Sitting Kills, Moving Heals:

An Interview with Dr. Joan Vernikos

By Dr. Joseph Mercola

DM: Dr. Joseph Mercola

JV: Dr. Joan Vernikos

Introduction:

DM: Welcome, everyone. This is Dr. Mercola, and we’re here today with Dr. Joan Vernikos,

who is the former director of Life Sciences at NASA for many years. She was responsible for

monitoring the health of the astronauts as they went into space and finding out what were the

damages that were occurring and what can be done to counter them.

I’m just beyond excited to have Dr. Vernikos with us today for a number of reasons. This is

going to be a little bit longer introduction because I would like to set the proper framework.

Many of you may not know that actually, one of my initial life ambitions was to be an astronaut

even up until college when I shifted to pre-med. I’m glad I didn’t, because I think there are too

many dangers in going up in space. But it was definitely an initial ambition of mine.

But then my new passion is exercise and health. I’m so excited because what we’ve been seeing

in the literature recently within the last year or two is that if you are very, very fit – exercise two,

three, four, or five times a week for a half hour to an hour of time, just exceptionally fit… But if

you sit all the time or a great percentage of the time, there is some research that shows that

you’re going to increase your risk of dying prematurely.

What Dr. Vernikos has done with her research with the astronauts has really kind of understood

why this is so and, even more importantly, provided us with a simple regimen that could

counteract those side effects.

I can’t thank you enough for joining us. As I said, I’m beyond excited to have you, because I

think you’ve really been instrumental in helping us understand a crucial aspect of living that can

really improve our life. And it does really cost hardly anything to do. So, welcome and thank you

for joining us.

JV: Thank you very much for having me and giving me this opportunity to explain to people, to

as many people as possible, how they can live a healthy life without really doing too much.

DM: Yes, indeed. Maybe you can probably provide us with a framework of how you first started

with NASA, some of your research, and how you uncovered this discovery.

JV: I started out… I was hired by NASA in the early days because of my stress research. After

all, the concept was that if you take a human and stick them on top of a rocket, they probably

would be stressed. And so I was hired, one of very few actually. Much to my amazement, in the

early days of Gemini and even Mercury, the measurement of stress hormones were really very

low during the flight. They were high before and high after they landed. But during the flight,

they were low. I scratched my head and thought, “Well, here goes a great career opportunity.”

In that event, I could explain it on the fact that these people selected from fighter pilots and test

pilots, they had seen action, and this was fun. Being in space was a fun experience. It wasn’t as

stressful compared to what the other things they have done that we would think of. Again, the

perception of what stress is comes into this.

But from that, we went to actually observing – because most of the work that was done in the

early days were observations – changes that happened as a result of being shot up into Earth

orbit, which is not totally weightlessness, but is microgravity. It’s a considerably reduced level of

gravity. That’s what I studied. And then we had ground models, simulation models (because we

didn’t have enough astronauts to study), or had people lie in bed continuously.

The Russians had come up with this notion that if you lie in bed continuously, it induces effects

similar to those we see in astronauts in space. That is because normally, gravity pulls in the head

to toe direction, whereas when you’re lying down it only pulls across the chest. Also, the concept

of inactivity came into it. That if you don’t have gravity, as you don’t in space mostly, then you

have a kind of inactivity, because exercise is not efficient. It’s not effective or as effective.

I then incorporated into my research at the Ames Research Center in California the model of

having people lie in bed and specifically the model of what we call head-down bed rest, which is

raising the foot of the bed by about 15 inches, minus six degrees head down.

This model came about again from the Russians. Because when their cosmonauts returned from

flight, they complained that as much as they really want to get a good night’s sleep, they could

not fall asleep because they felt as if they were sliding off the foot of the bed. They’ve also

figured that if they raise the foot of the bed by about 15 inches with [inaudible 05:57] foam

works, which are nice and thick, it felt horizontal. The scientists took a cue from that and said,

“Okay, maybe head-down feels closer to what it feels like in space than lying horizontal.”

I imported this model to our research center in California, where we had the first human research

facility. That’s what I did for most of my ground research to support the changes that we see in

astronauts in space and how to overcome them or prevent them.

DM: Well, let me mention a point that I got from reading your book about sitting. I’m a huge fan

of the exponential growth of technology and all the advances that it provides to us. But it seems

that it’s really moving in some direction that we’re becoming less and less active, because

everything becomes more efficient. We don’t have to wash our clothes by hand; we have

washing machines. We drive everywhere; we’re not walking. We have a lawn mower service or

lawn mowers.

Our ability to move about regularly and do these chores is just decreasing dramatically with time.

As a result, it’s exposing us to this inactivity level. That sort of sets the stage. Within the last 10

or 20 years, we’ve had this progressively decrease in normal motions and activity – walking,

sitting, and standing – that really has led to the point where the vast majority of people in this

country is suffering with back pain and decreased mobility and flexibility.

So, if you can sort of expand on the story as to how you made the connections. You already

mentioned that lying down or sitting down is pretty similar to microgravity that the astronauts

experienced in space. What was the next step that you found?

JV: The next step was that in these volunteers that I recruited for the clinical studies who

showed the same changes the astronauts showed – muscle wasting, loss in bone density, and

changes in the cardiovascular regulation – that when they stood up after standing up or after

coming back from space, they have the tendency to faint. Their sleep wasn’t quite what they’d

like it to be and so on. When they came back from space or when they stood up off the bed, they

recovered.

During Skylab, which was the longest mission we had in the early ‘70s, many medical observers

commented that astronauts were growing old in space. Of course, the astronauts didn’t like that. I

mean, here’s the right stuff and some doc is saying you’re growing old doing what you love. It

was just not very popular in the NASA environment. But these changes were happening and

were very similar to what was happening in bed, in space, and in aging.

I came up in 1986 with a little pamphlet, basically calling it Parallel Processes, because I could

not claim that this was aging. Because after all, we presume we don’t recover from aging. So, I

called it Parallel Processes and made the comparison between space and aging.

Then we wrote a book with my colleague Harold Sandler, who’s a cardiologist. We edited, in

fact, the book and wrote part of it, Inactivity: Physiological Effects, which is the first book on

inactivity, I think, that was around. We used our research to develop that.

[-----10:00-----]

But still, it was only parallel observations; it was not a cause and effect. Until one day while I

was doing one of those bed-rest studies. I was helping a friend out whose parents had come from

Greece and spoke no English. The lady had fallen and broken her hip, had it fixed and replaced.

But she refused to stand up and get out of bed. She eventually ended up in a nursing home in

California.

I decided to help her out and go and visit her because I could communicate with her. I could also

communicate with the nurses and the staff who were taking care of her, because there was no

communication there. She was in bed. She wasn’t getting out of bed. She wasn’t doing anything,

and things were not looking good.

What struck me at the nursing home was that many of the observations… Many of the things I

saw in these older people at the home were very similar to what I could see in my subjects who

have been lying in bed for seven days. And we’re not talking huge number of days; seven days

was the first studies that I was doing. Especially when they got out of bed, when balance and

coordination is affected, and they would pass out when standing up. They shuffled. Their feet

, in fact… They walk on the top of their foot and slide it down. They don’t step, pick up their

foot, and place it down.

I thought, well, this is very strange. These people who are in bed or the astronauts recover. But

here are these people in the nursing home who are showing exactly the same changes. Maybe

one should turn the question around. Maybe it’s not what causes the changes in them. Is it or

isn’t it aging? But maybe it is the conditions that they find themselves in – the inactivity or the

relative inactivity in space that induces these changes rather than the number of years one has.

When I started asking that question, then some of the research began to make sense.

Of course, we now know that with six months in space, the changes in bone and muscle that

occur here on Earth – like one percent loss of bone or one percent loss of muscle – over a year

happen in a month or even a week in space. You get almost a 10-fold acceleration of what now is

quite openly called the aging process.

DM: Okay, and then you continued the research further, I think, with one of the older astronauts

or actually one of the first ones. The very first one with a sub-orbital flight was Alan Shepard.

But then the first orbital flight was John Glenn, of course.

JV: Yes.

DM: And then he eventually progressed to become a U.S. senator. At the age of 77, he went

back up in space. And then you took the opportunity to do some experiments to validate your

theory of aging in the microgravity of space. Maybe you can expand on that.

JV: That’s a great story. He, of course, was a senator. He wanted to fly again, because when he

flew his first orbital flight, President Kennedy refused to allow him to fly again. He really

wanted to go to the moon. But President Kennedy decided it was not politically savvy to let him

fly. Because if anything happened to him, here was a national hero ended, and it would backfire

politically. So, John Glenn never flew again. And he always had that yearning.

When he saw my pamphlet… I remember walking by the Public Affairs Office and seeing the

Senator on the floor of the Senate waving my pamphlet around. I was amazed at what all this

was about. Well, he happened to be chair of the Committee on Aging at the time. It occurred to

him, as he was listening to all these testimonies, that what he heard was very much like what he

had experienced and what he knew his colleagues were experiencing as they flew. So, he got

very excited.

One day in 1997, he walked into my office. He had done some fantastic research himself, not his

staffers. He himself had done the research comparing the aerospace medicine textbook with the

PDR on the effects of aging and drew the comparisons between the two. He said, “Well, I think

if I flew again, it could provide information that could help everyone as we age.” Being a

scientist, I thought, well, that’s wonderful. But flying one person isn’t going to do it. We’re

going to have to fly a number of these older astronauts.

And I was quite concerned, because there was no president.

The oldest one who had flown then was Story Musgrave, and he was 50. And then after that,

Shannon Lucid, she was 52 and post-menopausal. But no one at 77. Mind you, he was a very fit

77. He took care of himself. He power-walked two miles a day. He did three times a day some

weight training. But still, there was a big risk.

My administrator came to me and said, “Well, Joan, if you can assure me that Senator Glenn will

be all right and nothing will happen to him in this flight, then I will approve his mission.” And I

thought, “Wow, this is quite a bit of responsibility.”

I went to my colleagues at the National Institute on Aging – to Richard Hodes who’s still

director there – and said, “Look, this is the situation. Let’s help me find out what the

conventional wisdom is or the medical wisdom is about allowing a 77-year-old to go back into

space.” We gathered some people around, some of the experts.

The conclusion was that it could be very useful. However, you needed more than one. We went

back and forth and thought, “Well, we got to start somewhere.” There are other astronauts who

are getting up to that age. So, we recommended jointly between the National Institute on Aging

and ourselves that John Glenn should fly.

I was concerned not because of what might happen to him during the nine days of flight, but

what might happen to him in terms of recovery. Because it was my observation that as people

age, they can do almost anything if they’re reasonably fit. But they need more time to recover

between exposures.

That’s how John Glenn came to fly. There was a lot of resistance among the astronaut core

because he was displacing the regular astronauts.

He had to do a lot of work. His regimen, his physical regimen was no different. But he was still

in the Senate while he was preparing. He would fly back and forth with these CDs of training of

what he would have to do every single minute (because that’s how shuttle flights were

orchestrated), what these astronauts have to do every single minute, who does what, participate

in the research experiments that whoever he displaced would have had to do, provide the samples

and monitoring to doctor onboard, and just generally learn all about the shuttle, which wasn’t

like his own spacecraft when he orbited the Earth.

It was a whole different kind of technology that he had to learn. He was fantastic. He participated

in all the ground tests and all of that. And then the flight happened. Everyone observed it.

President Clinton took credit. The administrator took credit. It was just fantastic. There’s press,

of course. [There’s] huge resurgence of interest in what NASA did, because, you know, it was a

very important person taking the chance.

We then had a presentation of the results at the NIH one evening, a full auditorium. We did…

All the results were double-blind. I didn’t know what the results were. Others didn’t know. They

knew what we knew. What they showed on the slide was out of the six people who flew, one was

an outlier. So, we all thought to ourselves, “Oh, dear, they’re his. He’s an outlier.” He’s older,

that’s why.

[----- 20:00 -----]

DM: These were the six people that were on the flight?

JV: These were the six people that were on the flight. Their average ages were between 35 and

45 and then one of 77. We thought, “Oh, dear me. There we go. This confirms that if you’re

older, you will react too differently.” When the identity of the astronauts in those data points was

revealed, he was not the outlier; a 35-year-old was. He was smacked in the middle of the cluster

of the other astronauts.

That was fantastic. Because it suggested that if you take care of yourself and if you are healthy…

The two miles of power-walking a day, it was not excessive. It was thorough, but it was not

excessive in maintaining his fitness. If you take care of yourself, you can do anything. Now,

again, I was worried about recovery. But he recovered just as fast as anyone else.

DM: So, you found no difference on the aging process and the recovery from microgravity in

space?

JV: Absolutely.

DM: And no one knew that before?

JV: No one knew. No one would have guessed it. No one would have bet on it.

DM: That’s a profound observation that you’ve uncovered. Can you give your estimation or

recommendation on what that means to us living here on Earth all the time?

JV: What it means is that the changes that accompany aging are the result – to me, at least that’s

what it means – of our lifestyle rather than numerological or physiological age as we have known

it, and that we can do something about it. We can correct it. We can prevent it. We certainly can

delay it, and maybe even prevent it.

As a result of Glenn’s flight, I did a lot of public speaking. What amazed me at the end of my

talks was that people would come up to me and say, “Where can I read more about it?” My jaw

would drop because there was a textbook, but nothing for the public that they could understand. I

thought, “Well, this is ridiculous. The next time I go on a talk, I want to have some notes with

me, or something I can hand out.”

I started collecting these notes to hand out. It soon became a book. It took four years. I decided

to leave NASA and really devote myself to communicating what we had found, what we were

finding, and what we were doing with their taxpayers’ money, my taxpayer’s money, and your

taxpayer’s money in terms of knowledge and advancements.

What became abundantly clear to me very quickly was that gravity plays a big role in our

physiological function and in the aging process.

Now, I came at it completely from the gravity perspective. I see now folks writing articles and

exercise physiologists. I really have to smile because they’re excellent in their work, but they

hung up on the once-a-day intensive exercise routine.

DM: Yes.

JV: I explained to them that astronauts exercise a lot in space. In fact, nobody has flown in space

without exercise. Even from the very early age, they had the [inaudible 24:29] they called it,

which was bands, you know, various stretch bands. They could hardly move in the Mercury and

the Gemini spacecraft. Nevertheless, they did something. They did not just sit there.

So, we don’t know what would happen to the body if we told them, “Don’t exercise.” First of all,

they wouldn’t do it. But we just don’t know. We know that if we send rats up there, they won’t

exercise. But all we know is that it accelerates the changes we are seeing over time in spite of the

exercise.

The Russians have been exercising up to four hours a day. But you see what happens… And it

has only occurred to me recently when we’re trying to think about exploration to Mars, for

instance, and all these grand schemes various people have and want to go to. Sometimes they

only want to go one way to which, you know, is a different issue.

DM: Yeah, there are 80,000 people who volunteered for a one-way trip.

JV: I know. I’m being aghast about this sort of thing. But what happens and what hasn’t

occurred to people is that when you’re on the ground and you exercise, when you stop

exercising, you’re still in gravity. Now, you may sit for the remainder of the 15 hours a day.

That’s your choice. Or it may be your occupation that encourages you to sit. That one hour is not

very effective under those circumstances. But if you carry on a normal day at work or life, then

you are very healthy.

But in space, you can exercise as hard as you possibly can. In fact, one astronaut, Steve Hawley,

said to me he has the strangest feeling. He said, “I pedaled on that treadmill so hard I just could

not do anymore. The moment I stopped, I felt like I had done nothing. I did not pant. I did not

sweat. Nothing. It’s not that I did not exercise while I was exercising. I was exerting myself as

much as I could, but there was no lasting effect.”

When you stop and think about it, when you stop exercising in space, you’re not in gravity.

You’re absolutely in microgravity, weightlessness, or whatever you want to call it. Low gravity.

And you immediately start responding to it as if it’s the first time you’re exposed to it. It’s only

while you are exercising that you might be having some benefit. But you cannot exercise the

whole day. So, some different approach has to be taken as far as exploration.

DM: Well, maybe we can expand on that. Because in my mind that’s one of your biggest

contributions to exercise physiology: the appreciation that gravity is an essential component.

And that you could be hyper fit, super fit with relatively small amount of exercise, especially

what we call high-intensity exercise training programs, which is only required 20 minutes a few

times a week.

JV: Yes.

DM: And you can get really fit. But if you’re sitting in essentially a microgravity situation, not

exerting yourself against gravity, you’re going to suffer. Maybe you can detail what your

observations were and what your recommendations are, because this is really the meat of your

discovery.

JV: Yes. I still keep improving on the products. It’s because you become philosophical, as you

have in your presentations. Gravity is one of the four forces of the universe. You couple that with

light, you couple that with magnetic fields, and you begin to have all the key factors that

inference our birth and development on Earth. This is what we are born into. We’re born into

none of these or at least a buoyancy environment, having never experienced the full force of

gravity.

Suddenly, we have to adjust. We have to adapt. We have to use these environmental forces –

gravity, light, and magnetic fields – to develop, grow, and function in the best way we can to be

most effective on Earth. If we ignore them, if we say, “Well, they’re there, I’ll take a pill”

(which, of course, there isn’t one, at least not for gravity), then we’re doing it at our own risk.

There’s nothing wrong with sitting. Sitting is part of our regimen. Now, I have things against

chairs or the invention of the chair. There are other ways of sitting. Squatting is better than

sitting.

[----- 30:00 -----]

We were designed to squat. We were designed to kneel. Sitting is okay. But it’s uninterrupted

sitting that is bad for us. We are not designed to sit continuously. We are not designed to be

quasi-microgravity.

DM: If I can interrupt you, because I think this is really, really profound, and I’d like to

emphasize this. Uninterrupted sitting can cause serious damage to you. And most of us – almost

everyone watching this – in contemporary society is exposed to this risk factor on a regular basis.

It’s just so profound. Because it really wasn’t appreciated until relatively recently. You’re one of

the pioneers in bringing…

JV: It’s still not appreciated. Because people are still doing research of how many hours of

sitting is bad for you. It’s not how many hours of sitting is bad for you; it’s how often you

interrupt that sitting that is good for you.

DM: That is so key.

JV: And you know, the other thing is that when you say “Stand,” or I say “Stand up,” then you

say, “Okay, standing is the opposite of sitting.” No, standing is not the opposite of sitting,

because sitting continuously is bad for you, and standing continuously is bad for you. The body

is not designed to respond to square waves.

DM: Okay, so, there’s a consequence of that statement, which is another profound statement that

either sitting all the time is bad or standing all the time. There’s this trend or movement for many

people who believe sitting is dangerous, so they use standup desks. But from your perspective,

that’s just as bad. Is that correct?

JV: Well, any retail employee will tell you that they suffer all kinds of consequences of many

hours of standing on the job. Even nurses have known this for years: standing on the job is not

good for you. The guards at Buckingham Palace pass out regularly if they’re not careful or do

something about it, like contract their muscles while they’re standing. It’s a well-known thing,

except you’re right. People have said, “Okay, well, I’ll do the opposite of sitting; I’ll stand.”

That’s simplistic and is not good either.

The desks have gone to extremes. There are desks… There is one desk actually called the

extension that basically slides up and down. You can move with it as you… Now, who wants to

do so much movement while they’re working? I don’t know. But obviously some people feel that

they don’t want to waste a single minute. But it is the interrupting the sitting. The interrupting

the sitting is not necessarily walking; it is the change in posture.

Now, let me come back to… Because I’ve taught in medical school, like I know you have. It’s

very important because we don’t teach our medical students about gravity. Gravity doesn’t exist

in medical textbooks. But even more than that, postural change. The importance of postural

change is not emphasized even in basic physiology texts. And it is an extremely key factor.

The people who have worked on something called non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT),

James Levine at Mayo and more recently Marc Hamilton. He did work in rats, and now he’s at

the Pennington. They say in their explanation… They’ve looked at fat metabolism. And they

showed that lipoprotein lipase is reduced during inactivity dramatically. It increases with

activity, with exercise. And they say that the most effective in increasing lipoprotein lipase is

standing up. Gosh, what a surprise.

DM: Maybe you can just explain the importance of lipoprotein lipase.

JV: Lipoprotein lipase is a wonderful enzyme that grabs fat from the bloodstream and transports

it into muscle to be used as fuel. You have what every overweight person would desire, a

mechanism to transfer your fat, accumulated fat, and use it for fuel. It’s as simple as that. I

oversimplified it, because there are many lipoprotein lipases and so on.

But this is a human lipoprotein lipase that does that and that responds to activity and inactivity. If

you’re lying in bed, if you’re in space, or if you are sitting for long periods of time, it hits

bottom. It’s amazing that standing up will prevent it.

What amazes me even further is that these brilliant people – Levine and Hamilton – still cannot

understand why. What is the mechanism of standing up? What does it do? What does it do that’s

different? Because when you think of walking you think of X steps and you think of so many

calories burnt. But do you think of standing up as exercise? Not really. We all do it. Do you think

of raising your arm as exercise? No.

Yet something’s happening when you raise your arm and keep it there. Because if you didn’t, it

would be hanging down beside you. Or your muscle legs are doing something when you stand

up; they’re contracting to keep you there. Because if they didn’t, they’d be crumpled on the

floor. These are all movements, almost below-threshold kind of movements, that do not burn up

a lot of calories, as we know them, but that are designed to work against gravity.

Now, let me bring you down to what I think of gravity and how I talk to people about gravity. I

think of gravity as a virtual rod that runs through our bodies when we’re standing up to the center

of the Earth. If we did nothing, it would pull us down toward the center of the Earth. That’s

important, too, because… I would come to that in a minute with respect to relaxation, which is

terribly important to activity.

I think of gravity as this virtual rod and as our stimulus. It was designed to be our source of

stimulation to our body. When we use it, when we challenge it, when we challenge its downward

force, its acceleration, or its factor that gives us our sense of direction, our position relative to our

environment, it is our weight. It’s not just one thing. It’s not just the load on the body. It is not

just the vestibular system in the rear that tells us where we are relative to the furniture around us,

to the screen I’m looking at.

It is much, much more than that. [It’s] a sense of acceleration and a sense of fun. Because I’ve

come to the conclusion that all the fun activities that we indulge in are based on gravity, okay?

DM: Yes, indeed. Like downhill skiing or one of my new favorites, which is bodyboarding in

the ocean.

JV: There you are, bodyboarding, downhill skiing, rollercoaster, your sports car, a motorcycle, a

swing, hanging upside down on parallel bars, every fun… Bungee cord jumping, I mean, you

know, skipping rope, and trampoline. All these fun activities, all these games and play that we

think of, are gravity-dependent. We are using gravity every which way. The moral to the story is

be a child again. Have fun. Have fun. Play!

The other thing that this virtual rod of gravity tells us, which is terribly important to what people

are suffering from these days from too much sitting, is stooping. I see women walking pass by

my window, and I think that’s wonderful. They’re out there walking. But you know what? Their

head is hanging forward, and they’re looking at their feet.

[----- 40:00 -----]

Yes, they’re walking, but they’re not walking upright. They’re not getting the full benefit of

gravity.

DM: Can you explain that? Because that’s a really surprising distinction.

JV: Yeah. If you think of using this gravity rod, think of it going through you. Any way you

orient yourself to this rod changes how much it is used by your body. So, if you bend forward, it

is… In fact, the weight of your head is being pulled down also by gravity. If you’re holding it

upright over your spine, it is not pulled forward. It is exactly where it’s supposed to be: your

spine carrying the weight of your head.

We know that your head falling forward is not a healthy thing. You may want to elaborate on

that. But it is a very dangerous sign of aging and something that needs to be corrected as soon as

possible.

DM: It’s surprisingly common. I mean, it’s pervasive.

JV: Yeah.

DM: And it’s sad, because there’s such a simple solution. It doesn’t… All it rightly involves is

time. It’s not expensive. It doesn’t involve equipment.

JV: Exactly.

DM: It’s just simple postural adjustments.

JV: When you think of sitting or people sitting at the office, again, the office chair is not your

friend. First of all, it’s not your friend, because if it’s on rollers, it prevents you from standing up

to go and get that thing that’s a few feet away. You’re scooting on the rollers of the chair.

Secondly, it is designed for comfort. And we’ve become comfort-addicted.

DM: What do you propose as a better alternative to the traditional office chair?

JV: An upright wooden chair with no armrest.

DM: Interesting. Why?

JV: I will accept the armrest if you promise me that you really rest your elbows on it. You’re not

resting your elbows, are you? If you rest your elbows and push them back every so often, which

means your shoulder blades are being pushed back, and then you can relax again. But you do it

as often as you possibly can. That will correct a lot of your postural problems. But if you sit in a

hard back chair, a good old-fashioned chair, it can have a nice comfortable pillow, but it at least

forces you to stand up and to sit up.

There are many things you can do at the office. I used to hold standup meetings, for instance.

They were only 10-minute meetings, which was wonderful because we get a lot done, everybody

had their say, and off we went to do whatever we were meant to do rather than just lounging in a

chair and listening to someone talk. There, just getting up from your chair.

I had a person in one of my talks put a hand up and say, “Well, I can’t do all this. I’ll get fired.” I

said, “What do you do?” He said, “Well, I work for a computer company.” I said, “Well, do you

drink water?” He said, “Well, yes.” I said, “Do you get up and go to the water fountain?” He

says, “We don’t have a water fountain.” Another casualty of modern technology. But he says, “I

have a bottle of water on my desk.”

I said, “Wonderful! Put it on the desk next to you. Put it on the window sill or whatever you

have, so that when you are thirsty and want to drink, you get up and go there.” And I said,

“Drink as much as you possibly can.” He says, “Well, I do.” I said, “And you go to the bathroom

often?” He said, “Well, I haven’t thought of it that way.” I said, “Well, all it is is structuring your

life to incorporate these movements that our parents and grandparents used to do in the course

and the business of living into your day. You do them without thinking.” That’s why I call them

gravity habits or G habits.

DM: Would it be safe to say that these habits are also quantified or determined as non-exercise

activities?

JV: Yes.

DM: NEATs? The challenge is to get more of this into your life.

JV: Absolutely.

DM: Because almost all of us are deficient in that.

JV: We need to incorporate it all day, every day, including weekends. That gets a chuckle. I

mean, why exercise on weekends, right? No, you move.

DM: Now, after I read your book, I was inspired. And really, I got it. Could you tell us the name

of your book? I don’t think I recall the title specifically.

JV: Sitting Kills, Moving Heals.

DM: Sitting Kills, that’s it. I highly recommended the book. It’s a simple book. It’s not complex.

It’s easy to read, in one sitting almost. After I read it, I was inspired, because you’ve presented

very eloquently and simply, the concepts. What I understood is that I just have to change this,

because I was one of the biggest guilty people out there for sitting all day long. I've structured

my lifestyle very efficiently, I could sit almost all day. What I did…

JV: Yes.

DM: Was I found an online timer, and I had to go walk every 10 minutes. And then the simpler

version is just to stand up. That would be sufficient. But I think the minimum is you need about

35 times a day to stand up. But right here’s the innovation that I thought of. Because I always

like to tweak things and make them better. In your book, you have a table of different activities

that have exposure to gravity. One of them is jumping up and down.

JV: Yes.

DM: That gets you up to six times gravity. What I do is I stand up every 10 minutes when the

timer goes off…

JV: [inaudible 46:47]

DM: And I do four jump squats. To show you what I do: I just go down like 10 minutes. I come

down, and I just do forward.

JV: That’s wonderful.

DM: And I sit down again. So, do you think that integrating a higher G-force activity into the…

Because that’s still an exercise. I mean, the heart is up a little bit, but it’s basically a non-

exercise.

JV: Right.

DM: Do you think that that would… I’m just getting your comments on that, because I’m really

interested.

JV: Absolutely. I hope I could use you as a poster child.

DM: Sure.

JV: Because it is exactly that. The more gravity stimulation you get, the better of your… It’s

interesting, because in 2005, I wrote for Popular Science. They have a very short thing called

Headlines from the Future. They wanted me to say something about...

Because one of the things I did before I left NASA is design what I call the human-powered

centrifuge. I’m not an engineer, so don’t misunderstand me. It was just that as I was growing up,

I went during the summers to Greece. We – my sister and I – had to pump the water up from the

cistern. We used to take turns at pumping them. I thought, well, there’s human power involved

here.

Why? Because they said we can’t put the centrifuge on the shuttle, because it takes up power.

And I thought, well, this is stupid. Why not use human power as you rotate that plate that you

spin around on the centrifuge to generate gravity. So, I designed such a thing and patented it. It

will see the light of flight one of these days. I thought for Headlines from the Future that

everyone should have one in their basement. That’s basically, you know, if you want to lose

weight.

Animals in the ‘50s, there’s research that’s done that a variety of species – from mice, chickens,

rabbits to monkeys – spun on a centrifuge at only two times as gravity. After a month, if you

study them, they had another drop of fat in their abdomen.

DM: This was being continuously exposed to two times daily?

JV: These animals were less active, and they ate more. Yes.

DM: Interesting. So, can we expand on how you came to the conclusion of the number of times

you just stand up a day? What were the thresholds? Because under a certain… If you only do it

five or six times a day – it’s certainly better than nothing, but you’re not going to get the

benefits. And then maybe you can discuss what some of those benefits are.

JV: Yes

DM: Because they are really quite profound.

JV: The research I… I was doing these bed-rest studies and came to this.

[----- 50:00 -----]

We’re trying to find a way of protecting the astronauts. The exercise, it didn’t matter what kind –

aerobic conditioning, aerobic endurance, or VO2 max – was easy to achieve, relatively easy.

Once a day you could maintain aerobic capacity. But you always have, like, a 50 percent

effectiveness of whatever exercise you did. Whether it was isotonic, isokinetic, strength,

resistance, or whatever, it was only about 50 percent effective. Now I think they have it up to

about maybe 60 to 70 percent, they say.

But this was always never quite enough. And you’ve still got all the changes, you know, the 10-

fold loss of bone, muscle, and so on when the astronauts return. Obviously, it’s not really what

you want it to be. I thought, well, maybe the question to ask is what would it take… How much

time would I have to spend upright if I’m in bed 24 hours a day? How many times do I have to

stand upright? Or how much time do I need to stand upright, or upright and walking, to prevent

being in bed 24 hours.

So, I got a group of volunteers. In fact, we did a double-blind. All the conditions were done in all

of the subjects. They would come at monthly intervals, and they’d be exposed to one condition.

We only had them in bed for four days, which is plenty, to induce these changes. By the way, if

you get the flu or something like that and you can’t exercise, there are things you can do to help

you not feel weak and nasty after you get up from the flu.

The question I asked was, okay, how many times do I need to stand up, or stand up and walk?

Much to my amazement, the answer was that standing was more effective than walking. Now, of

course, that was contrary to everything we believed in.

DM: Absolutely counterintuitive.

JV: Totally counterintuitive, contrary to the exercise routines we were using, which were more

and more intense. And what I had done in a very simplistic way was that I asked my subjects to

stand up every hour on the hour by the bed then for 15 minutes (since I know you don’t need).

Or we’d wheel them on a gurney next to a treadmill, and they would walk at three miles an hour,

which is mild, for 15 minutes. And then go back to bed.

We found that standing up by the bed was more effective than walking certainly for

cardiovascular changes and for metabolic changes. For calcium excretion, though, as little as 30

minutes once a day was enough. It did not take very much. I don’t think you would need many

times of doing that during the day. What was important was that to prevent the changes, you

needed at least 16 times a day of standing up for the cardiovascular system. Sixteen times.

DM: That’s one-six – 16 times.

JV: That is enough to prevent the 25 percent loss in aerobic capacity in four days, the plasma

volume reduction, and the sensitivity of the pressure receptors in the neck. I was very perplexed.

Of course, the next study would have been to have them stand for less than 15 minutes. Because

after all, you don’t stand still for 15 minutes; you’re contracting muscles. I want to make sure

that it was a minimum standing without too much of the energy-using, energy-generating muscle

contractions. And of course, to see if you stayed in bed longer, would you need more whatever.

But at that time, I was recruited to go to NASA headquarters and be a bureaucrat. That was the

end of my actual experimental research.

When I saw that and as I started thinking about aging and people sitting more and more,

including myself, I realized that obviously the trajectory from lying down to standing up is much

greater than sitting to standing up. I speculated that it would take at least 32 to 36 times of

standing from sitting to generate the same effect.

Since that time, there is an Australian exercise physiologist called David Dunstan, who has done

some actual sitting experiments and found in fact that that is so: you need many more times to

stand up. But we all do stand up that many times. It’s not excessive when you stop and think

about it.

DM: Well, I don’t know. I’m not sure if that’s quite accurate. I knew it wasn’t true for me. I

mean, I would wind up sitting for hours at a time without standing up.

JV: Yeah.

DM: Because they’re just, you know, beginning the projects.

JV: Yes.

DM: It was interesting. I didn’t realize that it was 16 times from the lying down supine position

in bed.

JV: At least.

DM: That you have to double that to 32 times.

JV: That was what I’m saying. It’s a sheer speculation on my part at the time. It did not… We

did not have the basic research at the time.

DM: All the research supports it now, it sounds like. No, but the Australian did, right?

JV: Yes, the Australian has done it, and there are others.

They’re still looking at hours sat. I tried to explain to my audiences that if you stand up every

half-hour, for instance, from sitting. That is, what, 32 times? If you stood up and sat down

repeatedly within 32 minutes, it is not the same effect. There is a difference. You need to spread

the responses, spread the change, and spread the signal and the stimulus throughout the day.

That’s a very important factor. That is an extremely important factor.

DM: That is. You just can’t do… Because otherwise you’re almost converting those 32…

JV: Exactly.

DM: It’s almost like a regular exercise; it’s not a non-exercise activity. So, how do you think

these jump squats I just demonstrated to you… If you integrated that into the standing process,

will that decrease the requirement because you’re in a bigger stimulus?

JV: I don’t know if it would decrease the requirement of the multiple times throughout the day.

DM: Well, I mean, it may go down to 16. Because it sounds like 16, if you’re lying down, is

sufficient.

JV: Oh, I’d love to [inaudible 58:01].

DM: Yeah, I’ve heard.

JV: Right.

DM: Because clearly it’s exposing you to more of this force that really is a crucial part of our

health…

JV: Yes.

DM: That’s incredibly underappreciated.

JV: But they have to think of it as an on/off switch. In fact, what we’re doing is we’re tuning our

body. Our body needs to be tuned, so that when the need arises for it to run away from a lion,

climb a tree, or whatever, it is fit to do so. The fact that we don’t use this need anymore – unless

we’re in Afghanistan or somewhere in the battlefield or we’re an athlete – doesn’t mean it’s gone

from our makeup. So, it’s the on/off.

DM: Right.

JV: The ability of using this standing-up gravity stimulus. The more, the better, to tune us or to

keep us tuned. In order to stay tuned, we need to do it throughout the day. It appears so that some

studies are beginning to show that. In fact, several times a day on the same energy expenditure, it

is more efficient in regulating insulin and lipids than a bout of intense exercise once a day, sitting

the same amount of time. It’s been some Dutch work and so on.

DM: Have you reviewed the studies that found what I mentioned earlier that the people who sit

more tend to have an increased risk of death as opposed to those who don’t? And if you have

reviewed them, how does that correlate with your theory?

[----- 1:00:00 -----]

JV: I was pleasantly surprised.

DM: What were your observations?

JV: Not because they’re dying, but because it reinforces the seriousness of what sitting does.

What these studies did was epidemiological. They went back and looked at the statistics of risk

of various cancers. They looked at breast cancer, at colon cancer, and the fact that how many

died and how many hours sitting, which was again anecdotal. They asked the people how many

hours they sat. They were told. The risk of death increased with the number of hours sat both for

colon cancer and breast cancer.

Of course, the wise guys in my audience say it’s only for breast cancer and colon cancer. I say,

“Hey, that’s where they started with the studies. Don’t kid yourself.”

DM: They have been the two most common cancers known to man, at least in North America.

JV: That’s right. But it doesn’t mean that because you have prostate cancer, you’re off the hook.

It is now being shown that it is true for the incidence and risk of prostate cancer. It is true for

almost any cancer you look at. And of course, it is true for… It is becoming true for various

cardiovascular risk factors like heart attacks, stroke, and things like that.

DM: Well, let’s have you comment on another aspect to the aging study with Senator Glenn. I

think it has inspired me. Because someone could listen to what you said and become very

discouraged. You know, “I’ve been sitting for 30 or 40 years. I’m doomed. What can I do?” But

the exciting aspect of your research is that the human body is dynamic, and it can reverse this

process. So, why don’t you explain that? Because it’s just very exciting. It’s never too late

essentially.

JV: That’s good. You’re absolutely right. It is extremely exciting. That’s why the first book, I

called The G-Connection: Harness Gravity and Reverse Aging. People say, “Come on,” you

know. Well, that was 2004. I think today I could say it with more conviction, because yes, you

can change what you are.

The body is plastic. The body changes all the time. We have new cells being generated all the

time – new brain cells – which was thought not to be the case some years ago, as well as new

cells everywhere, including skin cells.

It is extremely exciting, because the stimulus that these gravity-related activities – non-exercise

activities – generate is easy. It is simple movements every which way. The greater variety, the

better. That’s important, because the body gets used to the same thing over and over again. The

more variety you introduce, the more on and off throughout the day, the better. Introduce the

concept of fun and playing.

Dance. Dancing is a wonderful activity. I had an 87-year-old [inaudible 01:03:30], where I spoke

one day. She was there with her walker, a very elegant lady with her walker. When I asked

people what exercise they did, she put her hand up, and she said, “I dance.” I thought, “Oh,

yeah? Okay, how?” “Oh,” she says, “I put the music out loud, and I have chairs in my kitchen

with rollers on them. I push them around, and I dance.” And I thought, “Isn’t that wonderful?”

Absolutely wonderful. There’s nothing to stop someone from having fun. That is very important.

DM: Absolutely. I was wondering if I can get your insights on a tool that I believe initially was

using this base program. It’s the acceleration training or Power Plate, which is one of the first

ones and which absolutely can increase the gravity up to six times or so, depending on the

settings that you use. I’m wondering if you could comment on that, what your observations were,

and I guess the potential integration of that into a program or an ideal approach that you might

recommend.

JV: I think that there are all kinds of [inaudible 1:04:48] that generates gravity stimulus. A sway

plate is one. Vibration is another. Clinton Rubin up in New York has developed a high-

frequency, low-intensity vibration, which seems to be… It doesn’t generate that much gravity. I

mean, it’s not a jarring stimulus, but it is subtle enough. The information about high-frequency,

low-intensity seems to be important.

When we’re moving around and we see a speck on the floor, we bend down to pick it up, is that

exercise? No. If we reach up to get a book off the shelf or a pot off the cupboard, is it exercise?

No. When we brush our teeth, is it better to brush with a brush or with an electric brush? Electric

brush already takes away some of the movement that we would normally do with a regular

brush. Play golf. For heaven’s sake, if you’re going to play golf, don’t take a cart. Carry your

golf balls.

DM: Sure.

JV: Or at least, push your golf container down the slope. Yes, by all means, do sports. No one

says don’t exercise. I think that is very important to bring across.

DM: But we’re talking about that in a moment.

JV: Yes.

DM: I just want to clear up the question on the acceleration training. Into the frequency, has

anyone you know looked at the importance of the different frequencies? Because you can go low

frequencies like 30 cycles per second, 30 hertz up to maybe 50 or 60.

JV: Yeah.

DM: If that’s your sweet spot, it doesn’t matter if you’re like standing on it, because the

vibration….

JV: It seems to be transferred to the heels.

DM: Gets transferred to your heels.

JV: It seems to be a function of the proprioceptors. However, it is very interesting, because I

asked Clinton whether, for instance, people with spinal cord injury could benefit. He said, “Well,

we’ve been trying to get funded to do that study, but the peer review says, ‘Come on, I mean,

you know, you’re going to sever your cord.’”

They finally had a pilot study approved by the VA and the NIH. They put a tooth sensor in

people. They had them sit obviously with their feet on the plate. The sensor in the teeth picked

up the vibration in the feet, which meant that something was getting up there. They haven’t

finished the subsequent study, which was to take people with spinal cord injury and look at their

bones and their muscles, and see if they can be maintained with such treatment, which would be

fantastic. Oh, I should know…

DM: So, this should be the application that they have in medicine.

JV: I know you would appreciate it. Very few people have noticed, but I had to put it in. The last

chapter in the book is about gravity therapy, using gravity as treatment.

DM: Wow.

JV: There are obvious ones like rehabilitation, for instance. But I think one of the very near and

dear to my heart is the treatment of kids who were born with cerebral palsy. There are volunteers

that go to the hospital and use the pullover legs in a walking type of motion, so that the brain gets

the idea that this motion is part of what it has to do.

But what they don’t do is have the babies upright, so that they can benefit from the stimulus of

gravity while they’re moving their legs. There is an institute in Hungary called the Peto Institute

that does just that. They don’t know why, but they know that it works. I mean, they never evoked

gravity as the reason. But to me, looking at it, it’s obvious that that’s what’s happening. So,

gravity as treatment can be used. It can reduce the number of deaths at birth.

Because the way we’ve changed the birthing process: we cut the cord and pick up the babies

upright. Well, they’re like astronauts: they pass out, because they don’t have the regulatory

senses developed to send the blood up to the head. Therefore, the longer you have them lying

down until they get adjusted to living in this gravity environment, the better off they’ll be.

[----- 1:10:00 -----]

There are a lot of implications that I think would be found eventually. Certainly, I think it will be

useful in diabetics, spinning on a centrifuge. Because the right kind of muscles… You see it’s

posture muscles predominantly – it’s what we call stabilizers – rather than the mobilizing

muscles, the big, big, vast [inaudible 1:10:42], hamstrings, and so on. Posture muscles are what

work against gravity.

DM: Could you give us some examples of the posture muscles or these small muscles in the

spine?

JV: They’re small muscles in the spine. They’re relatively very thin muscles on the back of the

gastrocnemius and the leg. They’re the ones that when you stand up, that’s what you recruit.

People who have trouble standing up. Again I do that in my talks. I ask people to stand up, and

they roll all over the place, lean on the table or on the chair to get themselves up. I said, “That’s

okay. You start out that way.” But eventually those soleus muscles are going to be strengthened

to the point that you can stand up without leaning on your knees or leaning on anything.

I want to tell you about a study, which is not in my book, that I saw recently, about a Brazilian

group (you may have seen it) that has developed a scoring for aging.

DM: Yes! We did an article on that. It was fascinating, absolutely fascinating.

JV: Most of us can’t get up from a seated-on-the-floor position without leaning on something.

[Inaudible 1:12:13]

DM: [inaudible 1:12:13-16]

JV: But then you have something else, Muslims pray five times a day. They go from an upright

position. It’s very interesting the way they drop into their knees, so they’re holding their upper

body postures straight. They drop into their knees. They do this three or four times. And then of

course, they kneel over and put their head on the ground, kneel over and put their head on the

ground, and then stand up again. They do this five times a day. Well, guess what.

I think, you know. Someone said, “Oh, that’s why they lived to be a hundred. I said, “Well, there

may be some truth to that.” They’re not the soonest people in the world necessarily, but they

obviously can do that. That’s just like the Brazilian group.

DM: You’ve really opened the eyes of so many people about the importance of these non-

exercise activities. I’m wondering if you could sort of frame the exercises you just mentioned

and how they would integrated that to a regular, traditional exercise program, where you’ve got

these mobilizers as much as the large muscles in the body, the ones that most of us both think of

when we think of exercising, such as running, high-intensity exercises, or strength training.

I guess it’s sort of a curiosity question if… I think ideally we should do both. But if for whatever

reason, a person is limited to one or the other, sort of an experiment, is it your belief that if they

didn’t exercise, the non-exercise activity would be…

JV: Yes.

DM: Healthier?

JV: Yes, it’s my belief that the non-exercise activities are the foundation of the foundation of our

tuning and our health, and more important than regular exercise.

DM: They’re more important than regular exercise.

JV: No, regular exercise is the next step. You build on the foundation.

DM: Oh, everyone has it backwards!

JV: Because if you get injured or if you have too much work to do on your project, and you

don’t have time to exercise, you always have time to move around. You stand up at the

commercials when you’re watching TV or whenever.

DM: Not too much now. We have the VCR. You can just forward, you know.

JV: That’s the problem. We have all these technology that’s designed to make our life easier

(whatever “easier” means) sitting.

DM: Well, it does. I mean, it provides a lot of benefits to us and humanity as a whole. But as

long as we understand the basic requirements that are dictated to us by our ancestors, our

upbringing, our biochemistry or genetics, and if we honor those with relatively simple techniques

that only take a few minutes a day, it can have dramatic and profound implications…

JV: Absolutely.

DM: On the quality of our life and the length of our life.

JV: A colleague of mine who’s head of the University of Virginia Endocrinology section said, “I

tell my diabetes patients to do three squats, three full squats, every hour.” I said, “That’s

wonderful. Who came up with this?” He said, “Well, I just came up with it, and I tell my

patients.” Then I said, “Well, you’re brilliant. That’s all I can say.” He’s seen tremendous

improvements.

DM: Did he see big improvements by having…

JV: These are type 2 diabetics.

DM: And these are type 2 diabetics, I’m assuming.

JV: Squatting is an extension of standing. Ideally, if you squat and stand, you might get the

absolute maximum benefit of using gravity, of working against the force of gravity. You’re

absolutely right.

DM: Or particularly the next step is jumping.

JV: [Inaudible 1:16:32] go from a squatting to a jump and land again and squat. That is the

maximum exercise you can possibly do without any equipment. That’s about your 6.5 G.

Trampoline is the next one. Trampoline goes up to 4.5 G.

DM: [inaudible 1:16:52-55]

JV: Absolutely. Because…

DM: Okay, so, what’s your opinion? You want trampolines rebound?

JV: Also, the balance.

DM: Okay.

JV: The balance is extremely important. Because I see kids (because that’s what they are for

me), 20-year-olds. If you think that we develop until about 20 and then we quit moving. We go

to college, and we sit.

DM: Absolutely. So, what is the ideal regimen for someone using the trampoline? Would you

give your comments on that?

JV: You would go out there and have some fun and play once a day.

DM: Just once a day?

JV: The important thing is don’t do nothing the rest of the time – it’s not an I’ve-ticked-the-box

routine. And vary it. Do squats and jumps one day. Do some trampoline one or two days. Go to

the playground. We should have adult playgrounds. Nobody… The children aren’t using them.

Both Finland and Germany have adult playgrounds.

DM: Really?

JV: Oh, yes. It’s not my creation. I thought I had invented it, but no. They have them and they’re

used. Not only that, but I told the locals her, I said, “Look, if I recruit the older people to go and

use the swings at the playground, perhaps the children would go also because they wouldn’t fear

the safety factor.” It’s this sort of encouraging… And I’m worried about the kids, because I think

the kids are sitting so much.

DM: Oh, absolutely. But it’s a simple solution. It’s getting back to the playground, that seesaw,

another perfect example. That was one of my favorite…

JV: The seesaw, paddle bars…

DM: Equipment, the seesaw.

JV: Hopscotch. Who plays hopscotch anymore? Who skips rope? These are all fun activities.

DM: Yeah.

JV: Bicycling. Bicycling is very good. It’s not a particularly gravity-related activity, but it’s an

acceleration aspect of the gravity stimulus. We mustn’t forget that. We need to stimulate all the

receptors we have that perceive gravity. We don’t know yet what they all are. We know the inner

ear is very important. We know that we have receptors in the soles of our feet and our hands

probably. But we probably have them everywhere. The beauty of gravity is it’s a mechanical

force.

Now, there is, as you know, the great movement in mechanical transduction. In other words, if

you take a cell and you elongate it, you change its shape, that triggers a stimulus that conveys to

the next cell that it’s time to do something and change my shape.

[----- 1:20:00 -----]

I sincerely believe and that’s why I think people with spinal cord injury, for instance, would

benefit. I believe that the stimulus of gravity gets through from one cell to another through

mechanotransduction. It’s transduced. It’s changed into a protein, into a chemical message that

gets into the next cell.

Also, we now know that inactivity reduces the number of telomeres in the mitochondria, the

oxidative stress component. If you’re active, if you do non-exercise activities, you restore the

telomere length.

DM: Interesting. Some age experts believe that the telomere may be one of the most important

barometers of how long you’re going to live.

JV: Well, it’s certainly a marker. There are many markers. I think inflammation, acidity, and the

telomere length are some of the very critical markers that you can use for the aging process and

for disease, any disease.

DM: And non-exercise activities like you’re promoting…

JV: All of those variables.

DM: Will include all…

JV: All of those variables.

DM: All of those variables.

JV: Definitely. Activity will affect inflammation, will reduce inflammation. It will increase

telomere length together, of course, with nutrition. I don’t believe that any one thing does

everything.

DM: Of course. It’s a whole variety of different factors. I’m passionate about health. I’ve been

studying it for decades. I’m trying to teach people how to do it. But I can tell you that what

you’ve uncovered is just novel, virtually no one knows about it, and it may be one of the most

important factors. It’s very rare to ever learn new information like what you’re presenting that

has such a profound impact on health. And it’s so simple.

JV: Oh, yes.

DM: What I’ve learned about health is that usually the best and important ideas are the simplest.

JV: It’s fascinating. Let me tell you another one that I’m working on, and that is the relationship

of gravity to sleep. I thought you’d like that.

DM: Oh, interesting.

JV: Astronauts in space sleep – what apparently looks like perfectly normal EKG variety of

sleep – adequate hours. But for one, they will tell you when they wake up, they do not feel

refreshed. If you, as I’m sure you have, sat on an airplane and tried to sleep sitting up, you sleep.

But you get up and you feel terrible. There are soldiers, for instance, who will sleep upright.

DM: Right.

JV: But it’s never satisfactory. Why do we put our head down to sleep? You got it.

DM: Gravity.

JV: I am persuaded to get my sleep colleagues at Brigham to do the research, because I’m

convinced that gravity has a role. It is very interesting. The other thing that nobody knows

anything about or very little is what happens during sleep, during the night, to the metabolism.

Yeah, we know it goes down. We know certain hormones increase at certain times.

But for instance, if you go in water, if you sit in water, if you go into a pool at night… If you go

into a pool during the day, the first thing you do – if you’re a child certainly and some adults – is

pee, okay, right? Now, if you do that at night, you don’t.

DM: Yeah.

JV: We had a guy who wanted to know whether during the night in our bed-rest subjects… Let

me re-address this. During the day, in bed-rest subjects, as in space, you lose calcium. You pour

out in the urine, but you don’t turn around. But over time, you do.

DM: Interesting.

JV: The story on that is we lose – by continuous inactivity, lack of postural cue, whatever it

turns out to be. I’m inclined to posture cues as the trigger – over time we lose that shutdown

reflex for the kid during the night. People as we age have to get up and empty their bladder. I’ve

made it my personal goal…

DM: Interesting.

JV: Not to succumb to that. And you can.

DM: Yeah, that’s a… Well, and it just radically sort of dominos your health in a downward

spiral, because you need sleep. Sleep is another important constituent of health.

JV: Absolutely.

DM: If you can’t sleep well, you’ll just radically spiral downwards.

JV: Yeah.

DM: I’m just so grateful for your work and for all the pioneering efforts you’ve done. Because,

you know, I’ve been fit my whole life. I started exercising when I was a teenager. I’ve been

exercising for 50 years now. But I noticed when I started to get into my 50s that my flexibility

wasn’t what as it used to be. I just have to strain to get out of the chair. I couldn’t be able to get

up.

But I am convinced now. There’s just no doubt in my mind. It’s because I wasn’t doing enough

of the non-exercise activities. I was becoming very efficient in sitting in my chair and getting a

lot of stuff done and accomplished. I was ignoring this absolutely crucial component of health.

JV: Yeah.

DM: It’s very rare, as I said earlier, where I find people who really have this profound insight on

health – and you have. Probably one of the 10 greatest appreciations that I have on health is what

you’ve discovered. I can’t thank you enough for doing that.

JV: I thank you for the platform, your support, and your help. Let’s get the word out there.

DM: I think we definitely will.

JV: Fantastic.

DM: We’ve done it in many other areas like vitamin D and other issues. The dangers of swine

flu vaccine were another one. Essential fatty acids, astaxanthin. There’s a whole variety of

different topics where we’ve really been the leaders in catalyzing. This will not be hard because

it makes so much sense, and there’s no cost to it. All of this is standing up.

JV: Yeah.

DM: I mean, ideally, you want to do all the other exercises. But I guess one of the final thoughts

I have as a question for you is if the person did nothing else other than stand up 36 times a day…

I mean, they would have to do some of the others, but essentially none of the others if they did.

Would that be sufficient to provide a stimulus to prevent the downside…

JV: I believe [inaudible 1:27:57].

DM: Of not having to do exercise activities?

JV: What do I want to do? What’s my objective? I want to be healthy, and I want to be

independent. I want to be independent as long as I live, which means I maintain my

youthfulness.

DM: Right.

JV: Obviously not my age, so that I can enjoy life however long it happens to be. Once you ask

that, then you say, okay, where do I start? Try and be minimalist: few activities that are directed

toward this fundamental approach. It’s how you do it, what you do, how long you do it, and

you’ve got it.

DM: Yeah. It’s so simple. Again, thank you from the bottom of my heart for all the pioneering

work you’ve done in this area.

If people want more information, we will have it on our article that comes with this. But your

book is Sitting Kills, Moving Heals. It’s available online at Amazon. It’s easy to get. It’s a simple

book. I highly recommend it. It’s an easy read. You can go into some more details in that book.

But it helps reinforce this concept.

Hopefully, everyone watching this… There is not anyone alive who doesn’t need or benefit from

this activity. It’s just absolutely crucial. Virtually no one’s doing it. It’s just crazy not to integrate

this into your lifestyle.

JV: Thank you very much, Joe. Yes, you can do it.

[END]