Healthspan and Lifespan

In this episode of the Catapult Effect podcast, host Katie Wrigley discusses the critical concepts of healthspan and lifespan, emphasizing the importance of quality of life over mere longevity. She shares her personal journey of improving her health and well-being, highlighting the significance of brain health, diet, movement, and stress management. Katie encourages listeners to take actionable steps towards enhancing their healthspan by focusing on one area at a time, fostering mindfulness, and engaging in social activities. The episode serves as a motivational guide for anyone looking to improve their overall quality of life.

Takeaways

• Healthspan is about the quality of life, not just longevity.
• Suffering differentiates healthspan from lifespan.
• Improving healthspan is possible through conscious effort.
• Brain health, diet, and movement are interconnected.
• Exercise is essential for enhancing healthspan.
• Start small when incorporating movement into your routine.
• Reflecting on past achievements boosts confidence.
• Choose one area to focus on for improvement.

Resources:
The Heroic App - try 30 days for free (hint: start with Basic Training!)
katiewrigley.com

Credit: Tom Giovingo, Intro & Outro, Random Voice Guy, Professional ‘Cat‘ Herder

Mixed & Managed: JohnRavenscraft.com

Disclaimer: Katie is not a medical professional and she is not qualified to diagnose any conditions. The advice and information she gives is based on her own experience and research. It does not take the place of medical advice. Always consult a medical professional first before you try anything new.

Transcript

Katie Wrigley (00:00.844)
Welcome back to the CatapultaPet podcast. I am your host, Katie Wrigley. And I think I already mixed up those words starting out the entry. I'm gonna start that again. Because I can get rid of that.

Welcome back to the Catapult Effect podcast. I am your host, Katie Wrigley. I wanted to share with you in a quick solo episode about a new concept that I have been noodling since I was introduced to it through the Heroic app over the weekend. And that is the concept of healthspan and lifespan. So just a quick note on Heroic, and I'm going to put a link to it in the notes because this app has been absolutely life -changing. I started using it at the beginning of the year.

And impactful is an understatement. All of the science that they put in behind the app, all of it is true in my experience, and then some. So I am going to make sure that that link is in the show notes. And Brian Johnson, the CEO of Heroic, is an incredible human being. And his whole mission of the company is for 51 % of the world to be flourishing by the year 2051, which is a tall order to ask. We've got a big gap to fill there.

And it's a beautiful mission that I'm 100 % part of. My own vision in my company is to create a human experience without suffering. And suffering is exactly the difference between health span and lifespan. And that was the concept that Brian was talking about this weekend, and I really, really grabbed onto this. And I want to just focus, there is a long list actually if you Google it, or if you look it up on chat GBT, which is what I did.

but I wanted to just focus on a subset, just three parts of the list so I'm not overwhelming you. So the thing to think about, your lifespan is your quantity of life. It's however long you're gonna be on this earth, whole lot of factors go into that. Your health span is your quality of life. The time that you spend within your lifespan where you do not have chronic disease, you do not have chronic pain, and you have a high quality of life.

Katie Wrigley (02:11.66)
The traditional diet and medical model doesn't really support a health span that will go the length of a lifespan. That's why we see a lot more people moving into alternative methods. There is a lot that you can do to improve and increase your health span. And I'm proof of that. And so are so many other people. I've already had a decade or more where my health span, I don't know if we'd say it wasn't there.

but it wasn't doing so great. And I had a lot of fear of what life was gonna look like later down the road because my pain levels were so high, there was no way that the state that I was gonna be in was gonna scale for another 20 to 30 years. And it was terrifying. Like I remember so many times sitting on my couch in Colorado and just kind of staring at the wall in front of me zoning out from the TV and just thinking.

things have got to get better because if they don't, this is not going to scale until I'm 70. I think I was 40. I was 43 at the time as I was thinking that. And now I'm almost 50 and I feel better than I ever had in my life. I feel better than I did before I turned 40. And so that's proof of just how resilient we are as human beings. Now, I don't know yet what other damage I may wind up seeing from all my years of abuse and neglect of my own body.

As I've talked about in other episodes, I engaged in a lot of addictions that were not healthy, including recreational drugs, bins drinking. Luckily, I got out of the promiscuity unharmed. But there things that I wasn't proud of that did a lot of damage to my physical body and to my organs. And I ate a hell of a lot of sugar, which is one of the worst, most toxic substances that you can put in your body. More on that in a minute. So I don't know.

if I have been able to balance all those. What I do know is I have put in a Herculean effort into reversing the damage that I've done to myself. And I also know, because of everything we're going to talk about today, that the best way that I can ensure that I improve and increase my health span is by continuing to do the work that I'm doing now. So I wanted to just take a subset of all the things that you can, you can go Google health span versus lifespan, or how can I create

Katie Wrigley (04:33.834)
a better health span for myself. And you're going to get a lot of the same answers that I did, whether you use chat, GBT or Google. I encourage you to dig in and go to the longer list if you want to. I had initially started this episode and started to read the list and I was overwhelming myself. So I figured and I already do all those things and I was still overwhelming myself. And so I figured if you, my cherished listener, is just now embarking on a wellness path, I don't want to overwhelm you.

So we're gonna stick to three of the areas that you've probably heard me talk about before. And that is brain health, diet and movement, they go hand in hand, and also stress management. These are three of the most important pieces I think. And a lot of the other pieces on the list, if you do Google health span versus lifespan and how you can improve your health span, a lot of the other things on that list can be taken care of by a subset of these areas, the brain health.

diet and exercise and stress management. So brain health.

Cognitive movement obviously fits in here. But for those of you who don't do cognitive movement, there are still plenty of things that you can do to help improve and increase your brain health. Having a desire to learn, being in constant learning is a great way to positively stimulate your brain and not all on your mobile device. See if you can find some learning that is in the brick and mortar world.

is in books that you can actually hold in your hands and they're not on electronic devices. The electronic device is gonna stimulate your brain in ways that you may not like. It's not the healthiest brain stimulation, but learning new information that creates new neural pathways in the brain, that is going to help increase your brain health. The other thing that you can continue to do for brain health and for your health span is making sure that you have an active social life.

Katie Wrigley (06:30.08)
or some components within social lives. Brene Brown has done a lot of research around the impact and the danger of loneliness. And it's alarming. I'm not gonna go into that in here, but again, I encourage you to do more research on your own if you'd like to. I wanna stay focused on the healthspan topic. Socializing is a great way to stimulate your brain. And I don't mean socializing with everybody with a mobile device in their hand. Science shows that even when a device is out, even if it's powered off,

and it's upside down, it is still gonna grab people's attention in the room. So put those devices where no one can see them, engage in eye to eye contact with people in the brick and mortar world and see what happens to your mood, to your overall brain health as you allow more social activities. It can be...

Really really good to be around like -minded people I just spent a week in California with my cognitive movement family and all the amazing people who showed up for cognitive conscious and witnessed profound changes and that community and being able to be face to face even though I had some distractions and Wasn't as present as I had meant to be I'm gonna own that I was still very very present and I got so much out of it I was able to connect

so much more deeply and it left me feeling really good. And so I encourage you to do the same and connect with people you can in your social life as well. And the other piece that you can do for brain health as well is starting to get more mindful. And there's a lot of different ways that you can do this, but I'm gonna use an example that's actually gonna segue into the stress management piece. So one of the ways that you can start to get more mindful.

One of the things that tends to happen because our nervous systems are focused on the negative, not the positive, which means the information we're more likely to remember is the negative, not the positive, which also gives your monkey mind a chance to glom on to that negative information and go to town with it. And if you find yourself, let me rephrase that, when you find yourself with your mind spinning down that road, beating yourself up with all the shoulda, woulda, coulda's that you quote unquote were supposed to have done,

Katie Wrigley (08:43.638)
I want you to pause right there and ask yourself, does this hurt me or help me? Chances aren't hurt you. So, okay, what is a thought that helps me? So let's say, just take an example I gave. I can look back at all the abuse I did to my body and I can easily start spiraling on that. Does that hurt me or help me? Hurts me, right? Yes. What helps me is focusing on what I can do.

which is the routine that I have in place, have had in place for 258 days now, maybe 259, for quite a while, and sticking to that routine because I know it helps me feel better and I know that it is actually reversing a lot of the damage I did to myself. Focusing on the solution versus the problem is gonna be good for my brain and it's also gonna be good for stress management.

So this is where I want to pivot into the stress management piece. That is this thought hurting me or helping me. That is one of the greatest ways to start to bring mindfulness into your life. And it is also a great way to start to shift out of your stress. A couple other exercises that you can do to really help with stress and boost your confidence. Go back to all the challenges you've already overcome. When you feel like you can't do something or you're not going to go over this challenge.

Sit down, list out 10 things, write them out with your hand, pen and paper. Write out 10 things that you have done that you didn't think were possible. So just to share a couple from my list, I had put myself into major debt multiple times and I got myself out of debt multiple times.

I helped my drop zone become the first drops in the United States to get a little boy to legally skydive, keyword legally, without the Make -A -Wish Foundation. That was in 2012, one of the biggest accomplishments to this day. Another big accomplishment, and this is the one I go to whenever I think I can't do something and that monkey mind is trying to keep me in the thoughts that hurt, I went from disabled to half marathon in six friggin' years.

Katie Wrigley (11:01.016)
That's pretty cool.

Could I have done more? Probably. Could I have done less? hell yeah. And I did the best job that I could. And I'm really proud of the progress that I've made. Again, I can sit there and beat myself up or I can go, hey, I actually did something really cool and I'm continuing this journey and this feels awesome. You have the same choices. I'm not trying to make this about me. I'm trying to hope that you see yourself in these stories. So I want you to pause this podcast right now, write down 10 things

that you are proud of, that you did, that you didn't think you would do. Pause it now. Okay, did you get your 10 things? Good. If you didn't, pause it. Well, if you're driving, then obviously wait until you stop driving. But if it is safe, then please pause or loop back after this podcast and go through this exercise. You will not be sorry. That is one of the best things that you can do to help start to shift your stress. That and is this thought hurting me or helping me?

And you also want to kind of normalize it. And those pieces, the looking at everything you've already done, you're going to show your brain, hey, I didn't think I was going be able to do these, and I did them. And that's going to help boost your confidence and help see that you don't actually have to stress that much. The other thing that you can look at is, you know, financial stress is something that's been big with a lot of people. And look over the course of your life. Have you had financial stress before? Yes or no?

Probably yes. And even if things weren't perfect, did you always figure it out some way somehow? The answer is probably yes again. And go back to that. And then so how likely is it that you're gonna figure it out again? It's pretty dang likely. If you've done it before, you're gonna be able to do it again. So start to show your brain some.

Katie Wrigley (13:00.948)
of the proof you already have about what a badass you are and how epically you can manage your life so you don't need the stress. And as someone who had a very long running stress pattern because for some reason that was what felt safe for me until I started doing this work and so I'm still undoing it in full disclosure. Am I still stressed? yeah. But am I as stressed as I used to be? No. Nowhere near.

just a fraction of how stressed I used to be. And my stats show that. Both my blood work, my biometric stats, and my aura ring, everything shows a massive improvement in health from the reduction of stress that I have been able to do. And you will see the same in your life too. I have seen people that I know in my life who have had cancer start to come back again. A cancer that, by the way, was supposed to kill them. So they had already beaten the odds.

and they were still in a stressful career. And the doctor pretty much told them, if you want cancer again, you can keep working. But if you would like to remain cancer -free, now's probably a good time to retire. And she retired. Health went way up. She found things that she loves doing. She has fulfillment in her life. And she is no longer in danger of getting cancer again or having it come back. And that was just from a shift in stress.

This also leads me to the next piece. Another great way to manage stress is exercise. And this also ties directly back in to the health span again. So there is a lot of different types of movement. There's doing weights, there's yoga, there's Pilates, there's orange theory, there's CrossFit, there's everything that you can imagine is out there to do. Water sports, snow sports, there's something for every season, every climate, indoor, outdoor.

You may not be in a position to really be super active, but I still challenge you to see how you can move your body. Even if you are in a wheelchair, how can you move your body today that's beneficial? Even if you can't walk, there are ways that you can still move and give yourself some exercise, get that pulse going.

Katie Wrigley (15:19.364)
get that cardiovascular system working and giving it little bit of positive stress so that it grows and feels better and is stronger for you, there is still something you can do. So I do want to challenge those of you who are not very mobile to look and see what exercise is available to you. Reach out to your physical therapist, to anybody else that you're working with and ask them for guidance. You want to move. It is going to help your health span. Now for those of you

who don't have an excuse other than I don't have time. I wanna challenge you on the time thing. And actually, we can go over your schedule together and I bet if we do, we can find some time where you can sneak in some exercise. It doesn't have to be an hour or two hour block. You can sneak in 10, 15 minutes here, 20, 30 minutes there, maybe if you have that block. If you don't have more than 10 or 15 minutes, find a few 10 to 15 minute blocks during the day.

You want to also have a mix. So one of the things that they recommended, again, this came out of the Heroic app, was you want to have three to four hours worth of zone two, which is really like low pressure cardio. I think it's right below the fat burning zone. I may be wrong on that, or maybe the bottom of the fat burning zone. There's all sorts of ways to figure that out. That's not my wheelhouse, and I don't want to muck up the water. But figure out what your zone two is. I believe it's like age

Might eat that.

Yeah, I don't remember what it is. So I'm not even going to try. If you go back to the episode I had with Casey Ruff around diet, he actually talks about how to figure out what your zones are and what your optimal heart rate is. But you want to have three to four hours in that low aerobic intensity zone per week, which you can get just by walking. And it doesn't have to be a fast walk. You can actually take just a moderate pace walk or even like.

Katie Wrigley (17:15.324)
slower paced walk and still get that benefit for yourself in the system. You also want to be doing some high intensity interval training to get up actually into your your max zone, your anaerobic zone. I'm not sure what the guidelines are on that. I do know there's three to four hours of the regular exercise and really the more you can move the better. You also want to be building in some resistance, some strength training, and some

resistance in there for your bone health too. And you want to be doing that resistance strengthening three times a week. So I apologize, I'm not sure about the high interval training, but as far as the strength training and resistance, you want to do that three days a week. And you want to make sure you're getting three to four hours over the course of the week of zone two cardio. That's going to be some of the best things that you can do. They're also going to help brain health. It's also going to help with stress management. It's going to improve.

your health span and it's also going to make you want to be more social too. So it gets so many benefits and one of the things that can happen when you're in pain is that you get afraid that the pain is going to come back and honestly the fear around pain coming back that can last a lot longer than the pain itself and that was definitely the case with me. Find someone who can help guide you through that pain. Find an expert not through pain through the fear.

find an expert who can help guide you through that fear so that you can get back into the exercise that you wanna do. All right, so in review, I want you to take one of these three areas, please, as your follow -up from this episode, because podcasts are great, but unless you're putting action and integrating it into your life, it's just useful information that just sits there and no one does anything with it, so.

Out of the three things, brain health, movement and diet, or stress management, I want you to pick one area that you're gonna start to work on. Either it's increasing your mindfulness and finding when is this thought hurting me versus when is this thought helping me. Your stress management piece, whatever it is in there that works for you, I want you to start with one of those this week. If you've been thinking that maybe you wanna start moving, start small. That's the other note I wanna make sure I mention.

Katie Wrigley (19:36.48)
If you haven't been moving at all, please don't go directly to three hours of exercise a week. That may be a little bit too much for your body, depending on where you are. But you wanna get there as the goal. So if you haven't been exercising, give yourself time to ramp up to those levels and you will benefit from it. I believe that is all I wanted to do. So again, one last review. Choose brain health, movement and diet or stress management.

Start to practice one piece even if you just take the this thought hurts me Okay, and this one helps me and you go in to help me thought that's a win Thank you guys so much for joining me I have a bunch of amazing guests that are going to be coming up over the next several weeks and please stay tuned because I'm actually going to be cake creating a free masterclass For all of you, and I am hoping that you're going to be checking it out I'm gonna be attaching it to this podcast over the next few episodes

So please come back again next week and join me. And until then, be well. Thank you so much for your time.