Manoush Zomorodi is the award-winning host of NPR’s “Ted Radio Hour.” Her new book, “Body Electric: The Hidden Health Costs of the Digital Age and New Science to Reclaim Your Well-Being,” tells a larger story about what the digital age is doing to our bodies. Scott Brocato recently spoke with Zomorodi about her book, and here’s a portion of their conversation.
Scott Brocato:
First of all, talk about the Body Electric Project and what inspired it.
Manoush Zomorodi:
Well, it was how uninspired I was, actually, Scott, that inspired it. It was this sense at the end of a long day on my computer that I felt completely spent. My back hurt. My eyes were dry. I couldn’t think straight. I felt exhausted despite the fact that I had done very little during the day. Like all I could do was crawl over to the couch to check my phone or watch Netflix. And we’d heard so much about the effects of being online too much or social media on our mental health. But I was like, this feels very physical to me. So I really wanted to understand what was going on in my body when I spent all those hours on a screen. And is there anything that I can do about it?
And so just as I was kind of thinking these questions, I heard a report, on Morning Edition actually, about a study that had been done at Columbia University Medical Center by Dr. Keith Diaz. So Keith is a physiologist who is trying to figure out what is the least amount of movement that the human body needs so that all the sitting we do doesn’t kill us. And he had found in his lab that five minutes of very gentle movement, walking for two miles an hour, every half hour had outsize effects. It cut people’s blood pressure, their blood sugar, it kept them focused, it improved their mood.
And so I said to Keith, you know, why aren’t we all doing this? I gave him a call and was like, this is magic! Why aren’t we all doing this? And actually I took part in his study. But he was actually kind of like, I don’t think we can disrupt this world that’s built around screens and sitting. I don’t think people can take interruptions and really do what they need to do because we have lots of chronic health issues in this country. Diabetes has doubled in young people over the past 20 years, for example.
So the situation was urgent. It wasn’t just me who was feeling bad. And I said to Keith, well, let’s try to get people to see if they can do it.” So we put out the call to public radio listeners–maybe some of your listeners, Scott–and asked them to join a clinical trial. We had over 20,000 people sign up for a scientific study to see if they could get movement breaks into their screen-filled sedentary lives and to see whether A, whether it was feasible, and B, what the effects were.
Scott Brocato:
And…?
Manoush Zomorodi:
Well, it was fascinating! So you could choose to either do five minutes every half hour, five minutes every hour, or five minutes every two hours.
“Body Electric” book cover
Scott Brocato:
And that’s five minutes of what sort of moving?
Manoush Zomorodi:
It could be anything. It could be walking around while you’re on a phone call. It could be taking the dog out. It could be vacuuming. It could be shuffling side to side. If standing up is not an option for you, arm movements, arm circles. Two miles an hour was what we did in the lab, and that’s like a stroll. Basically, getting your blood flowing and getting, most importantly, your leg muscles or your arm muscles stimulated. That stimulation is what’s needed to draw out the glucose and the fats from our bloodstream and to push oxygen up to the brain.
And so we found that people who committed to doing this, 82% of them were able to stick with it. That same statistic, that 80%, liked taking breaks. They saw on average a reduction of 25% in their fatigue levels. Their mood stayed steadier. They felt like they could concentrate again. People talked about losing a few pounds, their back feeling better. And most surprisingly, all these interruptions, despite what you might think, they actually improved productivity just a little bit. So they weren’t a big problem. And so all in all, we felt like, well, you know, this is the solution.
So we had those statistics and then over the last couple of years, I’ve gone back and read into how people integrated movement into their lives. And that’s what’s at the heart of the book, a blueprint for taking back your body and your brain from your screen-filled sedentary life.
Scott Brocato:
And we know in our brains we should get up, move around. My Apple Watch tells me, you know, it’s time to stand.
Manoush Zomorodi:
Yes, and you ignore it? (Laughs)
Scott Brocato:
And I so often ignore it! But I know I should do it. And when I do do it, and I’ve been practicing this for the last couple of days since looking at your book, and already in just a couple of days, it makes a difference.
Manoush Zomorodi:
It’s crazy, right?
Scott Brocato:
It’s such a simple thing. But let me ask you about the chapter, The Daily Mindset. You mentioned that the neuroscience of mental exhaustion explains why we get so stuck to our devices. In other words, you know, we can come home after eight hours of looking at our screen–you know, I’m on the radio, so I do it quite a bit–and yet we get home and we can’t stop scrolling or watching or getting on devices. Why is that?
Manoush Zomorodi:
I think you’re referring to the story that I tell where I actually went in an fMRI machine to see which parts of my brains were stimulated. So one first thing in the morning before I had stared at a screen all day, and then again at the end, and I played this cognitive game so they could measure it. And essentially, you know, that was just me in that study, but there is becoming more sort of indications that the parts of our brains that make good decisions, that have judgments, that do the harder work, the harder thinking, those get tired at the end of the day, right? It’s like that muscle is working so hard that the more you feed to it, all that cognitive switching that you do–should I send an e-mail? Should I not? Should I respond to this? I need to do this–we’re exhausted by the end of the day.
So the part of the brain that takes over at that point is the striatum. And that is the habitual part, the part that takes over that…you know, you could play a dumb game on your phone because you always play that dumb game on your phone, right? That part of your brain that just goes into habit formation. And that’s not always a bad thing, right? Sometimes you might drive home and you don’t even remember doing the drive? That is again, is your striatum taking over. So it has a purpose, but it’s why like at the end of the day, you don’t feel like necessarily learning a new language or having a long depth conversation with your mom. You want to do something that’s easy. And that’s okay, but you just have to remember that is your cognitive resources being drained.
Scott Brocato:
Well, in your book, you make clear that the five minutes of the “move break” is not a substitute for regular workouts. If you have a regular workout, keep going, right?
Manoush Zomorodi:
But that was what was so surprising was that even if you work out in the morning, if you then spend the majority of your day seated and looking at a screen, the consequences are the same for you. The body needs constant interruption in order to keep that conversation going with the brain and to make sure that you flush out the glucose, the fat, so that we don’t get diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease. Three out of four Americans right now have at least one chronic health condition, many of which are preventable. And this is an easy way to do it.
But to me, the best part is that sense of optimism that I…I’m an optimistic person, but it would fade away. This way at the end of the day, I felt more positive. And you know, you read the news; it’s tough out there. I think we could use a little bit of energy, a little bit of positivity in our lives. And this is a free, easy way to do it.