that were 68, like in the other study, these were people in their thirties and they sat them at a desk and they said, okay, thou shalt sit for two hours and no fidgeting, no tightening your muscles, no moving your legs around. Just sit like most people do.
They then measured some characteristics of the blood vessels in your legs, and it's called a pulse wave analysis and velocity, but none of that matters. But what it does is it told us something about the stiffness of those blood vessels.
What they found was even sitting for two hours, that blood vessels in your legs got stiffer. Now, this wasn't permanent. Obviously, they got up and around and It probably went back to normal, but what it tells us is even during those two hours, you're having changes to your blood vessels, which are not in a positive direction.
What was fascinating about the study for those of us that exercise regularly is it didn't really matter if you had exercised that day. So, a lot of us are like, I went for a nice run. I can relax all afternoon because I've done my aerobics. I've taken my steps. I'm done. But what they found was even the people that exercise, they also had stiffness in their blood vessels, which wasn't good.
Now, this is a small study. It's not the definitive answer to anything. But what it does suggest and the take home message here is if you're in a Seated position, which many of us are, and we don't go to the office. We're doing remote work, try to get up every hour exercise is great, but it may not undo all the problems of sitting, you know, on an airplane, we try to get up every hour for a whole host of reasons. One of which is blood clots in our legs but try to get up. Maybe you're standing, you've got your headphones and you're on a phone call and you're walking around and being sedentary. The more you can do that, the better.
Roger: This is why we have that hardwired again into a Fitbit or an iPhone or a lot of the devices to try to remind people to stand.
What I do is I have a timer on my watch that goes off every 17 minutes. It's actually really annoying, but it's like, I'm in deep work and I'll stand up and I'll, even if I just walk around for a second or two, then I'll go back to work. Just as a reminder.
Dr. Bobby: I think that's wonderful. All of these aides can be wonderful to get us up and around.
I don't want to drive people crazy. It's like, oh, my god, I have to get up. Just if you can, stand, walk around, take a little break. It's good for your brain. Now I'm suggesting it's good for your heart and the rest of you.
Roger: I actually think it's okay if it's annoying.
I remember when I was in Costa Rica and I was in the van and I had the ice packs under my arms in my groin area and the medic in the back would not stop talking to me and asking me questions.
In my head, I'm like, would you just shut up? Leave me alone. I wanted to sleep and it was really, really annoying, but it was for my own good. Right? Exactly. It's okay to still be annoyed, but still stand up.
Dr. Bobby: Point well taken.
Roger: All right. What's the next study that builds on this?
Dr. Bobby: Okay. So, we're building the case that moving around regularly for exercise and even just throughout the day is a good thing.
Michael Easter came out with one of his newsletters and he was referring to some work that was done by a scientist named David Raiklin, and he studied one of these native tribes and it's the Hadza. What was known about the Hadza is that they sit for nine hours a day, give or take, and there's this then inactivity paradox.
Well, we Americans, bad things happen when we're sedentary nine hours a day, but the Hansa are sedentary nine hours a day, but they seem to be okay. Well, that doesn't seem fair. So, what is it about us and what is it about them?
What the scientists did is he strapped on various muscle sensor things to the Hadza to say, okay, what's going on here? What they found is, although they were "sedentary", their muscles were active. So, what does sedentary mean for the Hadza? It meant instead of sitting like we do in a chair, they were squatting. If anybody's squatted for a long period of time, it's very active with your muscles, or they're sitting on the ground, not in a chair.
When you're sitting in a chair, your body's. cuddled and cared for and whatever. When you sit on the ground, your core muscles are keeping you from falling over. So, it's called the inactivity paradox, but it's actually not a paradox because it's very clear what's going on. They are "sedentary", but they're actively using their muscles.
This is just another kind of these studies that suggest movement of our muscles and of our bodies is a good idea.
Roger: Or engagement of muscles, at least.
Dr. Bobby: Exactly. Exactly.
Roger: So, what's the next study?
Dr. Bobby: Well, the last one I want to touch on is not about movement per se, but it does relate to our muscles.
Folks may remember that I was being a Doubting Thomas or Skeptical Sam when we talked about nutritional supplements and that I haven't met too many of them that I like other than multivitamins. So, there's been a lot of excitement about vitamin D and all the rest, and it is one of the most frequent supplements that people take. There have been observational studies that showed that folks with higher vitamin D levels have less muscle loss.
But up until this study, it wasn't randomized trial data, and these observational studies that correlate one thing with another are fraught with all sorts of problems, and you can't necessarily trust what the results are.
Here was a study that came out in the Lancet, which is a really well-respected British journal, a randomized trial of a thousand people.
On average, they were 61 years old, and they randomized people. For three years, and one group got the vitamin D supplements, the other group didn't, and they measured hand grip, which is an important way of looking at how we're doing and how long we're likely to live, and they also looked at lower arm and leg muscles and muscle strength.
What they found was the group that was randomized to receive The vitamin D had a lower likelihood of having weak hand grip or weak arm and leg muscles. So, if you didn't take vitamin D, you had a 9 percent chance of being in that low strength category. It was almost half of that in the people that had vitamin D, 5%.
Now, this sounds great. Like, okay, everybody, let's all head off to CVS and Walgreens and buy our vitamin D supplements. But, as I like to do, I like to sort of dig behind the study results and say, well, the headlines are pretty impressive, but is that really true?
Well, first of all, it was in a bit of a unique population. These were pre diabetics. These were Japanese individuals and their lifestyles may be different than ours. But there are two things I think this study points out and it's worth thinking about. Yes, 10 percent of the people, almost 10 percent of the people did have weakness over the next couple of years that didn't take the vitamin D.
But if you look at the glass the other way, 90% of other people on no vitamin D supplements were fine, did not have that weakness. That gives us a number that we often calculate, which is what's called the number needed to treat. At some future episode, I'll talk about how you calculate that. But basically, you would have to treat 10 people with vitamin D every day for years, for one of those people not to have the weakness developed in the study. So, nine of those 10 people are not getting the benefits that this study is touting. So even though the headlines sound great, that's the first problem. Not everybody's getting this benefit. Only some people are likely to get the benefit.
So all right, fine, I'll take my vitamin D. Yes, you're right. Only 10 percent chance it's going to make a difference for me. Why not? The reason why not is that vitamin D is a double-edged sword because there's other studies that show if your vitamin D levels are too high, you have a risk of coronary artery calcification.
Too much vitamin D. Vitamin D helps our bones, but bones are calcium and calcium can be deposited in our arteries, and that's not a good thing. Don't just jump into taking lots of vitamin D thinking it's going to help your weakness. It's a double-edged sword and you have to think carefully about it.
The take home message for me is this doesn't change anything I would do because I worry about that double-edged sword and specifically, I do worry about heart disease.
Roger: So now my friends, we have peeked into the world of a medical super geek and what he does with his free time, which is a blessing for the rest of us.
So, when I think of this, Bobby, what do we do with this is always the important question, right? We talked about N of one. Is that even appropriate here or should we just move more?
Dr. Bobby: Well, as we think about movement, clearly, we want to continue with our aerobic exercise and all the other elements of exercise we've talked about.
But now this is just a tweak on that of saying not only should we exercise, but we should also do something throughout the day because exercise is just an hour of the day. Now we have 23 more hours. There's more help that we can do to live long and well, but people are often not necessarily convinced just because Dr. Bobby said something and this study says something.
As I've always promoted, you want to prove to yourself that whatever it is matters to you. If wearing socks to bed improves sleep in one study, well, wear some socks to bed and see if it matters to you. Similarly, many of us are wearing watches or Fitbits or whatever.
We have an idea of how many hours or minutes we have that are sedentary. I would say let's do our standard N of 1. If you think getting up and getting around is going to help you in some way, I'll feel more energetic, I'll sleep better, whatever it might be, go ahead and test it out.
See how many sedentary minutes you have today. See how you feel. Measure that. Try getting up and about more often during the day and then come back a week or two later and see if you're feeling better. I believe in the long term, the lack of not sitting as much as a good thing, but let's see if there's some short-term benefits that will motivate you.
I always think that's a good thing and let's do that.
Roger: Question on that, whether or not we feel short term benefits. Shouldn't we naturally try to just move throughout the day?
Dr. Bobby: That's a critical question. The answer is yes, but the answer is yes, based on scientific studies. As we've talked over and over and over again, people take supplements for the rest of their life on the hope it will make a difference, and we talked about omega 3s, which are very popular, but it appears the studies that it doesn't really help reduce cardiac disease or other things.
So, I'm not really big on asking somebody to do something for the entire rest of your life, unless science and the studies in humans really support it.
I believe the sedentary issue is pretty strong and that these studies, although they're not the perfect 30-year study, give us inklings it's going to be good for you.
Roger: Okay.
Dr. Bobby: So that's my belief.
Roger: I think a good step in that is what I call, well, I learned this phrase, I forget where, OTM. It's like, if I said OTM to my kids, they would know what it meant, which is "opportunity to move".
I'll give a story like we have neighbors that live half a block away, a little over half a block away. When they come over, they'll have like their chest with their drinks and maybe an appetizer that they're bringing. They will drive to our house. I live in a normal neighborhood. It's not like we have acres and all that.
I always tease them because like, that's an OTM. That's an opportunity to move. Just walk down the street or park a little bit farther away or leave things that you want somewhere else so you can get up and go get them and not quite as easily.
As always, Bobby will have links to these studies, by the way, in our 6-Shot Saturday and have something really cool coming up.
I don't know if we have a date yet, but Bobby, you're going to have a podcast, correct?
Dr. Bobby: I am indeed. As a name, it's Live Long and Well with Dr. Bobby, you guys could have probably come up with that one, having heard me enough times over the last year or so. But yes, I'm very excited. I will continue to do the segments with you, Roger, with all of the listeners, because I just find it fun.
But I felt that it was time to have a regular podcast. It will be every other week. It will be 30 minutes. So, it's not going to be these one or two- or three-hour ones that healthy people often do. It'll be very practical. We'll take home messages. We'll talk about a lot of the same types of studies and things that I've been talking about for the last year or so.
I aim to be geeky, but not get lost in biochemistry or physiology, and at the end of the day, provide some practical education and thoughts that folks can hopefully follow and live long and well. So, it's a new journey for me, a new journey for those who choose to come along. It should go live in the next couple of weeks so hopefully the next time you and I have a podcast segment, I can officially announce it and it'll be in the usual locations, but that's its name and the website with that exact name, Live Long and Well with Dr. Bobby will be available.
Roger: I'm excited about it. I know you're a safe place and a critical thinker.
With that, let's go set a smart sprint.
TODAY’S SMART SPRINT SEGMENT
On your marks, get set,
and we're off to take a little baby step we can take in the next seven days to not just rock retirement, but rock life.
All right. In the next seven days, OTM baby. Opportunity to move. Doesn't have to be anything drastic. Park farther away from the door at the grocery store. Take an extra five minutes on your walk with your dog or your favorite person.
Find opportunities to move. That's all.
CONCLUSION
I think last week on the show we answered a question related to our suggestion of maybe separating the non-financial and financial podcasts. Many of you in our 6-Shot Saturday email, well, really all of you that responded, were like, no, don't separate it. Doesn't make any sense. Don't add more work. It's what helps make the show what it is.
That was my conclusion as I've been thinking about it on and on, but you have confirmed it for me. So, we're keeping it as is. I appreciate, as always, your dedication to helping us make this a great show for all of us.
The opinions voiced in this podcast or for general information only, and not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual. All performance references are historical and do not guarantee future results. All indices are unmanaged and cannot be invested in directly. Make sure you consult your legal, tax, or financial advisor before making any decisions.