Rhonda Patrick

It was a study that was done over the course of 30 years.

It was two separate studies known as the Dallas Bedrest Study.

And the study involved, first of all, Dr. Lean's mentor, Jared Mitchell, who was studying a group of men and looking at the effects of being sedentary on their cardiorespiratory fitness and other cardiovascular health parameters.

And when I say sedentary, I mean...

full-on sedentary.

They underwent bed rest for three weeks.

So what that study found was, lo and behold, when you're actually not moving for three weeks, not even getting up to go to the bathroom.

So, I mean, they had catheters.

This was extreme bed rest.

They really wanted to look and see what happened to cardiovascular function, cardiorespiratory fitness, after just not moving for three weeks.

Of course, lo and behold, cardiorespiratory fitness declined.

Not so surprising, as well as a lot of the other parameters they measured.

But what was really eye-opening to me was, you know, fast forward 30 years, Dr. Levine is now in Gerard Mitchell's lab, and they find those same group of men, and they wanted to see what 30 years of aging had done to their cardiorespiratory fitness, which does naturally decline with age.

And what they found was that their cardiorespiratory fitness after 30 years of aging was

was no worse than their cardiorespiratory fitness after three weeks of bed rest 30 years ago.

So essentially, three weeks of bed rest is worse for your cardiovascular health, for your cardiorespiratory fitness, than 30 years of aging.

And when you put it like that, it's like, wow, being sedentary is so detrimental on our cardiovascular health.

So maybe you can, Brady, just kind of recap, highlight, talk about what cardiorespiratory fitness is, how you measure it.

I guess we'll get into some ways to improve it.

But I mean, this is something that you have a lot of experience in as well.