Latest news with #NormanSwan
ABC News
07-07-2025
- Health
- ABC News
Why are so many younger people getting cancer?
Sydney Pead: Cancer has traditionally been a disease of old age, but younger Australians in their 30s and 40s are increasingly being diagnosed with cancer and scientists are desperate to understand why. Today, Dr Norman Swan on his Four Corners investigation into what could be causing the sharp rise in cancer rates among younger people and what can be done about it. I'm Sydney Pead, on Gadigal land in Sydney, this is ABC News Daily. Sydney Pead: Norman, you've been looking into the alarming increase in cancer rates in younger people. As a millennial, I'm pretty personally invested in this story. It's pretty concerning. So what kind of increase are we seeing here? Norman Swan: It varies according to cancer. So a lot of publicity has been about bowel cancer, but in fact, the data given to Four Corners by Cancer Australia shows 10 cancers rising in the under 50s. It's called early onset cancer, but it's particularly marked in 30 to 39 year olds. If you take the statistics from 2000 to 2024, bowel cancer has gone up 173%, prostate cancer in this age group 500%, pancreatic cancer 200%, liver cancer 150%, kidney cancer 85%. Breast cancer is going up, but at a lower rate than the others. Sydney Pead: Oh my goodness, that is such a worry. And you've actually been talking to people who have been diagnosed with cancer at a relatively young age. Can you tell me a bit about Fiona? Norman Swan: Fiona So trained in accounting and finance. She's got three kids and her and her husband live in Sydney. And she was diagnosed eventually after about six months of odd symptoms, which were not ignored. Fiona So, cancer patient: I started getting like itch all over my body. And we thought it might be an allergy. We did blood tests, everything. And you don't think liver cancer would happen to someone who's like just turned 40. Norman Swan: By the time they actually investigated that, she had a huge liver tumour, which ruptured before it could be operated on. I mean, really quite dramatic. Fiona So, cancer patient: You straight away think, why me? What have I done? I don't smoke. I don't drink. I wasn't obese. I didn't have any of those symptoms. You know, I was being healthy. I was living, trying to, you know, do all the right things and it still happens. Sydney Pead: Mm, absolutely. It's so shocking, really. So in Fiona's case, what did her treatment plan look like? Norman Swan: Fiona had major surgery to remove the tumour and part of her liver. Unfortunately, not long after the surgery, it was clear that the cancer had spread, partly because it had ruptured. And now she's on a clinical trial of another treatment. And that is keeping things under control. But sadly, it's not a cure. I mean, this is hugely traumatic for her, her three kids and her husband, David. Fiona So, cancer patient: The first thought I had was, I'm not going to watch them grow up. I'm not going to see them go to university. And it's not something you ever thought. You thought you get to grow old with your husband. You get to watch your kids grow up. And then suddenly that was something that could be taken away from you. Sydney Pead: And Norman, sadly, this situation that Fiona finds herself in, it's becoming more common in young people who are juggling work commitments and family and medical appointments. So I want to turn now to some of the causes that might account for this spike in cancer rates, because we hear so many things. Is it air pollution or microplastics or too many meat cold cuts? You've been speaking to Dan Buchanan, who is one expert. He looks at bowel cancer and he says changes in our gut are a big concern. Norman Swan: What Dan Buchanan has found, and he studies what's called oncogenomics. This is the pattern of DNA mutations that you see in cancers. He can pretty much tell the age of somebody with bowel cancer from the genetic mutations in their bowel tumour. In other words, there's been a generational change. So older Australians who get bowel cancer and you look at their genetic mutation pattern, there was a change with Gen X and then with millennials. So something has happened. And he believes that that something is related to the microbiome, the guts. Associate Professor Dan Buchanan, bowel cancer researcher: We have lots of bacteria in our gut, and it's that balance between good and bad bacteria that creates a healthy state. So we think that exposures or environmental toxins may change that balance between good and bad bacteria, allowing some not so friendly bacteria to produce toxins or agents that may damage our DNA. Norman Swan: What he and others have found in a proportion of people, it looks as though early in life they were infected with a bug called E. coli. Now we've got lots of E. coli in our bowels and there's lots of different forms, but this was a toxic form of E. coli. And the toxin, the chemical that it produced, damaged the bowel and changed the DNA in the bowel, leading to bowel cancer in some people. The reality is cancer causation is a slow process. You get multiple mutations over time and it's unusual for that to gallop. Most of the time it's a fairly steady and slow process that can take 10, 20, 30 years. So if you're getting cancer when you're 30 or 40, you've got to go back to your childhood or your mum's pregnancy. That's likely when the changes occurred. So for example, if you look at the microbiome, caesarean section rates were going up during that time to quite high levels. And when you're born by caesarean section, at least for the first few months, you don't have a normal microbiome. When you're born vaginally, you ingest the microbiome of your mum. It doesn't happen when you're born by caesarean section. Antibiotic use in kids wasn't going up particularly at that time, but antibiotics certainly were being used. That was round about the time when ultra-processed foods started booming. So that makes your microbiome vulnerable. We also found in the course of researching the Four Corners in 1975, which looked as if it was made last week, because it talks about plastics, plastic ingestion and toxins in plastic that might be the source of cancer. And why hadn't we banned them? Four Corners 1975: Today, when they sell us our daily bread, it comes in a plastic bag. Now it emerges that when we eat food packed in plastic, we might unknowingly be eating some of the plastic as well. And no one knows the effects of that. Norman Swan: Microplastics are a possible cause, again, with no proof at this point. But they do get mashed down to very tiny, almost molecular sizes, which then can penetrate into our bloodstream and cause inflammation, maybe affect our brains and our heart, maybe related to cancer. We just don't know. Sydney Pead: So concerning. Let's just stay on this topic of microplastics, because that is such a big concern. And unfortunately, plastic is something that's virtually impossible to avoid. So many of us get our takeaways in plastic containers or heat up leftovers in plastic in the microwave. So can we blame plastic for rising cancer rates? Norman Swan: The answer is we don't know. I spoke to Dr Christos Symeonides, who works for the Minderoo Foundation. He's a paediatrician and he studies chemical and plastics. And he argues that this is an area that we don't really like to confront. Dr Christos Symeonides, Paediatrician: We're exposed to a broad universe of synthetic chemicals that our biology isn't familiar with. And that has left a great deal of uncertainty. Within the universe of plastic chemicals, we're looking at the last academic count at about 16,000 chemicals that are used or present in plastics. Norman Swan: When you look at the chemicals in plastics, there are thousands and thousands of chemicals, only a few of which have actually been properly studied for their hazards in humans. Dr Christos Symeonides, Paediatrician: Of those 16,000 chemicals, only one third appear to have been evaluated for potential hazard. If we look back at that one third that have been evaluated, the substantial majority, around 75%, are identified to be hazardous from those assessments. But there's a limit to which that tells us about what they'll do in our full, complex biology of the human body. Norman Swan: But we assume that the ones that haven't been tested are safe and we allow them to be used, but they might not be. Sydney Pead: Yeah, that's right. And as you say, it's not a new problem. We've been talking about this even here at the ABC since 1975. Just a little more on that. What have we learned about these plastics and the other chemicals that we're exposed to in our environment because PFAS, for example, is just a huge concern. Norman Swan: With PFAS, the so-called forever chemicals, which are in non-stick frying pans, they're in cosmetics, they're in a lot of different products. They do persist and when they persist, you do worry about their long-term effects. There's a lot of doubt about whether they as a group do cause cancer. There's not a huge amount of evidence for that. There is one called PFOA, which is just being regulated for and banned for industrial use in Australia, but that's linked to kidney cancer and probably breast cancer as well. Now, it may be that some of the others are, but yet to be proven. Sydney Pead: So, Norman, for young Australians, these numbers are so worrying. Yes, we can throw away our plastic utensils or our non-stick frying pans or avoid bacon, but it's going to take a lot more than that. So does the government have a long-term strategy to tackle these increasing cancer numbers? Norman Swan: We still really haven't got an anticipatory strategy for chemicals anywhere in the world, really, not just Australia. And there's something called the precautionary principle. We talked about that a lot during COVID. The precautionary principle is if something looks as though it's causing a problem or could be causing a problem and there's no harm in removing it, then you should remove it. Or you should not introduce it until it's proven to be safe. In other words, you should not wait until a hazard has been found. And the problem here is 30-year-olds today could well be paying the price of things that happened 30 years ago in the environment, and we only find the hazards out when it's too late. Sydney Pead: So in the meantime, is there a stopgap solution like expanding the age range of cancer screening programs to catch these diagnoses earlier? Because too often these diagnoses are coming really late for younger patients. Norman Swan: First thing to say is we only screen for four cancers. Cervical cancer screening, which starts at the age of 25. Breast cancer screening, which starts at 50, despite the fact that 20% of breast cancers and probably a growing percentage occur in people who are under 50. Bowel cancer screening, which starts at the age of 50, but it's moved down to 45. But again, you've got to opt in rather than you automatically being in the screening program. And then finally, there's lung cancer, and that's for heavy smokers, either current heavy smokers or past heavy smokers with no symptoms. Now the thing with screening is screening is of a healthy population with no symptoms. You do not want a screening program to make people sick or worse. Cancer is still a disease of aging. The older you are, the more likely there is to be damage to your DNA, and you're more likely to have cancer. Therefore, in a screening program, if you are older and you find an abnormality, that abnormality is more likely to be serious than it is if you're young, despite this increase. And therefore, you're discovering in a screening program, more people who have abnormalities that may not matter or may not turn into cancer. But the risk is that people have invasive investigations and sometimes invasive treatments, which they might not have needed. So you've got to work that one out. Then it's a question of economics for government. Can they afford to make these screening programs younger? It's likely to save lives, but there are economic costs involved. The main strategy that's left is early detection of people with symptoms. In addition to us all doing what we know does work for a lot of cancers, which is a decent amount of physical activity, a Mediterranean-style diet, where you're eating a lot of different vegetables, not eating a lot of red meat, and certainly not smoking burnt plants, whatever plants they may be, whether it's cannabis or tobacco. Sydney Pead: So certainly being made aware of the symptoms and to know what to be on the lookout for is going to be a huge part of this. Norman Swan: I have maybe three messages here. One is get yourself a general practitioner that you like, who gets to know you. A lot of younger people don't have a GP. It's important to find a GP and a practice. And sometimes that's a bit of a search to find a GP who's right for you. The second thing is, if something new happens to you, you've never had before, a headache, a lump, bleeding, bruising, anything virtually that you've just never had before, don't sit on it. Go and see your GP. Probably nothing, but it might not be. And thirdly, don't let it go. If it hasn't gone away, if it comes back, go back. It's your body and be assertive. Sydney Pead: Dr Norman Swan is a reporter for ABC's Four Corners and host of the Health Report podcast. You can watch Norman's Four Corners report on ABC iView. This episode was produced by Kara Jensen-McKinnon. Audio production by Sam Dunn. Our supervising producer is David Coady. I'm Sydney Pead. ABC News Daily will be back again tomorrow. Thanks for listening.
ABC News
10-06-2025
- Health
- ABC News
Mailbag: More complexity in prostate cancer testing
Norman Swan: So let's go to the mailbag now. Preeya Alexander: Yes, so I was not here, I was off gallivanting last week, but you've done a story… Norman Swan: Feel free to criticise what we did. We wouldn't have been so crap if you'd been there. Preeya Alexander: That's not at all what I was suggesting. Norman Swan: Olivia was fantastic… Preeya Alexander: She's always fantastic. Norman Swan: So a GP has written in about our story on prostate cancer diagnosis and screening, although we didn't use that word. We had Jeremy Grummet on the show talking about the guidelines, because he took umbrage, because…this did involve you, because when you and I were talking about these guidelines that came out when they first came out, I was quite forceful in saying that the PSA blood test was crap. And Jeremy, who's been on the Health Report several times before, took umbrage at this and saying it's not crap with the new guidelines. So anyway, he came on to talk about the prostate cancer guidelines and to correct my image that the PSA was crap. And this GP who's written in says, 'I found Jeremy's comments to be the untypical, unrealistic comments that urban centric, non-GP specialists are prone to make.' And our correspondent is in fact a general practitioner. So he says, 'It takes a few seconds to tick the PSA request on a form, and that's the easy bit. The Herculean task is then to obtain access to a urologist and a prostate magnetic resonance imaging machine for a rural or regional patient. And let's not forget city dwellers without private insurance who are facing exactly the same problem.' Preeya Alexander: That's the thing. The blood test, the PSA, is often the easy part, I have to agree with this, and I work in a metropolitan region, but often it's the next steps, it's what do you do with the result, how likely is it to actually cause a problem, and how does the patient access the ongoing either urology input or scanning that they need, because it can be very costly. Norman Swan: And to be fair to Jeremy, he did talk about this disparity between city and country and this evidence. And Paul also writes in, 'I know this is anecdote, and I've no idea if it's evidence based,' but when he was a GP…we've obviously got more GPs listening to the program now that you're on because they want to check you out here, whether you're sullying the profession. 'I've had a few isolated patients with an extremely low PSA (in other words, under one) which slowly rose to be around about four.' And just to put this in perspective, I don't know if you know this, Preeya, but the original studies that were done I think it was at Stanford University by a urologist there, on PSA, he was suggesting you had a high risk of cancer at a PSA of 25. Preeya Alexander: I remember you saying this when we did the show several weeks ago… Norman Swan: And it's crept down. And what Paul's talking about is that this change in PSAs are really important, even at a low level. Preeya Alexander: Paul's saying the idea of having a baseline, perhaps. But I have to say, are you potentially detecting cancers which were never going to cause any problems? Because that's the whole debate with prostate cancer, isn't it; you might detect cancers that someone might live with and die with the cancer, as opposed to die of it. And so this attaining a baseline and routine testing, gosh, it's filled with conundrums, and you need to have a big chat to the patient beforehand. Norman Swan: And some people can have prostate cancer with a normal PSA. But what Jeremy would say, if I was channelling Jeremy Grummet here, is that that's what MRI is for, is to sort this out for you. And if there's nothing much there, then you can relax. Preeya Alexander: But it's not always easy to access, either the MRI or the urologist. As we've just said, it's a little bit of a conundrum I think still. Norman Swan: It is. Preeya Alexander: Yep, but we love hearing from you. So if you want to write in with any topic suggestions or comments or questions, it's healthreport@ Norman Swan: And you don't have to be a GP to write in. Preeya Alexander: No, you don't, please, ideally everybody, all community dwellers. Norman Swan: And don't forget our companion podcast, What's That Rash? , and this week we're going to be talking about concurrent workout regimes. Should you combine cardio with strength exercises? Interesting question, I'm sure it's dominated your life for a long time. Tune in to What's That Rash? to find out. We'll see you next week. Preeya Alexander: We will.
ABC News
01-06-2025
- Health
- ABC News
Should you train cardio and strength on the same day?
Tegan Taylor: Norman… Norman Swan: Tegan? Tegan Taylor: You have told me in various guises over the years the different things that you do for exercise. I know that you cycle at the moment. I know you've been a fan in the past of high intensity interval training. I know that you've been doing Pilates. But what I want to know is, across a typical week, what's the mix? Norman Swan: Well, I cycle a lot into work, so almost every day I'm getting what you call endurance or aerobic exercise cycling, which is quite a lot of exercise. And almost every day I'm doing some strength work as well, whether it be Pilates, gravity-based stuff or stuff with weights. Tegan Taylor: Look at you just fulfilling the Australian guidelines on physical activity. What a guy. Norman Swan: Yeah, but I still look like the guy you'd kick sand in his face. That was an ad that used to be for Mr Universe, you know, be like Mr Universe. 'I was once the guy who had sand kicked in his face and look at me now,' and he looks like Arnold Schwarzenegger's dad. Anyway… Tegan Taylor: I love your timely references, and also how you reenact things so briefly. Norman Swan: That's right. You can't see my arm movements here, but yeah, that's right. Tegan Taylor: Well, the mix of physical activity on a certain session or on a week is the topic of this week's What's That Rash? and I'm super excited to get into it because it's a rich seam to mine. Norman Swan: It is, on What's That Rash? , which is where we answer the health questions that everyone's asking. Tegan Taylor: So today's question comes from Vicky, who says, 'I'm wondering if there's benefit to training cardiovascular fitness like jogging and swimming on a separate day to weights and strength training, or is combining the two in the same training session best for maximising results?' Norman, this is something I hadn't ever really thought about much before. But, as we've discovered, there's actually quite a lot in this. Norman Swan: There is a lot in it, and there's a lot riding on it if you are an elite athlete and you're trying to get the optimal training regime, and that's where you've got to separate this out, because most of the research is actually not into people like you or me, or shall I just say 'me' because you are much fitter and stronger than me, but in the elite sport context, what's the best way of doing that? And we've probably got to get some definitions right up front, so… Tegan Taylor: Well, I think we should start with some groundwork as to…if we're not talking about elite athletes, which we will probably talk about quite a bit in this chat because, as you say, a lot of the research is in that space, but for the average Australian who looks like they might get sand kicked in their face, what are the recommended amounts of physical activity across a week? Norman Swan: Well, the physical activity guidelines, it depends on whether you're having moderate or vigorous activity. Moderate activity is activity where it's actually hard to have a conversation while you're doing it, so it's not relaxed, low-level things. So if you can gossip about the kids or your friends on a walk around the park, that is not moderate intensity exercise. You've got to be walking fast enough or jogging so that it's hard to have a conversation. Vigorous is just one step up from that, where you really couldn't even think about starting to talk because everything's going into the exercise that you're doing. So if it's moderate intensity exercise, it's two and a half to five hours a week, which really means on most days of the week you're having about 45 minutes of moderate intensity exercise. It's a bit less than that with vigorous. Vigorous activity means you can probably compress that into a shorter period of time. But the recommendations also (and going to Vicky's questions) say that at least two days a week you should be including muscle strengthening activities, and that includes push ups, pull ups, squats, lunges, lifting weights or household tasks that involve lifting, carrying or digging. So none of it is mild exercise, it's all at a level which you're feeling a bit of stress on your system. Tegan Taylor: And there's nothing in there saying that you can't do them as part of the same thing, although I guess depending on how you read it, you could say, oh, I have to do this. And also the strength training separately. It doesn't say that. Norman Swan: To the contrary, they're saying that in your 45 minutes of cardio type exercise, aerobic type exercise, you should take some time out. And I think if you look at it it's maybe 15 minutes of the 45 minutes, I can't remember exactly, that is associated with muscle strengthening. So yes, it is part of that aerobic 45 minutes that you're having. And remember that muscle strength is a really important part of our wellbeing, particularly as we age, because as we get older we lose muscle mass, and that's a route to frailty. So you really want to be being as strong as you can, within the limits of your ability to do exercise, going through life. Tegan Taylor: And there's a term for this mixture of cardio and strength-based activities, it's called concurrent training, where you're doing strength and cardio in the same workout. The thing that I find interesting about this is that I find it very difficult to do cardio without involving my muscles in a pretty big way and doing the sorts of things that you would consider to be strength based, and I find it really hard to lift weights and not get puffed. So can you really separate these two things from each other anyway? Norman Swan: Well, you can in terms of what's dominant, but it's true that a lot of muscle strength exercises…I mean, just try doing squats. Squats do get your heart rate going, and if you are doing reps with weights, that gets your heart rate going, so it's very hard to separate them, and that's where the goals of your exercise start to come in. Tegan Taylor: Muscle strengthening is quite an ancient thing that men especially have done for a really long time. I was actually shocked to discover how recently it was that we realised that cardiovascular exercise was good for us. I was really surprised that even for the first half of the 20th century doctors often believed that strenuous exercise would perhaps cause a heart attack rather than prevent it. Norman Swan: Yeah, and it was a fellow Glaswegian who really pioneered this research. A good Jewish boy from Glasgow, actually he was from Liverpool originally, but then trained at the University of Glasgow… Tegan Taylor: You'll claim him. Norman Swan: …and then a public health researcher at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, really a pioneer, Jerry Morris, and he did this seminal study which was looking at double-decker buses in London and comparing the health and wellbeing of drivers to the conductors who were running up and down the stairs. Tegan Taylor: Such an interesting controlled study, because it's controlling for so many different things, socioeconomic factors, by choosing two groups of people working in the same industry, working probably the same kind of shifts, but the real difference there is their physical activity levels. Norman Swan: Yeah. I mean, not perfect, because it's likely that bus conductors were a bit fitter to start with because they were able to get up and down the stairs, but nonetheless it was a pioneering study in its day, and it showed drivers were much more likely to die of a heart attack than bus conductors, and if bus conductors got heart disease, it tended to be milder, they tended to develop more angina rather than suddenly getting a heart attack. But going back to Jerry Morris, he showed conclusively really that cardio (in other words aerobic exercise rather than muscle strengthening) helps your cardiovascular health and reduced the risk of heart attacks and strokes. Tegan Taylor: Do you know what's really lovely? At the Olympic Games in 1996 he got an honorary Olympic gold medal in recognition of his excellence in the science of sport and exercise. How cool is that? Norman Swan: Super cool. And what's also super cool is that he didn't die until he was 99 years old. Tegan Taylor: See, he knew what was up. That's so cool. So let's talk about cardio exercise first then. Do we have specific definitions of what constitutes cardiovascular exercise? Norman Swan: Yeah, it's about your heart rate, in many ways, it's about an exercise that stresses your cardiovascular system and gets your heart rate up into a proportion of the maximal heart rate, usually round about between 50% and 70% of your maximum heart rate, which is age adjusted. And what's been shown is that if you do that on a regular basis, you reduce your risk of coronary heart disease, but not only that, your blood pressure tends to come down, your resting pulse rate comes down. And really the only way you can get your pulse up to that sort of level for a reasonable period of time is by exercising all your muscle groups. You're not going to do it necessarily with a pair of weights in your hand, trying to strengthen your biceps. Tegan Taylor: So vigorous physical activity, getting your heart rate up into that space. And in addition to giving those long-term health benefits, you're also increasing your endurance, if performance in a cardio based sport is important to you (for example, long distance running). Norman Swan: Yes. So this is where the issue of the research being done into sportspeople, because concurrent training is good idea in theory because you knock off two things at the same time, but do you work against it? And what the research shows (and it's taken a long time to get back to Vicky's question, but it's an important question) is that if you are an ordinary person training for benefit, concurrent training increases both strength and endurance and aerobic fitness. It doesn't necessarily improve power. Tegan Taylor: So, strength based. Norman Swan: It's strength based, but it's also about being able to recruit power quickly. So if, for example, you are training, even though you're not an elite sportsperson but you're training for tennis or squash, that power thing is affected by aerobic training. Now, it's thought that it's about which parts of your body you're training. So if, for example, your aerobic training is mostly your legs and you're wanting power in your legs, then there is interference. Tegan Taylor: Oh, I thought you were going to say there was going to be benefit there, but are you saying… Norman Swan: No, it's interference. Your power goes down when you are doing it. It's probably that you are exercising the same muscles, they're tired and not getting the same benefits. So for example, if you are rowing as your aerobic exercise, which is more of a whole-body thing, and you're wanting to train for power in your lower limbs, it looks as though you do not compromise power. You might get more strength by separating out the two, but who's got time for that? In a practical sense, you will improve strength and aerobic fitness if you want to do them both at the same time. Tegan Taylor: Well, you say 'who's got time for that', but let's say you are trying to optimise, let's say we are talking about an elite sportsperson, Vicky's writing to us from the AIS. What is the optimal…is there a certain order that we should be doing things in? Should we be separating it by days, like aerobic training on one day, strength-based training or power-based training on a different day? Norman Swan: The literature is mixed on this. For example, if you were doing it on the same day, you would watch what aerobic exercise you're actually doing. So if you're wanting to get power, and the power is particularly in the legs, you might focus for your aerobic training on rowing, or indeed cycling, static cycling, because cycling is a concentric exercise which is different from the muscle movement you might want to get if you're going from scratch to a full sprint. Tegan Taylor: But for the average person, we're going to come back to one of our little refrains, which is the best exercise to do is the one that you're going to do, it's the exercise that you enjoy and that fits into your lifestyle, and to not overthink it too much. Norman Swan: Yes. Well… Tegan Taylor: You like overthinking. Norman Swan: I don't think this comes naturally, so I think you've got to think about it. You've got to think about you're out for a walk and you pass a bench where you might do push ups and where you stop and do squats, you've got to think that through so that you're doing all of that in one session, and you will improve your strength, and you will improve your aerobic exercise. It might not make you the fastest on the field, but very few of us want to be. Tegan Taylor: Yeah, you want to live the longest, then you can out-lap everyone. So Norman, we've talked a lot about sports performance in this chat. What we haven't really talked about is some of the other reasons why people are keen on exercise, apart from longevity, i.e. weight loss. Norman Swan: Yeah, I'd rather talk about fat loss. Tegan Taylor: Okay, yes, good distinction. Norman Swan: There's pretty good evidence in the scientific literature that if you do concurrent exercise, in other words strength training and aerobic exercise in the same session, you burn more fat. So if fat loss is your aim, you want to be doing the concurrent training, it's really good for that. Tegan Taylor: Let's say you are doing concurrent training, you're going for your walk or whatever, does it make a difference…what do we know about whether you should be doing your cardio first or your strength-based stuff first? Norman Swan: It doesn't seem to make any difference, from the literature that we've got together for this program, although I'm sure people would argue about it. I mean, in the days when I could afford a personal trainer, the personal trainers would actually vary depending on what they would do. Some of them would get you running on the machine and then do the strength training, and some people will get you to do the running on the machine afterwards, and some people would get you to do none at all. And I don't think it makes any difference, which is why I don't have a personal trainer anymore. Tegan Taylor: So, the bottom line for Vicky then? Norman Swan: A bottom line for Vicky is that if power is what you're after in elite athletes, then there is an issue with concurrent training. It doesn't mean you can't have it, but you've got to think through what aerobic exercise you're doing, that it doesn't interfere with the muscles you want power from. If you're just ordinary people like you and me who want to live as long as possible, as healthy as possible, strong muscles, concurrent training is fine, but you've got to think that through so that you're actually doing realistic exercises. And what we haven't spoken about is progressive exercise. Tegan Taylor: Oh, better talk about it quickly then. Norman Swan: You've got to have a consistent level of difficulty, and for that you've got to pile on the weights as time goes on, or pile on the extra exercise. But the good thing is if you're tight for time and you do the exercises faster, the aerobic ones, you get through more burning in less time. Tegan Taylor: At a training session I was at the other day, they finished us off by doing bicep curls. And you'd start with a weight, and then when you couldn't get to do any more, then you'd switch to the lower weight, and by the end you had two-kilo weights, and even lifting those, it felt like they weighed about 20 kilos each. I was cooked and I could barely move the next day. Norman Swan: So a lot of people think that exercising to muscle exhaustion is the trick, rather than necessarily piling on really heavy weights. So doing multiple reps rather than three or four reps with a really heavy weight, because that will tear your muscle fibres. But this whole issue of tearing muscle fibres just for bigger muscles is not necessarily strongly equated with strength that you need for the future. Tegan Taylor: And actually on that, if you want more about muscle strengthening, muscle hypertrophy, we did do a What's That Rash? episode on that in January last year called 'why no pain no gain is bull', so you can check that out on the ABC Listen app. Norman Swan: And you can also check out our protein intake What's That Rash? because to strengthen your muscles and do well, you need an adequate protein intake, so you can go to that What's That Rash? as well, and we'll have both those in our show notes. Tegan Taylor: There's a What's That Rash? for everything. And I've got to know, Norman, what's your next exercise that you're doing? What's your next workout going to be? Norman Swan: I've got to get on my bike and cycle home. Tegan Taylor: And I'm planning to go for a swim tonight. Well, Vicky, thank you so much for the question. If you've got a question that you'd like us to dig into and get super nerdy about, we love it, and the email address is thatrash@ Norman Swan: Let's go to the mailbag. Tegan Taylor: Yes. So Nat has messaged in. So we talked a few weeks ago now…Norman, we're always talking about N-equals-one studies, where people have self-experimented, and then when we did our live show on knuckle-cracking, we talked about an N-equals-one that won an Ig Nobel Prize a few years ago, about someone who cracked the knuckles of one hand only for 50 years to see if it developed arthritis, and it didn't. Nat has done an N-equals-one study for us similarly. Would you like me to share what it is? Norman Swan: I would. I love these pioneers of medical knowledge. Tegan Taylor: So this one is in relation to our episode on acne that we did a little while ago. Nat says, 'In my early teens my mum repeatedly told me that if I squeezed my pimples, they would get worse. I decided to test this theory at about age 13, and for the next five or so years, I only ever squeezed or popped pimples on the right side of my face…' Norman Swan: Oh, unilateral plook popping. Tegan Taylor: '…leaving those on the left side to fester unhindered. At the end of my experiment, at around 18 years of age, I had to concede that my mum was right and that the right side of my face did in fact get far more pimples than the left, and the skin was more scarred and uneven than the left.' Norman Swan: What a sacrifice to make for medical science. Tegan Taylor: Thank you for your service, Nat. Nat goes on to say, 'It was one of the rare occasions when the many medical myths spouted by my mum did turn out (for me at least) to have some credibility, though I'm unsure whether the cause was the pimple squeezing action or the transfer of a cocktail of bacteria via grubby teenage fingernails.' Norman Swan: Yeah, my bet's on the latter. Tegan Taylor: It could be a bit of both, I think. Norman Swan: We love N-of-one studies, keep them coming. Tegan Taylor: Nat, thank you so much for that. And you can always send your feedback, your N-equals-one studies, your body building tales of woe, all of it can come to thatrash@ Norman Swan: See you next week. Tegan Taylor: See you then.
Daily Mail
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Wild moment ABC Australia host is targeted by 'deepfake' of reporter
ABC 7.30 host Sarah Ferguson (pictured) has been floored by a 'deepfake' AI version of one of the show's reporters live on air. Ferguson introduced the Thursday night segment with a warning that AI-produced videos of doctors and celebrities were being used to trick Australians into buying unproven supplements. One of the doctors whose likeness was being used was the ABC's own Norman Swan. 'Norman, welcome to 7.30,' said Ferguson as she crossed to the reporter. 'Thank you Sarah, it's a pleasure to be here tonight to talk about deepfake scams that are ripping off vulnerable patients,' Swan said. 'These scams are becoming incredibly convincing.' The real Norman Swan then stepped into frame, revealing that a fake, AI-generated version of him had been speaking to Ferguson. 'So convincing in fact, that you probably had trouble recognising that that is me,' the real Swan said. He explained that fraudsters were increasingly using his identity to sell 'dodgy supplements' online. One video on Facebook featured a fake Rebel Wilson talking about losing weight thanks to a supplement which she claimed was recommended by Swan. Another video followed the same formula but with the singer Adele. The fake videos were surprisingly easy to make, as Swan discovered in an interview with Sanjay Jha from UNSW's School of Computer Science and Engineering. Mr Jha, who uses AI for teaching purposes, demonstrated that only an internet connection, a laptop, and some free software were necessary to clone Swan's voice and appearance. The professor was quickly able to produce a deepfake of Swan while he sat watching.
Daily Mail
23-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Terrifying moment ABC's 7.30 is hijacked by a 'deepfake' reporter live on air
ABC 7.30 host Sarah Ferguson has been floored by a ' deepfake ' AI version of one of the show's reporters live on air. Ferguson introduced the Thursday night segment with a warning that AI-produced videos of doctors and celebrities were being used to trick Australians into buying unproven supplements. One of the doctors whose likeness was being used was the ABC's own Norman Swan. 'Norman, welcome to 7.30,' said Ferguson as she crossed to the reporter. 'Thank you Sarah, it's a pleasure to be here tonight to talk about deepfake scams that are ripping off vulnerable patients,' said Swan. 'These scams are becoming incredibly convincing.' The real Norman Swan then stepped into frame, revealing that a fake, AI-generated version of him had been speaking to Ferguson. 'So convincing in fact, that you probably had trouble recognising that that is me,' the real Swan said. The terrifying AI-generated version of Dr Swan featured two noses. He explained that fraudsters were increasingly using his identity to sell 'dodgy supplements' online. One video on Facebook featured a fake Rebel Wilson talking about losing weight thanks to a supplement which she claimed was recommended by Swan. Another video followed the same formula but with the singer Adele. The fake videos were surprisingly easy to make, as Swan discovered in an interview with Sanjay Jha from UNSW's School of Computer Science and Engineering. Mr Jha, who uses AI for teaching purposes, demonstrated that only an internet connection, a laptop, and some free software were necessary to clone Swan's voice and appearance. The professor was quickly able to produce a deepfake of Swan while he sat watching. But the technology could have dire consequences, with diabetes patient David Bell, from Melbourne, telling the show that similar content online had persuaded him to stop taking his prescribed medication, Metformin, and start taking a supplement instead. Metformin is an effective drug to treat type-2 diabetes and helps to prevent blindness and kidney damage.
