Why Sitting Too Long Negates Good Health Habits with Krisna Hanks

Nigel Rawlins: Krishna, welcome back to the Wisepreneurs Podcast. You were my guest on episode 13, so thank you for joining me again.

Krisna Hanks: How wonderful! Lucky 13, and here we are so many episodes later. Thank you for the opportunity, Nigel.

Nigel Rawlins: I'm very interested in your new work that you've been involved with. So, but first Krisna, can you tell us something about yourself and where you're from, and then we'll get into what you're doing new.

Krisna Hanks: Absolutely. So, currently, I'm living in Tucson, Arizona, in the desert. However, I've lived in many different places, as you might be able to detect by that sort of eclectic accent that I have. Part of that comes from the two decades I spent living and working in the Netherlands, in Amsterdam in particular.

My background, the short version is, grew up in the Midwest, in the state of Illinois, Quincy to be exact. Uh, as a young person did a lot of, uh, Gymnastics, cheerleading, uh, there weren't a lot of sports back then in my day, um, became very involved at a young age in dance, and in fact joined my first professional dance company at the age of 15.

That career landed me all the way to age 43, took me to a lot of different places, Chicago, New York City, ended up in the Netherlands for the latter part of my career and absolutely loved it, uh, towards the end of that career and throughout my whole career, I've been fascinated by the moving body. I taught dance, obviously as a dancer, choreographed, I also taught personal fitness, Pilates, senior fitness, everything moving, pretty much all through that time, um, as well as towards the end.

And then. Became an executive coach, did some years of executive coaching, and then just seeing a lot of the struggles that individuals have became much more focused on health coaching. And I know that can be kind of a generic, broad term. I see now where I am as more of a Metabolic Health Coach really focusing in on the benefits of good metabolic health, particularly as I age and everyone around us is aging.

Um, it's not something we can get around and, um, have, uh, done various things throughout that, that, that time on the Pilates studio with my husband. Have our own coaching business, Square One Wellness Coaching. But right now, currently. I'm working for heart surgeon, Dr. Philip Ovadia, who has Ovadia Heart Health.

He's written a fabulous book. I recommend to a lot of people 'Stay Off My Operating Table' which is something we'd all like to do, not be on the heart surgeon's operating table. As their Director of Employee Wellness Programs, I also do metabolic coaching for them, but trying to really focus now in on the work site, employee wellness, uh, employee metabolic health.

Nigel Rawlins: in many ways, you've got a new job. And what's interesting about this new job, you're about my age, you've started a new career in your late 60s.

Krisna Hanks: Isn't that fun? Isn't that fun? Yes. I definitely subscribe to the idea of maintaining work at some point. Maybe there'll come a time where I say, okay, I'm done. Um, I just want to go retire, but I feel I have a passion. I love what I do. I love working with the Ovadia team. Um, I love. Partnering with my, my husband, Robert on various projects as well.

And it just feels right to continue working and maybe there will come a day, well, when I'll say no, but like yourself, um, I'm still energized by what I do. And I still would love to contribute.

I'm still

Nigel Rawlins: trying to work out what it is that I'm doing, but I do think, I do think you're right about the movement. That we are born to move, and our whole world revolves around moving and if anyone was to see, now we are audio only, but if you see a picture of Krisna, she's lean and she's incredibly fit and she looks very very young.

You do not look your age at all.

Krisna Hanks: Well, thank you very much. I am. Yeah. And moving has definitely always been something I felt I've had an affinity. My mother would always say she asked me around the age of three, what I wanted to be in already, then I said, I wanted to be a dancer. Yeah. So maybe there's something inherent in it, but thank you very much for the compliment.

Nigel Rawlins: Now I think people will see for themselves and it's something to aim for. So let's start talk a little bit about why I contacted you this time. Ovadia Heart Health put out a white paper. So let's talk a little bit about what the subject of that is. So can you tell me something about that? Because I'm assuming you were involved in that white paper as well.

Krisna Hanks: Yes, I, I penned that paper with the oversight of, uh, of Dr. Ovedia, uh, and our medical team. Actually, we have a nurse practitioner and other clinicians, uh, on the team. So this white paper is about the detrimental effects of sedentary behavior, particularly with a little emphasis on the workplace. That said, I'm going to caveat that.

Many people who work from home, many people who are even just retired or partially working, are spending a lot of hours sitting. So while the emphasis may be slightly towards those, uh, still in the workplace. The workplace is everywhere, it might be your kitchen table, it might be an office you've made in your house.

You might be in an office. I just do a little back history on why this topic became very interesting to me, but also close by. So in 2010, uh, we were living in the San Francisco Bay Area. And I was at that time, the membership director of a group called the Stanford Health Promotion Network, SHPN.

And this is out of Stanford University. It was a consortium of companies within that San Francisco, primarily Silicon Valley area, uh, wanting to incorporate more employee wellness programs into their companies. So we had the likes of Google, Facebook, okay, all the big tech companies, but also many other smaller nonprofits from the various locations.

All interested in how can we improve the health of our employees and anyone associated with us. So Stanford organized in 2010, the first conference on what they called then the science of sedentary behavior. This was a little bit of a kickoff. They were, um, unveiling kind of a new department, a new thing called the Center for Longevity.

So this was one of their first projects. And I was invited as a worksite wellness consultant, along with many researchers. It was not a conference open to the public, but just by people connected and working actively in that field. But one of the most interesting things about this conference was you could not present with a PowerPoint.

They allowed no PowerPoints. They had no presentation. You were just asked to talk about what you were doing. Um, that way to have interaction with each other. I thought that was just amazing. Absolutely fascinating. But in this conference, there was some particular work and I have right here and we can put this in the show notes.

One of the first individuals to speak is actually from your country, Dr. Neville Owen and Genevieve Healy. Their paper, I thought, was the spark for pretty much everyone there. It's titled, Too Much Sitting, The Population Health Science of Sedentary Behavior.

And just to make this a little more realistic, what was completely fascinating to me as someone who spent my life in the moving fields, I have two degrees in kinesiology, is that their research was pointing towards too much sitting is not the same as too little exercise. And it was this whole sort of diving deeper into the fact that actually metabolic markers were impacted by what they called prolonged hours of sitting.

They even came up with these two, two terms called a prolonger. That would be someone who had, you know, multiple hours of sitting back to back as opposed to a breaker. Someone in even they gave examples of someone who's kind of fidgety, right? I just moving around and would even like sit up and stand up.

Those could be considered breaks and that this moved away from what had been much of our thinking of all you have to do is do your you know with the this various groups recommend 150 minutes a week of exercise, two times a week of strength training and all these things and you'll be fine. And they even came up with a funny term, which I use a lot in when I'm speaking, the active couch potato. Meaning you can do everything correctly. You can hit all the markers. You're doing your strength training. You're doing cardiovascular training. You're doing stretching. But if you're sitting for multiple hours, some of this good work that you're doing for yourself is negated.

And I just thought that was fascinating. It kind of blew, blew my mind for lack of a better way to say it, to say, okay, we have to rethink how we are approaching our daily lives.

Nigel Rawlins: Now, and that's interesting because that's quite a while back and now it's starting to emerge and it does It seems to be the case that, um, you know, people realize things and there are theories and studies, but it can take many years before it comes into the mainstream. For example, metabolic health. Um, we've probably known about that for many, many years.

So let's talk a little bit about about what sedentary behavior is and what problems is it causing. So sitting down's one. I guess the other one is sitting in bed watching TV at night, sitting and watching TV.

Krisna Hanks: Correct. And I just kind of want to make sure I hit these numbers correct. So, When we think about activity, and we point this out in our white paper, there's a classification that's called a MET, M E T, a Metabolic Equivalent of Task. And this early reason is It is true, right? We're talking 2010. Here we are 2024.

Takes things a long time, right? To, to change. So a metabolic equivalent of task, something like sitting or long term stationary is down in that one, I think to 1. 5. And, they utilize not only just Neville Owen, Genevieve Healy, but there's interesting research, Mark Hamilton who worked at Pennington Biomedical Research Center.

They use this term called light intensity exercise, which can be just standing up, starting to walk, lifting your legs up, things that use, um, sort of rather larger group muscles like our quadriceps, the front of the thigh, gluteus muscles, the seat muscles, postural muscles. And this went to a level staying under around a three MET.

And if you think other activities, so above the three would be what we would classify a little more as moderate intensity exercise. And then we start going in this range from three MET to eight MET. Those would be things like biking, swimming, walking with a little more vigorousness, running. Um, and then obviously, very vigorous would be really kind of high intensity.

So the MET qualifies it. Uh, and this is something then that can be measured through accelerometers and other tools. Um, and it's not like it's a perfect measurement. Somebody says, well, how do I know if I'm doing light or moderate? And we will even use things like, well, light's just basically kind of changing your body position in, in many ways.

Moderate is more of a consistent activity, but yet you're not really raising that heart rate super high. You could still carry on a nice conversation, you and I could talk easily. When we get into the vigorous, that's when it might be harder to carry on a conversation and, uh, you need more focus, The old talk test, your breath and your, your talking are changing.

Nigel Rawlins: So basically, I'm assuming what I'm hearing is that if you keep your MET level around one most of the day, you are really a couch potato and it's going to create problems for your health. So you need to vary it.

Krisna Hanks: Yes, you need to vary it and we'll talk about ways to do that, but I want to read one clip from, or one little phrase to show that exact sort of definition of physiologically what is changing and why this research also just totally ties into wanting to be and help individuals improve their metabolic health.

So this comes again from that paper from Neville Owen and all and, um, physiologically, It's been suggested that the loss of local contractile stimulation induced through sitting leads to both the suppression of skeletal muscle lipoprotein lipase, something called LPL activity, and this is necessary for the for triglyceride uptake and HDL, which is high density lipoprotein cholesterol production and reduced glucose uptake.

And that's, a bunch of sort of fancy scientific words, but what we're talking about is a compromise on our metabolic system in a nutshell. And we have five markers of metabolic health. We have waist circumference, blood pressure, blood glucose, which we just mentioned, triglycerides, which we just mentioned and HDL, which we just mentioned. So, we have our metabolic health primary markers being influenced when we're sitting for back to back hours, right? Now, I will caveat a lot of this research. At first, it was monitored through individuals, you know, sort of self recording their hours, and then they moved on to more sophisticated, where, where they could actually track them with accelerometers, so it wasn't their own reporting.

And actually, then what we saw was they were sitting even more. So, it has a real direct tie.

Nigel Rawlins: That's one of the issues I think that we're seeing with a lot of studies is self reporting is not accurate at all. It's almost made up. So you talked about the five metabolic health markers there. So sedentary behavior is actually causing trouble with all of those. So let's have a little talk about what's the benefit of metabolic health.

And because one of the issues here is, you and I, because we're older, and hopefully my audience is listening, is, is trying to look at ways they can keep their metabolic health going into their 80s and, and older, and often, like yourself and myself, to keep working. But not to age cognitively, so we can still think, we can still reflect on things, and still do our jobs, you know, and think.

So, what are the benefits of metabolic health, that you were talking about?

Krisna Hanks: Excellent question. And think that the knowledge base just exploded and expanded on metabolic health. And a lot of it really just sprung up like a rocket ship also during COVID because we saw that individuals who had poor metabolic health, who had underlying chronic conditions, were at a greater risk for, uh, catching the virus.

So that catapulted a lot to the mainstream, but we've known for years individuals who have poor metabolic health and particularly individuals who might be more, what we would call insulin resistant as opposed to insulin sensitive, um, also at a greater risk for type two diabetes, for heart health, for many of the autoimmune diseases, a host of chronic conditions, and there are a lot of not only heart surgeons, I'm working with an amazing heart surgeon, but all kinds of other doctors in various realms looking at trying to help their patients improve metabolic health in order to prevent some of these diseases, which we now kind of, sadly, are saying anybody who ages is going to automatically get ill. One of the phrases I like to utilize is don't accept that just because you age, you need or are automatically become, become ill. And one of those preventive measures is to look at your metabolic health markers, try to improve all the other lifestyle factors, not only that influence metabolic health, but just allow you to have a little more control over your health. We know sleep, managing, having good sleep hygiene, managing your stress, having good stress management practice, getting regular exercise and nutrition that does not contribute to this picture of insulin resistance or insulin sensitivity, meaning that you're really managing well, your blood glucose management, which then means you're managing your insulin. Oh, it's all definitely ties into that. And inflammation, you know, is a big word that gets used a lot, but improving your metabolic health is meaning that you're also lowering a lot of those markers that could be contributing to inflammation in the body.

Nigel Rawlins: What's interesting about this is we're becoming better educated about metabolic health and looking after ourselves, but the big issue is to actually do it, put it into practice. And you're also talking about there is measuring it. And I would suggest that that means working closely with your doctor.

What did I hear about, I don't know if it was on of your newsletters, was it? I think, um, somebody was on 15 medications. Was that your newsletter that I read then?

Krisna Hanks: It was, it was a, it was a, uh, a blog post. Yes. Yes. Yes,

Nigel Rawlins: and that was a young per well, young to us. Well,

Krisna Hanks: to us, young to us, and that sadly has been accepted that is, it is okay. Um, I do want to touch on one point that you brought up and I just want to make sure we don't miss it. You talked about cognition as we age and metabolic health is even being tied into that. Good metabolic health.

Now we even have a term, metabolic psychiatry, which is a rapidly growing field, where we have clinical psychiatrists, two of the very most prominent in that field are Dr. Christopher Palmer from Harvard University. His book is called Brain Energy. Dr. Georgia Ede, her book is, Change Your Diet, Change your mind, I believe. Sorry if I didn't say correctly, but it's a fabulous book. She's also a clinical psychiatrist, used to be at Harvard. She's now, uh, I've been working on her own. Both tie good nutrition to better brain health. Obviously, they use medications and pharmaceuticals in their practice with their patients.

However, there are patients who pharmaceuticals don't work for, and they show good promise. They're, they're utilizing the ketogenic diet to improve brain health from various, disorders from attention deficit to bipolar to depression. Again, this is not saying an either or, but that there are options.

So we see also, this is a line, I believe, Dr. Georgie Ede, you can't separate the brain from the body. They work together. And this is a great philosophy when we think about metabolic health and good metabolic health in our body. It means good metabolic health for our brain. Um, and this, I think for our age group, Nigel, us young ones, yeah, is important because who doesn't want to live independently, uh, and have their brain functioning on all cylinders.

Nigel Rawlins: The other big thing is, the older we are, as long as we've been continuing to learn and we've, we've developed a solid body of knowledge, we've still got a big contribution to make to, to help others. Um, you know, our brains are obviously going to be different, Different, say, younger person's brain, they've got a different form of intelligence, they call it fluid intelligence.

Ours is a crystallized intelligence. But it's a matter of whether we can keep recalling and keep helping. And that's what we've got to protect when we're older. That's why I love what you're talking about. So, alright, we've talked about the health risks of sedentary behavior. How much sedentary behavior is out there?

Do you think?

Krisna Hanks: That is a million dollar question, I would say. And it's not only from the research that I've cited, and I encourage everyone, and we can put some extra links in the show notes to look at this work themselves. There are many more, in fact, many people are using this saying that sitting is the new smoking, right?

I don't like to go down the fear campaign rabbit hole, but I, I think what's important to know is back to back hours are not good for anybody. So in some of the original research they had shown, particularly detrimental for people who were doing over four hours in a row. Okay. Um, we now know most people are kind of aware that's not a good number to be striving, but I like to say you know at a minimum, you're doing some kind of body change position every hour to not get yourself so absorbed in that project you're working on, uh, on your computer.

For some people, they need to set a timer, for some people, they have a thermos. So they're drinking either some coffee, some tea, some water, which automatically makes them get up to use the restroom a little bit more. That's a good thing. And what we saw again, goes back to this conversation on the MET the metabolic equivalent task.

It can be just as simple as you stand up, walk around your chair and you come back and sit. I like to tell people do, do a certain number of air squats every day when you're behind that computer. And it can be, you know, you can do even a little bit more if you want to get up and feel enthusiastic, do a couple jumping jacks or something like that.

But think of it like metabolic sparks. Like you, you changed your posture, you changed your position, you got yourself to a little bit higher MET activity level. And this seems to stimulate your metabolic processes. I've often used the analogy of if you sit back to back hours, it's almost as if your body thought you went to sleep and it doesn't need to really do anything.

And in fact, we do see people who do too many back to back hours have trouble sleeping. That it can be a sleep disrupter if we haven't had enough of these light intensity exercises. And there, people have gotten way creative, some people in call centers are using treadmill desk and various things.

But even here now, I work a lot of hours from home. I'm sitting now, but I have a standing position where I can stand up to do coaching sessions or other team calls. It's the variety that matters. And I think we need to think about this also for people who will binge watch on Netflix. I mean, how many episodes in a row are you going to watch?

It's not just when you're absorbed in doing an Excel sheet on something on your computer.

Nigel Rawlins: Well, I was just thinking it's, if you're binge watching Netflix, you're probably eating, um, foods. That, that was the point I was going to make. I remember the good old days when we only had TV. When the ads came on, we all got up to make a cup of tea or go to the toilet or something like that. We moved.

Whereas nowadays with your streaming, and I only prefer to watch streaming nowadays, so I don't watch normal TV, um, yeah, I have to force myself. And I was just going to say over the back there, that's an under desk treadmill that I bought recently. It's a only a couple hundred dollars. And that's Australian dollars too, which American dollars would be much, much cheaper.

American dollars is much, much better than Australian dollars. So about $240, you can have an under desk and you only have to move the desk up and just do it. I use it for online learning if I want to learn something. I'll walk whilst I'm watching something.

Um, so yeah, there's all sorts of ways. But the other thing about sitting too long that I noticed, your back bends. So you're starting to change your posture as well and stiffen up your body, especially around the shoulders.

Krisna Hanks: Yes, yes, there's all kinds of, uh, you know, uh, postural issues that come out of those long hours because the body becomes sort of passive, uh, we call it, you know, you get yourself into that banana position, tension in the shoulders and neck and, and the movement can actually stimulate that, also, I know that, Nigel, you work with a lot of women.

And the results from these Australian studies, but also the ongoing work in this field of looking, at breaking up our sitting time, actually the women fared worse in these studies than the men, and not to say that men should go ahead and sit for back to back hours, but this is also one of the reasons I sort of dove into this area a little bit more is, it's important to understand that also some of these issues we have to pay more attention to than the men do.

Nigel Rawlins: That was my concern. Well, I'm assuming that when women get to a certain age, they might actually retire. And if they haven't got something else to do, put it this way, I was thinking about a family member whose movement is, is being reduced more and more and is struggling to get out of chairs and stuff like that.

And so when you can't move, you're restricted to a smaller and smaller space. And at some point it means you're in a home and, and that's the biggest fear was, and, and when you're in a home, you're being cared for, and I know when my mum moved into a home, she didn't last much longer.

Krisna Hanks: Right.

Right. So that trajectory is a sad one that is very known these days. And I think something like this where we can approach it from all the fields. That's why I find working in employee wellness with the Ovidia team so fascinating is one of the things that breaking up sitting time is a really important piece that a lot of people could participate in. That's where they could start. So let's say physical activity, they have some other complications that are hindering from that. This is one area that they could start little baby steps to improve in, uh, is the little things, maybe, you know, finding some ways to move their legs underneath their chair, to move their arms, to practice in a small way, getting up slightly from your chair and getting down, even if they can't exactly get up all the way.

Getting a sturdy chair that has arms in it, where they can push down themselves. It is a piece that doesn't require all the strenuous activity, but a really good solid piece to start with. As well as trying to improve those metabolic markers.

Nigel Rawlins: I keep thinking about my mentor. Unfortunately, he had a fall in old age and that finished him off just about. But before he passed away they were trying to get him to do squats so that you could sit and get out of the seat. I mean, it's simple things like squatting, you know, it's, it's just scary how you can lose it.

All right, is this all ages that they need to start or is there differences about what you can do? Because I'm, again, if we, we think about old, say, women, what can they start doing if they've suddenly realised their body has changed and that's what happens, our bodies go a bit south when we get a bit older and we're sort of thinking, oh, I really do need to do something about this.

How can they start to get out of that active couch potato. What, what should they be doing?

Krisna Hanks: Well, if someone's actually an active couch potato, they might be already exercising, right? That's kind of the definition of it. They're doing all the other recommended exercise, but they're, they're sitting too much. But I think the general question is, what can people do? Well, we know sort of little kids, they don't stop moving.

They're pretty much going 24 sevens. We get into the teenage years, so I think. This is something that maybe parents need to, to have a look at is also how much time are their kids spending on their devices and looking at ways to help break them up. Um, there was a small study, not too long ago, it was only on 50 people that showed that even if they did one less hour of actual, uh, phone time, their devices.

In their leisure hours, they were, they showed some benefits health wise. Um, but I think any age is a good age to start looking at this right now because we all have a great portion of our lives, uh, connected or tied to technology. And I think the big takeaway of our conversation is here is yes, do all the activity that you love doing.

If you love dancing, if you love Pilates, if you love walking, hiking, if you're strength training, we talked about that last time in episode 13. I'm a big proponent of strength training for anyone over the age of 50, particularly, to keep your muscle maintenance or, to manage your muscles, and to ensure also that you're, if you do fall, you've got some good strong muscles to support you.

And, um, but I think whether you're in the 30s, 40s, 50s, understanding that too much sitting is It's not the same as too little exercise because I, I do see, and I work with many young people, I do see young people who do lots of wonderful physical activity, but they will sit for hours behind their laptop, texting, you know, Instagram, TikTok, watching video after video.

I think it's important for them. Obviously, We have more, let's say, to worry metabolically. They, they have their youth to sort of help them carry them on for a while, but at a certain point that youth won't be, um, you know, carrying them as they go through the various hormonal changes. Not only from this research, but just in my own work, I think anyone above the age of 50 should take breaking up their sitting time very seriously.

Nigel Rawlins: The other thing in there too, with the strength training, one of the problems about being older is that we don't even use the protein properly. That younger people can, because they can eat some protein and their body uses it. Whereas when we're older, we need so much more for it to actually, be used.

Krisna Hanks: Very good point. Sadly, as we age, we're not as efficient as processing that protein and like getting your protein. That's one of the things we work on with the Ovidia team and also my husband and I and our process is really helping people get to get a good protein target.

We use the words prioritize protein, uh, at every meal. It doesn't matter how many meals, some people do two meal a day. Some people even work well with one meal a day, or even if you're three meal a day, but really making sure that your protein target is spot on.

Nigel Rawlins: It definitely helps with muscle. I know at my age, I've been doing strength training now for five years, so I've actually got some muscle definition, but I think all the strength training I'm doing at my age is just maintaining what I've got. I don't think it's able to grow much more.

So, because I think the deterioration as we get older is quite significant. So, um, you know, I'm fighting just to keep up with keeping what I've got. But, if I hadn't have done five years, I don't think I'd be as well defined as I am, you could say that. Um, I just noticed with younger people, their skin's a lot more elastic than ours and looks a bit better.

Krisna Hanks: But they, they have a little more help from the growth hormone that we don't have so much assistance from that as we age, but you know, as I like to say, we've got two levers. In that muscle maintenance, category to pull you can pull the protein one. I'm a big proponent of animal foods is a big source of protein power because of the good bioavailability of it.

You've got another lever and that's your strength training. You want to try to be making sure as we age that you're pulling both of those levers.

Nigel Rawlins: So let's talk a little bit about how you help companies. So obviously that's, that's where the aim is now to get into the companies where people have got sedentary behavior. So what does a, a program look like if you're going into a company to help them?

Krisna Hanks: Great question. So, I'll just utilize an example of working currently with a manufacturing company. Manufacturing company has multiple shifts. They're actually working pretty much 24 seven, but you have three distinct shifts. And our focus with Ovidia Heart Health is metabolic health. We have oversight, unique oversight with having a heart surgeon looking over our content and our problems. Our major focus is having that, that interaction. So we're on site. We're going to the factory six times in the year. We do education, we do empowerment, we do some one on one coaching for specific things. We help lay this foundation of understanding what metabolic health is. It's understanding the lifestyle pieces that contribute to good metabolic health.

They do some initial lab work, those labs are then reviewed by our medical team. And then we do lab work at the end of the program so that they can have a comparison to look what doing some lifestyle changes might offer them. It's very much bringing this. to them. A lot of worksite wellness in the past has been disease management focused.

And I don't know if that term is utilized in your country or not, but disease management basically means we work with you only when you're sick. For example, in years past in a worksite wellness program, if you wanted to participate in the nutrition program, you needed to be diabetic. You couldn't take the nutrition program unless you had some sort of disease. Our focus is to flip that around, away from disease management towards building a foundation for good metabolic health.

Nigel Rawlins: And long term health from the sound of it. So that's a fairly enlightened employer to, to want to look after their employees like that. So, and that sounds like a significant investment, especially with blood tests. Um, I'd say the interesting thing there is if you've never had those blood tests before, and they give you some indicators, it's a jolt to do something about it, but you're there also to explain, well, you know, here you are now, this is where you've got to get to.

That that's very, very supportive. I'd say one of the issues too, where people are working three shifts, that can really muck up their metabolism too, if you're stuck on the night shift.

Krisna Hanks: Yes, there are strategies we need to do to work with individuals to help them boost their circadian rhythm. Sleep hygiene in that way. And that's why it's always that whole package, uh, of all these pieces. It's not just your lab results, but it's the work you have on how can you improve some of these other factors where you might have another barrier that you just you can't change.

Many of them love their jobs, but yeah, the, the cycle and the time is more of a challenge. And you're absolutely a hundred percent right. The employer is very enlightened, the CEO. Um, and this is what it's going to take. And in America, the employers are often covering the costs of the healthcare. And this is a different approach.

Can we improve our health care, and our health and wellbeing of our employees, not wait until they get sick. And this is a definite different philosophy. Not every employer is enlightened like that. Thank goodness there are some, and hopefully there are more growing. And, this is a chance to have a larger scope and broaden the knowledge base of all kinds of people about the benefits of metabolic health.

Nigel Rawlins: The last thing I want to do is end up in a hospital from something that I could have, um, prevented, you know, over the years. Uh, we're very lucky in Australia, we do have public health, so if we have an accident, we're straight into hospital and there is no cost. Which is fantastic, where you hear some horror stories about the costs of medical treatment in America, and we can't understand it in Australia, that you don't have a good public health system.

Krisna Hanks: And it's, it's very interesting also to think about health, right? You help a lot of entrepreneurs, Nigel. You're, you're working with people, various levels. Some are employed, some are self employed. And when we think about our health, right? Back to the old thing, you can't separate the body from the brain.

It's also about performance. And we, not only as aging creatures, right? But if we're not well, and if we're not well metabolically, it's hard to perform well. And this is also something that's been known in the workforce. You know, you want to, you do executive coaching, you want your team to have high level performance skills and communication and negotiation and sales and everything.

It's really hard to do any of those things, if your physical body and your mental body aren't well, and that's where I think the exciting point and the exciting place to be in employee wellness is that point right there. What are we doing to improve and put the performance of ourselves as the leadership team or CEO or anyone else, but also our employees to take it to another level.

Nigel Rawlins: Which is what the knowledge economy is all about. Having a high level cognitive ability is definitely a competitive advantage. So anyone who's working in that sort of area really does need to keep their brain really on the ball, and that means your body. Is there anything else that

Krisna Hanks: First I want to say thank you again for the opportunity to talk with you. I always love sharing ideas and I think I encourage everyone to do their research in terms of metabolic health. We spend a lot of time at work and those hours should also be supporting our health choices. To open up that conversation about metabolic health. But on our topic today, also talking about ways that you can break up your sitting time. Um, there's substantial research out there to show that people who take many breaks are higher performers as opposed to those people who, you know, in this research, you classify them as prolongers, those who sits for hours or breakers.

And we all know that if we're working on a project, we step outside, get a little bit of fresh air. We come back. Suddenly it seems to click for us to encourage others to support these practices.

Nigel Rawlins: Well that is brilliant. Okay, there is the whitepaper that can be downloaded, but how would you like people to connect with you, Krisna?

Krisna Hanks: So absolutely. Certainly the white paper can be downloaded for free. That's at the Ovadia Heart Health. com slash wellness page. And we can put that in the links. And in that paper, I also cite a lot of the research we talked about today. My website with my husband, Robert is square one, the number one wellness com. I'm on LinkedIn just by my name. I'm on Twitter at square one wellness and Instagram, the same square one wellness. So, I'm out there.

Nigel Rawlins: You're definitely out there. I see you on Twitter a lot. Alright, thank you very much, Krisna, for joining me.

Krisna Hanks: Thank you again. It's an honor to be a repeating customer here and keep doing the fabulous work that you're doing for all those women, but men as well in the working space.