A Shocking Predictor of Longevity and How to Improve It to Become Stronger for Longer with Courtney Conley

Dhru Purohit Show

Dhru Purohit

Medicine, Health & Fitness, Alternative Health

4.7 • 3.4K Ratings

🗓️ 30 October 2024

⏱️ 83 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

This episode is brought to you by Bioptimizers, Bon Charge, and Ollie. We don’t often think of foot health as a factor in longevity. However, falls, hip fractures, and early mortality statistics show that foot health is just as essential for long-term wellness as other factors we prioritize. Today’s guest has made it her mission to bring foot health to the forefront of conversations about optimal health, especially as we age. Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, Dhru sits down with renowned foot and gait specialist Dr. Courtney Conley. Dr. Conley discusses the most significant predictor of falls, lifestyle factors that weaken our toes, and how a sedentary lifestyle and modern footwear contribute to weakness, ultimately increasing the risk of falls. She also shares the qualities of optimal footwear, tips for gradually incorporating minimalist shoes into your life, and simple exercises we can all do at home to strengthen our feet. Dr. Courtney Conley is a renowned foot and gait specialist and the founder of Gait Happens, where she pursues her passion for helping people reclaim their foot function. She is also the owner and operator of Total Health Solutions clinic and Total Health Performance gym in Lakewood, CO, where she leads patient care focusing on restoring gait mechanics and resolving foot issues to enable easier, pain-free movement. Dr. Conley is a founding member of the Healthy Foot Alliance, an international team of practitioners dedicated to promoting the benefits of natural footwear and reducing the need for unnecessary surgeries by strengthening foot foundations and creating a stable platform from the ground up. In this episode, Dhru and Dr. Conley dive into: The greatest predictor of a fall (00:00:07) Factors that weaken our toes (4:00) Modern footwear and its correlation to falls (8:50) How a sedentary lifestyle contributes to weakness (14:05) The impact of improper shoes and bunions (15:50) Foot anatomy (19:45) The connection between foot health and brain health (25:39) Three types of chronic pain linked to foot health (34:08) Dr. Conley’s journey (36:30) Informed consent for activities that harm foot health (43:20) Building toe strength for beginners, intermediate, and advanced levels (46:35) The shoes Dr. Conley recommends and her non-negotiables (58:04) The ideal number of daily steps (1:07:50) How to create lasting habits and behaviors (1:11:20) Setting up children and the geriatric population for success (1:14:50) Dr. Conley’s practice (1:17:50) Also mentioned in this episode: Dr. Conley’s Foot Health Programs Dr. Conley’s shoe recommendations For more on Dr. Courtney, follow her on Instagram, Facebook, or her Website. This episode is brought to you by Bioptimizers, Bon Charge, and Ollie. Upgrade your digestion with enzymes! Go to bioptimizers.com/dhru now and enter promo code DHRU10 to get 10% off any order and free gifts for a limited time. Right now, BON CHARGE is offering my community 15% off; just go to boncharge.com/DHRU and use coupon code DHRU to save 15%. Want to give your dog the best in clean eating?Take the online quiz and introduce Ollie to your pet. Right now, Ollie is offering 60% off your first box of meals when you subscribe today! Just head to Ollie.com, use the code DHRU and you’ll get 60% off your first box of meals in your subscription. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:17.0	Courtney, welcome to the podcast. It's a pleasure to have you hear. You know, something pretty wild that I learned from following your content is that one of the greatest predictors of a fall as we age is the strength of our toes. Now that information is going to be pretty shocking for some people,
0:20.4	which is why I'm so excited to have you here because the truth is if you care about longevity, which my audience does, you have to care about the strength of the foot, especially the toe. So what are the top reasons that so many aging adults have poor
0:39.5	toe strength and why does toe strength matter to longevity?
0:44.2	It's probably one of my favorite things to talk about and you know it's I have a funny story
0:48.8	to start here in that a comedian also got a hold of that statement and he made a pretty famous comedian and he made a little
0:57.3	clip about it and he said you know which I completely understand we have all of these things to be concerned about from a longevity perspective right
1:07.3	We have to worry about our diet and our nutrition and how much exercise are we getting how in the world am I supposed to now pay attention to my toes?
1:16.5	And it was kind of funny. And I really thought about it and I said, well, if you think about the prevalence of falls which is if you look at the statistics one and four adults will fall
1:30.7	When you have your PCP appointment especially if you're over the age of 65, for example,
1:36.3	one of the very first questions they will ask you is, have you fallen within the past year?
1:41.5	And if so, how many many times it's that common one of the biggest
1:46.0	sequelas or one of the things that can happen when we fall are hip fractures in fact the
1:51.2	most common cause of a hip fracture is a fall.
1:54.0	And if we look at what happens when we fracture our hip,
1:58.0	25% of people who fracture their hip will be dead within a year,
2:02.0	and 50% of those will have altered function
2:05.2	after they fracture their hip which is just astounding. When I was learning about all
2:09.4	this and I was looking at Karen Mikkel's, who she has done a lot of fall prevention research.
2:15.8	And one of the studies she did was on looking at non-falling seniors in seniors who have fallen. And they looked at factors like quadricep strength,
2:25.0	in ankle strength.
2:26.0	And in both groups, those numbers came out pretty even.
2:30.0	But when they looked at toe strength,
	...

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