A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Did you know the brain uses the largest portion of energy compared to any other organ? But how often are we training to better treat this invaluable body part of ours? A new book by NPR's TED Radio Hour host Manoush Zomorodi argues that there are better ways to be modern workers, aka people who make a living in front of a screen or two or three or four or five - that's me - every single day. The book is called "Body Electric," and Manoush joins us now to talk about it. So first off, tell us about the history of "Body Electric" and this program, MORNING EDITION.
MANOUSH ZOMORODI, BYLINE: Well, A, it all started right here, actually. So a few years back, I would close my laptop at the end of the day and felt like I only had enough energy to crawl over to the couch to check my phone or watch some Netflix. I wanted to understand what was happening in my body. Just so happens that I was walking the dog, and I heard our very own Allison Aubrey doing a report about a study that had been done at Columbia University Medical Center by Keith Diaz, a physiologist who found out that the best way to offset the harms of our sedentary, screen-filled lives is five minutes of gentle movement every half hour. This sort of formula offset people's blood glucose levels, their blood pressure. It stabilized their focus and their mood.
So after I heard that, I called Keith up, and I was like, why aren't we all doing this? And he said, I just don't think people can do it. So we decided to team up and ask your listeners to give it a try, and 23,000 people signed up. So we debuted the data here on MORNING EDITION, and I have spent the last couple years really digging through all the information and stories that we got. So it's been quite a ride. It's good to be back.
MARTÍNEZ: People do want to find ways to make their lives better, even if it's something small and simple. But they don't know what to do, or maybe they don't even have the time to think about what to do.
ZOMORODI: Definitely. And I think our listeners are curious. They want to know why it doesn't work. Even if you work out in the morning, it doesn't matter if you spend the rest of the day seated on a screen. Our leg muscles need stimulation. When you sit, you have to think of your body like a kinked garden hose. You're bent at your waistline and at your knees. And just like with water that backs up, your blood backs up. But muscle stimulation is what pulls the lipids and the glucose out of our bloodstream that processes it and then also pushes oxygen up to our brain, where - makes this possible for us to think straight. So it's all this beautiful system that just needs constant tending to.
MARTÍNEZ: You know, I covered sports for a very, very long time before I got into public radio, but when I saw this - professional information athletes - that was a new one for me, Manoush. That was a new one for me. How exactly do professional information athletes train?
ZOMORODI: Yeah. So this was sort of a concept that I concluded after going through all the information. In 1950, a quarter of jobs were sedentary. By 2019, 90% of jobs are sedentary. So an athlete treats themselves to rest and feeds their body, right? I think we should be doing the same thing, even if our football is Google Docs. We can only really focus for about half an hour to an hour at a time. And that's not because you're lazy or you don't have willpower. That is a biological fact. We are not machines.
MARTÍNEZ: I grew up in the I'll-sleep-when-I'm-dead era. You know that phrase?
ZOMORODI: Mm-hmm.
MARTÍNEZ: I'll sleep when I'm - yeah. So it's an excuse to just kind of always be charging hard, whether you're partying or working. You mentioned, you know, just taking a break. What do the experts say about forcing yourself to do this? Because it's difficult.
ZOMORODI: Actually, there's really interesting research that your brain gets into patterns, right? So let's say you have an hour where you are switching between tasks and you're answering email and looking at texts on your phone and all those things. Even if the next hour is calmer, you will get stuck in that pattern to the point where you'll start switching tasks just on your own. This is the work of a UC Irvine informatics researcher, Gloria Mark. She has found that 44% of the interruptions we experience - usually in the workplace - come from ourselves. So no wonder we feel like we're our own worst enemy, right?
And so I think constantly telling yourself, like, there is science. There is a reason I should do this. And that's what the 20,000 people found - that 82% of the people stuck with taking the breaks. Eighty percent liked taking breaks. People's productivity rose slightly. They felt like they came back to their work refreshed and ready to focus.
MARTÍNEZ: So on this exact subject, there's a chapter in the book, Manoush, that I've been obsessed with - Chapter 7 - "Hitting The Refresh Button: Sleeping, Resting, Resetting." I think there's a lot of misconceptions about sleep, about what it means to get rest, proper rest. Is it possible to make up for lost sleep?
ZOMORODI: Unfortunately, no. You can never fully make up the work that gets done in your brain. But here's the good news, OK? Blue light - maybe not as detrimental as we thought. And for the longest time, people were like, oh, if you look at blue light, it's like taking an espresso shot right before you go to bed. But what we've now found is it's actually way more complicated than that. The blue light itself is actually pretty weak. And the new thinking is that it's displacement, right? We're using our phones to displace the sleep that we used to be doing.
MARTÍNEZ: So I'm wondering - how much rest did you feel once you said, OK, this book is done?
ZOMORODI: Well, I'm trying to walk the talk. You know, one of our participants said it perfectly. They said, I'll be annoyed with myself and I'll be like, come on. Just go take a walk. No, I have too much work. But you feel better every single time you do it. Yeah, but maybe not this time. It's this inner conversation debate that you're having with yourself. And she said that once she took two steps, she would - suddenly, even just that would make her think, OK. Actually, I feel better. It's rough out there, A, right? There's - it's - the headlines are scary, and I think we're all just looking for something, a little something to bring back our optimism and our energy. And it's nice that this is free, as well. So there's that.
MARTÍNEZ: That's Manoush Zomorodi, host of NPR's TED Radio Hour and the author of "Body Electric: The Hidden Health Costs Of The Digital Age And New Science To Reclaim Your Well-Being." Manoush, thank you.
ZOMORODI: Thank you, A.
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