The Biology of Comfort and Why We Need Stress

• Why does modern convenience — from processed foods to sedentary lifestyles — quietly undermine metabolic health and resilience?
• How does insufficient fiber intake disrupt the gut microbiome, short-chain fatty acid production, and long-term digestive health?
• Why can’t essential health behaviors like sleep, exercise, and nutrition be “banked” or compensated for later?
• How does chronic comfort — constant temperature control, passive entertainment, and easy food access — reduce mitochondrial resilience and nervous system adaptability?

What We Discuss:

00:00 Constipation, Stress & Why Fiber Matters
01:45 The Hidden Cost of Convenience & Comfort
03:00 Processed Foods and Sedentary Lifestyles
05:20 Fiber Supplements vs Whole Foods
07:00 Packaged “Health Foods” vs Real Nutrition
09:40 Fiber Intake and Gut Microbiome Health
13:00 Why Health Habits Can’t Be “Banked”
18:10 What Happens When Gut Health Fails
22:30 Exercise Myths and the Limits of Convenience
27:00 Why We Need Healthy Discomfort
31:00 Practical Tips to Add Movement Back Into Daily Life

Full Transcript:

Dr. Ted Achacoso: [00:00:00] There is no recourse but to, but to counsel them to divorce because there's no going to be no end to their fighting it. You can actually, the best thing to do is to be able to be aware of your schema. That's why meditation works, right? You're becoming aware that something is rising in you, but the problem is that you cling onto the story of that arising.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: So my, my favorite. Example is my friend who yeah, curses the the news every day because the markets are tanking. And I remind him, are you constipated? And that's the reason you're irritated. It's the reason why you're streaking at the TV if you're not constipated. You see the market news, eyes, okay, the markets really recover tomorrow.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: But see, those are like your schema, right? These little things that, that are in your physiology that just basically think, you think you're irritated with be the market news, but you're actually, that's a false attribution, right? You're irritated because you are actually having very constipated morning.[00:01:00] 

Dr. Ted Achacoso: Or very consummated mornings, series of mornings. So anyway, that's, that's all of the 

Dr. Allen Bookatz: reason we need fiber. 

Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah, I have what I've lectured for 15 years now, Alan, that, Alan, that, that the fiber is the fastest disappearing macronutrient in the human diet. And now finally, people are picking it up a decade and a half too early.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: No shit. Right. 

Jodi Duval: Literally. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: And now they're fiber maxing too. Not just getting fiber, but like how much max fiber can you get it? And actually, this is a great segue into our conversation today, guys, on the hidden cost of convenience and comfort that we're gonna be talking about on the Health Optimization Medicine podcast.

Dr. Scott Sherr: It's good to see you all. Happy podcast. How are we all doing? 

Jodi Duval: Feeling not constipated today, which is good. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Oh, I'm really glad to hear that. 

Dr. Allen Bookatz: Ready to get out of our comfort zones. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: I'm excited for this topic, Jody, that you decided that we chat about [00:02:00] today. You're calling it the hidden cost of convenience and comfort, and one of the things that was just the segue that I was thinking of is processed food, right?

Dr. Scott Sherr: You have food that has very little fiber or very poor nutrient density, and especially the low fiber. I remember I was working with a patient. It was the son of one of my other patients, and he was around 2021 and he was a professional gamer and he hadn't had more than one bowel movement a week in a couple years, and he was sitting in a chair for 18 hours a day.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Maxing his gaming. Definitely not fiber maxing and 

Dr. Ted Achacoso: they, you make it sound like looks, looks maxing. Right. I just saw an on that too. Yeah. The bones grow one way, but Scott, they probably also eat Soylent, right? Remember? Yeah. The guys don't actually even know the origin of that. It's from so green where, oh my god, the name is familiar.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: But yeah, it's a classic story. Like so green is made up of people for. It [00:03:00] is a very famous story. It was even made into a movie where the old people actually disappeared to a better place, et cetera, et cetera. The truth is that they're actually getting killed and ground and made into silent. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: That's right.

Dr. Scott Sherr: That's right. 

Dr. Ted Achacoso: And that was the actual, the food of the people. And Solen was actually named after that, but it was made of soy and other stuff and it's a paste. Have you ever had it? And no. You squeeze it When I am, I, I used to be so crazy. I would code for 18 hours, A, your friend would be gaming for 18 hours.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: I would be coding for 18 hours just straight through several days. And all I'd be doing is having the silent and actually some. Uh, people have Mountain Dew, right? Because of the caffeine. I would just have water. It's, but it, it just, it just feeds you and you don't have to go on and on. But that's the price of convenience.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: Of course, it, it's 10 days later you poop because there's absolutely no fiber.

Dr. Scott Sherr: A difficult way. So do you wear a diaper [00:04:00] when you're coding for 18 hours or do you go, do you wear a diaper when you're. Playing a game. I I was, I You don't get up very often. 

Dr. Ted Achacoso: No, but I, I don't know. You have a be cop. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Peacock, of 

Dr. Ted Achacoso: course. Yeah. A pee bottle. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: What if you're female? That's not that easy to do.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah, 

Dr. Ted Achacoso: there there are attachments, but it's usually males who do a lot of the gaming and coding. Anyway, they have the appendage to actually, Dan, go to. In, in, into a bottle, right? But the hidden costs here are goes both ways. Like for example, the convenience of our lifestyles will give us things like soil and all of these other things, but they do lack fiber.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: But even the convenience of adding fiber sucks, right? Say you, you take like a cilium husk or you take a mixed blend of fibers, et cetera, et cetera. Right then you have to take lots and lot of water, and then when you do take them, you finally fart, fart and fart, right? So it's, it's either you get used to actually taking natural fiber every day where your farts are [00:05:00] manageable, or you take this artificial, actually they're natural source of fiber, but artificially dosed and you get all of the bloating, et cetera, et cetera.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: The warning, right? Drink lots of fluids with it and second, you will fucking fart. And I know I have patients who I actually warn, please don't take your fiber supplements if you don't want Get to get embarrassed in a, in a black tie gala because you will fart with those things you need 

Dr. Scott Sherr: anonymous, like on an airplane or something.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: So this is a convenience of having easy food that have no fiber. And there's a, the convenience of having fiber that's dosed unnaturally, right? Fiber should be actually taken, uh, in the diet. And for the goody two shoes who actually are so used to fiber, I have someone right now who's actually prepping for a colonoscopy, right?

Dr. Ted Achacoso: And he was saying like, holy shit, it's so difficult to find food without any fiber. And that's because it's preparing for a colonoscopy and he wants to reach for food for foods that are natural for him, that actually naturally fiber rich, [00:06:00] right? 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. It is difficult to find food with how new fiber isn't it?

Dr. Scott Sherr: Uh, what I would say in addition as Ted is in frozen mode waiting to come back to see us, is that I think about convenience and comfort a lot of different ways. Jody, and I was gonna actually ask you after Ted was done to chat a little bit about how you see this in clinical practice where you are in Perth.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Is it all veggie, mite and Marmite? Is that the, the convenience foods that people eat or what do you, what are you seeing people sacrifice for convenience at this point in clinic on a regular basis? 

Jodi Duval: Yeah, and I think I'll give context as well, and I think it's a great thing to talk about in relation to food.

Jodi Duval: The other reason I chose this particular topic is because I'm seeing a lot of people who are in chronic states of health and sometimes we actually need to come out of our comfort zone to push the body into a better state of healing. And so it's knowing to know is to what, when is that going to be? And that's the biggest question when I see clients, but to the convenience of food.

Jodi Duval: Yeah. It's what I'm finding actually is people are going to [00:07:00] more the convenience health foods now, and they're still not, they're not great. So there's convenience health bars, convenience health meals, and it's still in the sort of health food section of the supermarkets. But they're packaged still and they're not whole and they're not full, you know, vital foods that are full of water and vitamins and minerals, but they've been putting in an unnatural form that's.

Jodi Duval: Recognized by the body, and we talk about that at home, hope a lot, but it's not consumable. The chewing process, the actual entourage impact of what that whole food has on the body is very different in a packet. And you can't create nature in that way. We try to to mimic nature as much as we can, but we can't achieve that.

Jodi Duval: And so you have to know. What is a good quality food versus what a convenience food is, even if it's a health food, and how often you should be having those. Yes, they should be just as a, just in case I didn't get to the shop today, or I couldn't have lunch today, versus having it as a sustainable meal plan.[00:08:00] 

Jodi Duval: Yeah. So that, I think I'm seeing a lot more in practice. People are aware of what's bad and what's good. But it's now they're getting convenience. Health foods come in and even if it is fiber attached, it's not multitudes of different fibers with all the other nutrients and support. That's along with that.

Jodi Duval: Also, aside to that, the food's not great quality anymore because of the soils that we're. Not the soil in, but the soils that we're eating from and the food's being grown in is not high quality and full of the dense nutrients and minerals that we are needing too. Yeah. So that I, I think I'm seeing that in clinical practice and I'm having to guide people into making sure that they're making their foods well and the convenience of the cooking too.

Jodi Duval: Microwaves, we can talk about that as a convenience point. We could talk about cooking in the wrong. Oils and the wrong heat, and you've got fried foods and you've got air fryers, and it's all of those convenience products. The way that we're cooking can also be not ideal for health all the time. Yeah.

Dr. Allen Bookatz: Jody, when you're counseling [00:09:00] your clients on this, uh. How are you for our listeners, how are you helping them understand the requirements for fiber, especially in day and age where fiber is not really seen as, oh, part of eating Whole Foods? It's more of a supplement in itself, just like a vitamin would be, oh, get your fiber.

Dr. Allen Bookatz: And so people are in this mindset of thinking of that. I'm just curious, how do you, using what you just said, how do you encourage folks to really hit those fiber goals given, and let's maybe talk about what those goals are. On a daily basis. 

Jodi Duval: Yeah. We talk about, Ted talks about it a lot. He's been talking about it for a long time.

Jodi Duval: We're aiming at around 25 to 30 grams of fiber a day, and that's hard to hit, but it's something that, yeah, you have to have a visual output for clients because they go, what is 25 to 30 grams? What is, what is that? I can't see that. And you say vegetables and fruits at each part of your meal or each part of the day.

Jodi Duval: So breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And then you've also got the colors. I put it in there as [00:10:00] colors and different types of foods. And then you've got a combination of different things on your plate. So I giveaways a plate. Example, you've got your rainbow fruits and veggies. You've got your proteins, which you need.

Jodi Duval: You've got your carbohydrate forms of grains. If you require them at that particular time and you've got your fats and showing them in terms of portions of what that might look like, then that gives them an example that they can visually understand for the fiber and in relation to why we have the fiber.

Jodi Duval: It's so easy when we do. A GI X or a gut microbiome and to show them all short chain fatty acids and these are the bacterias and this is their fuel. This is their food. This is what they need. And without that, then you don't get any of those good bacterias and the support that your gastrointestinal system, which is therefore your immune system, which is therefore your nervous system, which is therefore your mood and your brain and how your body is coping in the world.

Jodi Duval: So yeah, putting it in those. [00:11:00] Sorts of, and in real life encounters and examples for those particular clients. And it's not just about having a good poo, which is amazing and it feels good, but it's also about how you show up in the world and how resilient you are and how, how then you can be more uncomfortable in your life to then grow.

Jodi Duval: Yeah. 

Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah. Jody is very kind. I actually require 34 grams of fiber a day, about four grams more. But if you take a look at the artificial fibers that are out there, you can actually get 10 grams from a single scoop of however people, what people don't realize that fibers are carbohydrates and they are included in your total carbohydrate count.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: So what you should pay attention to is if you're actually counting carbohydrates, is what's called your net carbs. Those that are actually absorbed by their body. Right. So your total carbohydrates minus your insoluble carbohydrates, which is fiber, right? So no, no. You even have to repeat this to doctors, that carbohydrates are [00:12:00] actually fibers are actually carbohydrates, and then that they're just insoluble.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: They don't contribute or they don't contribute to your calorie count. Or if this is soluble fiber, then they do. Include are included in your calorie count. So of the fibers, there are insoluble fibers in the soluble fibers. So Im, you better take a look at what kind of fibers you're actually taking in. If you are doing convenience fiber intake, right?

Dr. Ted Achacoso: And make sure that when you take, there are some that are capsules or is there some that are measured by the scoop full, et cetera. Make sure that they're always with some water. Alright? When a lot of water actually, not just some water, when you take it, that's the way. That I actually look at fiber. The thing that we're looking at here in terms of convenience, right, is that there are certain things that we do repeated in life that cannot be banned, and eating is one of them, right?

Dr. Ted Achacoso: The effects of poor eating will actually reverberate all throughout your life, your life, not even just [00:13:00] within. The years. Uh, but they will reverberate during the day, right? Because you get constipated, you get irritated, you have all of these behavioral manifestations and one and another. When you look at convenience things is that another convenience thing is exercise, right?

Dr. Ted Achacoso: We are in, you cannot bank exercise. So these are habits and things that you cannot bank. Like good eating is something that you cannot bank. You have to eat, you have to eat healthily at every instant that you actually eat. Or, and then you have to exercise daily because it cannot be banked. So that these are the kinds of lifestyle and habits that we need to develop because their effects, although they are long-term, right, you cannot bank them.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: There is a myth that you can actually pay, pay back, sleep debt. The truth is that you can't lost. Sleep is lost sleep. The inflammation is already in there, et cetera. So I'm just, what I'm pointing out here for people who are looking at what's convenience versus and how do we, [00:14:00] how do we address them technologically or biochemically or chemically, is that we, when we ac accrue all of these deficits.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: They cannot be paid. Really, we're just trying to put bandaid over it. We try, for example, for exercise, right? We do, we do short protocols that exercise all the planes of the body, for example, which I teach to my patients, right? Uh, multiplayer protocol, which can be done in 20 minutes. And it's good for seniors like me almost this year to be able to do for 20 minutes without actually bothering to do a longer routine like I used to when I was younger.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: And there's age appropriate exercise. So these are the kinds of conveniences that actually we can tailor to our patients or clients that will allow them to be able to be compliant because 80%, I said 80% of our results. Are due to patient compliance. We can give them as much a protocol as we want, like high fiber diet.[00:15:00] 

Dr. Ted Achacoso: If they don't follow it, you're still fucked. You tell them, okay, this is sleep schedule, but if they're able to sleep, you're still fucked. So what I'm saying here is that it's very hard to put convenience solutions to things that we cannot bank or we cannot save. And those are eating, sleeping, right, and exercising.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: These are things that cannot be banked and therefore. We have to actually execute the solution right then and there when we need to. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Ted, I have a question. What can we bank anything? 

Dr. Ted Achacoso: Sperm?

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yes we can. Is there, but is there anything that we can do? Now that pays it forward later. There's certain things, of course, right? But what, what stands out to you as something somebody can do now that's gonna pay it forward later? For example, other than sperm banging. 

Dr. Ted Achacoso: Oh, actually the kindness. Now, if you're kind now, it'll be paid, paid later.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: In terms of health optimization, right? The health [00:16:00] optimization we say, the things we do, we actually detect and correct imbalances in our metabolome. Right? Although optimization is continuous because the goal is health. And health is a perpetual goal. This is a moving target. It's not the occurring a disease.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: So what pays forward is that we're not even preventive medicine, right? It preventive medicines, prevention of disease, how it's paid forward is via the beneficial side effect. Prevention of disease is a beneficial side effect, right? You're being more, more kind to your. Partner and to your children is a beneficial side effect because you have a, you, you have a, you feel a lot better.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: You have a feeling of wellbeing and therefore that translates to the people around you, the people that you supervise to your company, et cetera. That's what I've seen as a, as a long term effect. Right. It's not banked, but it's a long-term effect. Right. Of the, of the things that you actually do to yourself.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: The, because quality is [00:17:00] at this moment, right? Quantity, that's a beneficial side effect. Like longevity is a beneficial side effect of health optimization. Right? So we're not after longevity. So we're not banking anything, but we are looking at the long-term beneficial side effects of what we do. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yes. I think one of the things we always run up against, and you've, you said this so appropriately over the years.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Is that it took you 50 or 60 years to feel the way you are and you wanna feel better tomorrow. It's not something that's reasonable, right? Because the biology, physiology, all those things are going to shift and it's going to take time. So we have to be there for patients and clients to help them along that path and give them ways to, to find their way through.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: Yeah, we're at instant gratification society, right. So we want, it's like I have 40 year olds who come to me, like males who are depressed, they're on antidepressants and just three months of hormone balancing. They actually don't need their antidepressants anymore. [00:18:00] So you could see here that these things are accumulated over time.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: They cannot be, they can't be addressed overnight, much more so for nutrient imbalances. You have not been taking magnesium, so for fucking 20 years, how do you expect that to be relet overnight? You can't. It has to be done in tandem with both your diet and supplementation. And my problem with illness medicine doctors is that, oh, don't take those vitamins, minerals, you can just eat them in food.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: And my challenge to them, okay, name me one food that has alpha lipoic acid in it. Because that's a measured deficiency here. So that's the arrogance of illness medicine, right? They think they know that it's in food, but when you ask them where in the food it is, they wouldn't know where it is. So I tell them to shut up.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: If it's not your specialty, just shut up. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: I love it. Alan, I have a question for you actually that's in, related to this, is that you have one of the most convenient places for people to go for any single problem they might ever ly have. Is the emergency [00:19:00] room. And so I think there's a real cost for people being able to use the ER at will for everything.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Do you think that this, and I know you discussed this before, how it's when they've gotten to your er, it's too late, but the convenience of going there and getting their next whatever from you, how does that relate to you think to all of this? Is that we're describing it? 

Dr. Allen Bookatz: Yeah, it's interesting. The first thing that came to mind was when you say you can't bank anything, by virtue of not eating enough fiber, you're just banking your stool, right?

Dr. Allen Bookatz: And it's just backing up and backing up. And then guess what? Convenience and comfort, putting those things aside. You do come to me and you have, there are real conditions from severe constipation, one of which is something called toxic megacolon, which yeah, it's, that's, it's exactly what you think it is.

Dr. Allen Bookatz: It's a huge dilated colon that's so backed up. And think of like a muscle that has just been stretched and not worked for so long that it's [00:20:00] thin and atrophied, and now it just can't even push anymore. And so now this person has lost a majority of the tone in their bowel, and so they can't even push stool forward.

Dr. Allen Bookatz: So they are quite literally full. Shit. And they have to come to us. And no matter what we give them, even if we give them fiber, it doesn't really help them. It's like the analogy of you had someone who's not been exercising or not been taking magnesium for decades, and all of a sudden we give them magnesium, we think it's gonna get better.

Dr. Allen Bookatz: No, like their system has adapted. So we have to go in there and manually pull it out. And sometimes we'll actually have to admit people to the hospital for this very thing. So 

Dr. Scott Sherr: it's convenient to 

Dr. Allen Bookatz: get 

Dr. Scott Sherr: vitamin D, 

Dr. Allen Bookatz: it's 

Dr. Scott Sherr: vitamin 

Dr. Allen Bookatz: Dilaudid. It's convenient to. Exactly. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Uh, yeah, my, I just, my question here is like, is it.

Dr. Scott Sherr: Is it too easy for people to just go to the ER and convenient? And the hidden cost of this maybe that people don't have any reason to try to help themselves, is they can always get Dilaudid from one of your ER doctors and which will make 

Dr. Allen Bookatz: them constipated [00:21:00] actually. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: Yeah. 

Dr. Allen Bookatz: What's interesting, so the problem actually makes itself worse.

Dr. Allen Bookatz: And the ED, we're trained to treat emergencies and this is something that isn't an emergency. And so when someone comes in and they are looking for guidance on how to manage the constipation. I can't, we, of, of all the things that we see in the ED and the things that we were probably least equipped to actually help someone on, the more chronic front is gonna be things like.

Dr. Allen Bookatz: Constipation and maldigestion, and we have a wonderful module to help to help those that are listening to understand gut health and the relation to the immune system and digestion. But when you come to us, basically we are in the mode of just flushing you out and relieving whatever blockages in the pipes.

Dr. Allen Bookatz: And then we're just hoping that it. It stays that way. And so we're gonna give you things that are gonna sequester and keep water and fluid in the gut so that you just have leaky stools. Because the alternative consequences is, is putting your health at even more risk. So [00:22:00] we, and in the, in the meantime, your gut microbiota is essentially shot or you probably didn't have much di no much diversity, at least in the commensal sense to begin with.

Dr. Allen Bookatz: There is no, and then all the benefits, I guess if you, I guess going back to our banking. Analogy. What we are banking, when we're eating fiber and we have a good diversity of our food, is we're taking care of those microbiota. And those microbiota make these amazing molecules called, uh, like different mo metabolites, things like short chain fatty acids, and then that actually feeds our intestinal cells and that make sure that they're taking care of themselves and so they're healing themselves.

Dr. Allen Bookatz: And a beneficial side effect is, guess what? We clear up the damaged DNA and the waste and the things that over many years accumulate and can cause 

Dr. Ted Achacoso: cancer. Oh my God. But again, that's something's rehearsed. The lecture. That's, that's, I'm 

Dr. Allen Bookatz: channeling you 

Dr. Ted Achacoso: lecture, Alan. I bet you've given that once already.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: I'm kidding. I'm kidding. Do you remind me of something about banking exercise. Right. One of the [00:23:00] tricks that I do if I can't exercise is of course I go on a course of an anabolic steroids. Right. So it's, I am going to be like. Fucking four weeks in Manila, I won't be able to exercise. What am I going to do to in order to preserve my muscle?

Dr. Ted Achacoso: So you start with, okay, I'm gonna take some, some, a short term, like six week term of some anabolic steroids, et cetera, et cetera. But the thing is, even when you're taking those, you still have to lift weights in order to make the gain stick. Because if you don't do your exercise during the time, everything that you preserved or gained during the time is just all lost right afterwards.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: So. What the flying fuck is the same, right? So there's no such thing. Again, it's back to there's no such thing as banking exercise, right? You can cheat as much as you can, but the thing is you still have to do whatever it needs to be done. That is a natural signal of the body, right? Example, the body needs tension in, in the bone, the muscle and bone in order to keep the, the calcium in the bone, right?

Dr. Ted Achacoso: It's a [00:24:00] mechanical tension that is needed. That's why you encourage women to actually do resistance exercises, right? Because no matter what you do, no matter, even if you take. Testosterone and, and other BOL steroids. In order to keep that, you are still going to lose that calcium and they're still going to promote osteoporosis, especially because estrogen actually is responsible in women for about 30% of the, uh, of the calcium deposition process in the bone.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: In fact, that is established. Hormone balancing, especially with oxygen, progesterone, testosterone will actually, you can actually re recoup up to 30% of calcium loss in the bones, right? That's way better than any other STR based or, or other injectables that you get in there for osteoporosis. Right? So here again with Alan's point, the not, there are natural signals in the body, like it needs a certain.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: Ecosystem of microbio in a certain distribution. In order to function properly, they provide chemokines or natural sys, natural signalers to the actual, the [00:25:00] intestinal mucosa, like the colonic mucosa. They need butyrate. The primary fuel of the colon cells is butyrate, right, and low butyrate is associated with colon cancer.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: And that's already, that's all news that's in, in the journals. But we don't think about this, that they are actually produced by the colonic bacteria and the cheat there is that you take butyrate supplements. But the problem with butyrate supplements is that they actually are very difficult to get into the colon.

Dr. Allen Bookatz: And Ted's right, you could absolutely take butyrate supplements in many of, sometimes we actually do recommend starting those, someone that is in our practices with health optimization. Certainly that 

Dr. Scott Sherr: that's an option when it comes to finishing this up, Jody. Maybe we can, you and I can wrap for a second here.

Dr. Scott Sherr: I think what it comes down to is that we're not, back in the 1950s and sixties, convenience was key, right? It was like the Jetsons timeframe, right? Like everything was gonna be easy. So easy and so convenient. But in the end, we're now [00:26:00] realizing that making things so easy and so convenient isn't so easy and so convenient for this physiology.

Dr. Scott Sherr: And I think it's a responsibility for us as clinicians to go look. Maybe there's a different way to think about this and we're just getting sicker and sicker if we're just thinking about convenience and comfort all the time. I dunno if you have any last parting words for us 

Jodi Duval: as we go here, Judy. I think, yeah, the way that I put it to my clients is we are more inclined to be comfortable and obviously we need to look after, as I was saying earlier about the chronic states of illness and we need to have rest, but it's knowing when we don't need rest because we have lower mitochondrial turnover, we have.

Jodi Duval: Lower BDNF we have. You know what I've noticed in people who have been really in looking after their rest, and it's been a chronic state of rest because they want to and they need to, and they're scared to push it. After working with Home Hope and you can see it's like we're re-putting in all these things, so you should be okay.

Jodi Duval: Your cells are, are now more resilient. You, you're filled. [00:27:00] You've being corrected now. But what I've noticed is that you get this persistent state of sympathetic. Tone, you get a persistent, reduced HRV, you get a persistent poor sleep depth and health. And then it is that delayed muscle activity, that kinetic sort of movement you feel that you're not on, not switched on.

Jodi Duval: I feel we're always gonna tend toward comfort. We have comfort in our phones, comfort in our, in our homes where, where. We are warm, we're safe, we're sitting on couches. We've got food availability for most people whenever we want. We're not temperature switching much at all. We're all in this steady aircon.

Jodi Duval: I liken it back to when I lived on a farm, I was in a stables. I, you can't control the temperature. You have to deal with the differences. You have to be out in the open and it's a stress all but it's a good stressor and you feel stretched and it's a good willpower. You are strengthening those areas of the brain.

Jodi Duval: If you're widening your willpower areas and you're, you are likely to get [00:28:00] more oxytocin, dopamine, serotonin from those activities because you're actually getting natural hires. We talk about hi being quite often, but from what we get now, we get so dampened by the comfort that we don't get and we also have high levels of dopamine producing tools and techniques and it.

Jodi Duval: All these phones and games that the natural changes in our environment and what we are doing in our exercise or even just eating food doesn't give us a hit anymore. And I feel that's a big problem with comfort as well. And therefore we're less likely to reach out to actually gain those. Good feelings and good hormones, neuro hormones from interaction with people or from activities that we might go out to.

Jodi Duval: So that's, I think about this a lot. 'cause I see this in clients. They're like, oh, I just need to rest. I need to recover. I'm like, yeah, we do, but we also need to push. If you haven't lifted weights or gone for a sprint, if you can sprint, then you don't really know. And when you do that and you come back and you feel [00:29:00] so good after a sprint, hey it's, wow, that was really damn hard.

Jodi Duval: But now, and I'm absolutely fucked. 10 minutes later, half an hour after that, you're like, I feel freaking amazing. It's so good. So it is just an analogy, but those sorts of things, just different ways of stretching ourselves, I think is a really important. 

Dr. Ted Achacoso: So one super final tip, a very practical one from an older person like me, right?

Dr. Ted Achacoso: One of the things that we lose as we get older is the capability to be flexible. Right. So what I do is that the things that I commonly reach for in the kitchen, I actually put them at a very high shelf so that I am actually forced to stretch up and reach them because everything is conveniently array for you.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: You don't even have to, you just do this, but if you're actually forced right to reach right, then it's a lot better for you. And if you put all of your array of your. Coffees, et cetera, et cetera. That way, that would give you a lot of stretching, exercise [00:30:00] just in your kitchen, right? Practical tips like those make life a little bit harder for you.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: It's not all about being convenient, right? And, and then you essentially try to not have things delivered to you so you can carry, for example, this, this weekend I had to carry a bed frame myself to my house, right? Which is like over three floors to actually bring it there. I could have easily paid, right?

Dr. Ted Achacoso: But for me, it's like the exercise of actually pushing myself because I didn't wanna do it. It's fucking winter, it's cold outside, and so on and so forth. But it's not about that convenience. It's about getting that activity in your system as part of your daily life. We are not meant to be sedentary, right?

Dr. Ted Achacoso: We're meant to move around. Right. So that's what I encourage everyone else in terms of convenience, make yourself. Slightly inconvenient but not dangerous, right? So that there is still that fight that within your system that that goes on, right? And that your [00:31:00] entire body is still exercise along the way.

Dr. Ted Achacoso: Alright? And that's a very practical way to live your life. 

Dr. Scott Sherr: I love it. That's a great tip to be a little bit uncomfortable. Allow yourself to be a little uncomfortable, a good one to finish up. So thank you. Fellow faculty at Health Optimization Medicine and practice for this wonderful podcast on the hidden cost of convenience and comfort.

Dr. Scott Sherr: And if you guys like this podcast, don't forget to like Incr and subscribe below so you never miss an episode. And we'll see you all next time on the Health Optimization Medicine podcast.

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