Take Charge Of Your Own Health With Measurable Actions - The Pulse Cure With Dr. Torkil Færø

The body has the ability to send you signs if it is not feeling well, although these are often hard to understand if not downright impossible. But thanks to the Heart Rate Variability (HRV), interpreting those signs has never been easier. Zach Gurick sits down with Dr. Torkil Færø, author of The Pulse Cure, to discuss how HRV can help you escape stressful mode and get into recovery mode. He explains how to acquire deeper insights into how your body feels and works through the measurable data from your heart rate. Dr. Torkil also explores the benefits of cold water therapy (and the best time to do it) and the importance of going outdoors regularly to get adequate sun exposure.

The information presented in Fully Alive is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified healthcare provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition or treatment and before making changes to your health regimen. Guests’ opinions are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the podcast host, production team, or sponsors.

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Take Charge Of Your Own Health With Measurable Actions – The Pulse Cure With Dr. Torkil Færø

This episode’s guest that I’m excited about is Dr. Torkil from Norway. He’s a physician, a world traveler, and a bestselling author of a book called The Pulse Cure, which is a breakthrough book that’s changing the way we understand stress, aging, and resilience. In this conversation, we’re going to dive into the power of heart rate variability, or HRV, as a real-time window into your nervous system and a vital sign for your health span.

Dr. Torkil unpacks how this often-overlooked biomarker can help you detect hidden stress, help you recover more effectively, and optimize your physical and emotional health with surprising simplicity. If you’ve ever wondered how to truly know when your body is thriving or when it’s silently struggling, then this episode will give you the insight, tools, and inspiration to tune into your body’s most honest signal, which is your pulse. Let’s dive into the conversation with Dr. Torkil.

Dr. Torkil, it’s such a privilege, an honor, and a gift to be here with you. I’ve been looking forward to our conversation, and I’m excited for our readers to learn from you, your expertise, and your experience, and the amazing research and work that you’ve done on The Pulse Cure, and the other research that you’ve done. Thanks for being here.

Thank you, Zach. It’s great to be here and talking to you.

You’re coming to us from an emergency room in Norway. You’ve been working?

Yeah. I just quit a surprise shift. I wasn’t aware that I was going to have this shift. After the watch this night, suddenly, they called, “Are you starting soon?” I had one more shift that I hadn’t noted in my calendar, but I just finished two minutes ago, so it’s perfect timing. I’m usually doing ER work all around Norway. Norway is a long country with lots of shores, islands, and beautiful nature. That has been my job for 26 years as a GP, going around to these beautiful places, seeing people, and experiencing what makes people sick and what makes them healthy. That has been my job for many years.

Introducing Dr. Torkil Færø

Thanks for the great work that you’re doing. As we start off here, for those of us who are new to your work, what inspired your journey into this exploration of heart rate variability as a key? Maybe tell us a little bit about the origin story for your groundbreaking work, The Pulse Cure, and what led you to write the book and the central message of the book.

As with most doctors, I was educated in treatment medicine. We wait until people get sick, and then we step in and treat them with pills, procedures, referrals to specialists, and so on. It’s kind of a reactive attitude. My father died at the age of 73, and I understood that I had to take a more proactive approach to my own health.

I was doing everything wrong. I weighed 40 pounds more than I do now. I did not exercise, did not care about sleep, did not care about nutrition, was even smoking at times, and was using other nicotine bags that we use in Norway. I was drinking a couple of glasses of wine every day, in the belief that it was a good thing, as we were recommended at the time. I understood that if I am going to live fully and be fully alive for the rest of my life and have a long life, I needed to change my life, more or less totally.

That was a wake-up call. We were on a sailing trip around the world with my family. We have been sailing for 1 out of the 4 years that we had planned. We were at the Panama Canal, just about to go through it and go into the next adventure. We got a text message from my mother. My father had fallen ill with cancer. We packed our bags, left the boat by the Panama Canal, and went home. He was 73. I understood that I want to live to be 90 or 100 and still be vital, so I changed my life. I started exercising and started caring about sleep, nutrition, and everything that we now know is so important, but as medical students and even doctors, we did not understand those from our studies or from our work.

I understood quite quickly that there had been so much research in these areas that I hadn’t had the time to look into, being busy financing the trip and then planning the trip, the adventure that I was on. My journey started towards better health. Somewhere along the way, I became aware that the heart rate variability is a biomarker for the state of our autonomic nervous system, but also a state of our overall physiology.

The better mitochondria we have, the better nervous system, the better nutrition, the better sleep, the better exercise, all of these things can be measured in heart rate variability, or the variation between heart rates. We can measure this biometric with our watches that we are using now. With the Garmin watches, the Apple watches, Oura rings, and WHOOP bands. I have three of them in my hands at the moment.

HRV is a biomarker for our overall physiological state, paving the way for better nutrition, sleep, and exercise. Share on X

I understood from the beginning that it was for my own sake, so I started using this to improve my health. Somewhere along the way, my editor at the biggest Norwegian publishing company asked me if this was a book that I could write for them, on how to use heart rate variability and our heart rhythm to improve our health. It became an insane bestseller in Norway, one of the biggest bestsellers in the last years, and has become a household concept in Norway.

Of course, the whole world is using these different watches and tools. There are very few guidebooks. To my knowledge, there are no other guidebooks like the one I wrote. It is a guidebook on how to use these variables compared to lifestyle strategies on sleep, nutrition, exercise, and active rest, alcohol, menstrual cycle, and many of the things that will affect our physiology and health. It’s been translated into seven languages, including English.

Unpacking Heart Rate Variability

Congratulations on the amazing success. The work that you’ve done is impacting and changing lives. Thank you for that. Maybe break it down for us a little bit. Many of our readers are familiar with heart rate variability or HRV. Can you explain in simpler terms why it’s such a powerful window into our health and nervous system?

The good thing is that the heart rate variability is such an easy concept that is almost too good to be true because it is the variation between heartbeats compared to our breath, the most basic, simple things in our physiology. We have to go and take a dive into our autonomic nervous system, which is the basis of our nervous system that we share with all vertebrates, all mammals. It’s an ancient system. It’s a couple of hundred million years old or even more.

How it works is that it has an on system and an off system. Many have probably heard about the fight, flight, and freeze mode, the sympathetic mode of the autonomic nervous system that mobilizes us towards what we want, to hunt for what we want, and to flee away from something that wants to eat us. The other part of the autonomic nervous system is the parasympathetic restful mode. The recovery mode, also called rest and digest mode.

If we look at hunter-gatherer societies, they will be in the active mode maybe 2 or 3 hours a day, and the rest of the day, they will be in the parasympathetic restful mode. That is the balance that our physiology is made for. The good thing is that the heart rate will reveal whether we are in the restful mode or the stressful mode.

It goes like this. If you’re in the restful mode, when you breathe in and you fill your lungs with oxygen, the heart rate speeds up a little bit to take advantage of that. When we breathe out, but we don’t totally empty it of oxygen, it’ll be quite significantly lower. The heart rate will slow down a little bit, measured in milliseconds, to save some energy while there’s less oxygen in the lungs. It’s detectable by these different devices.

When we are in a stressful state for whatever reason, whether you have been overtraining, quarreling with your wife, you have been eating something you can’t tolerate, it’s the week before menstruation for women, or you have been drinking alcohol, then you are in the sympathetic stressful mode. The heart beats like a metronome, like a clock. That is how these devices can determine whether we are in a restful state or a stressful state.

Coupled with algorithms and data from millions of users and artificial intelligence, they can give you an estimate of whether your stress balance is compatible with your health or not. Do you have a sustainable stress balance that will keep you healthy? The problem is that if we are in a stressful state too much of the time, then that will lead to an immune system that underperforms. It can lay the ground for all kinds of different diseases.

Essentially, we need our heart rate variability, or that’s the window into all the things that you’re talking about in terms of our mitochondrial function, cellular function, and overall health. That heart rate variability is the window into that.

That’s right. It’s a window. You can look under the hood, just like how the dashboard in your car gives you information on what goes on in your engine, the rpms, the speed, the amount of fuel you have left, and the temperature, with the old gauge. This is information that can tell you what goes on under your hood. They measure patterns of movement, heartbeats, oxygen in the blood, and temperature.

If you do not tolerate gluten well, your body will be in a statewide inflammation and will not have the resources it needs to deal with other things. Share on X

Out of the information that you have available on your wrist at all times, you can get a lot of information that is very valuable for your health. You are able to take control of a large part of your health. Not everything, of course, but the balance is in the autonomic nervous system, in your thickness level, and the strength of your mitochondria. It is the foundation of good health.

To be fully alive, you need that foundation to have good health so that you can spend your energy, your frontal lobe, or your human brain on living your life to the maximum. If you are too stressed, your body is underperforming. If you are sick, you will not be fully alive. You will not have the opportunity to do whatever you want unrestricted.

Through your research, you’ve found that most people in our world, or a lot of people in our world, are now living in a chronic state of stress. We’re spending too much time in our sympathetic nervous system, fight or flight response, or some level of that, versus being in our parasympathetic nervous system for 21 to 22 hours a day. Is that what you found to be true then?

Yeah, that’s what I found. It’s not my studies but the worldwide studies on chronic stress. That is what they find. What you will find when you start using these wearables is that the stress does not only come from mental stress. If you ask people on the street, “Are you stressed?” They will think, “Is there something in my relationship? Is there a lot of stress at work? Do I have deadlines? Is it too much I have to do compared to the time available for me?” That is okay. This will be revealed as stress on your devices.

What comes as a surprise for many people, at least for me, is how alcohol can stress you out. Alcohol is the worst stressor of all. I don’t think I’ve met anyone starting to track their heart rate variability who has not cut down on the consumption of alcohol, and minimizing it to the amount that they want to have in their lives.

Once you can see the data, it becomes obvious and evident what that’s doing to you.

What can be measured can be managed. Here you get this insight, and you can take control of this part of your health in a whole new way. It’s a way of taking control from the healthcare system, the doctors, and the practitioners, and putting it literally into your own hands. This is quite a big revolution, in my mind, on how to approach health.

Using Three Different Wearables Every Day

You’re using a Garmin watch, a WHOOP band, and an Oura ring personally. How do you use the three of those tools in conjunction with one another? What does a normal day for you look like? How often are you checking your HRV and then adapting as you go throughout the day?

I’m checking it every morning. I compare the three. I would say the most important by far is the Garmin watch. I would use Oura and WHOOP maybe as a second opinion, but also because this is my job, and it is important for me to know what they are doing. WHOOP came with their WHOOP 5.0, which has better battery time, and they have some new functions. WHOOP seems to be good at using artificial intelligence better than Garmin and Oura. They would have their pros and cons.

Both WHOOP and Oura will be better at estimating sleep phases, particularly. Overall, Garmin is the one that allows you to micromanage your stress levels in a way that, in my experience, no other device can because you can see the graphs so clearly. You have Garmin, so you know what I’m talking about. You can see exactly where the stress came in the two hours in that particular meeting or in that particular situation. You could see, “When I was with this person, I was calmer than with the other person,” and so on. You could see that, “This meal affected me more than the other meal.” What is your experience with that?

I haven’t been as familiar with your work, so I haven’t looked at my data to that level. I use it more for my training purposes and tracking my progress there and my VO2 max, if I’m training for a triathlon or something like that. I’m using it a lot for those purposes. I haven’t looked at it in the way that you’re using the data as much as I should be. I’m excited to learn that.

That sounds familiar because Garmin is developed mainly by athletes for athletes. I think most people have underestimated its value in their everyday lives. The same amount of attention towards how your heart rate works is not only for athletes, but it’s something that everybody can use because the heart rate will respond so precisely to the demands on your physiology. That’s also important for athletes. You may be exercising or trying to recover and have your focus on that, but if you don’t know that pizza, alcohol, or nicotine will destroy your recovery, then you’re struggling against the current.

It may be easier for you to cut down on alcohol or cut down on certain foods that will help you recover better, so that your energy is used on recovery and building yourself stronger, rather than your body having to deal with something that only gives it inflammation. The inflammation in your body will be revealed by your heart rate. Certain foods, like gluten, many people do not tolerate well. If you don’t tolerate gluten very well, your body is in a state of inflammation and will not have as many resources to deal with other things, like recovering better, or for your immune system, and so on.

I imagine as people become familiar with The Pulse Cure and they start tracking their HRV daily by looking at the graph throughout the day, “Here’s when it spiked, here’s when it decreased.” You probably need to be tracking what you ate and what you drank as well, so that you can see how those things might affect you.

You will learn a little bit on the way. I’ve written the book so that you don’t have to do everything on yourself, and learn from what I’ve found and from what so many other users have found. You can start with the experience of other people. You don’t have to make all the mistakes yourself. You can start by learning from our mistakes or experiences.

You’ve mapped it out for us and made a template that we can all follow. Do you check yours once a day in the morning, and see how you’re doing?

I check it in the morning, but I also keep an eye on it during the day. Now, I’m so used to it after using these devices for six years. I know more or less what will happen. For example, one thing that was a big surprise to me, being at the ER right now, is that I would think by default that working at the ER would be stressful. I wouldn’t even consider any other thought about it, but what I found with my heart rate is that this is the easiest thing I can do. I’m almost like being in a spa. I would be more stressed on the holiday than I am here working with patients.

It has been a busy day, but my body battery that Garmin watch has, I can save my body battery. It’s still quite high. I don’t know how many patients I had. It’s been a stressful day here, but my heart rate is low, so I’m doing something calm for my nervous system. Having done this work for 25-plus years is probably part of the reason. When I started out, it was probably a lot more stressful than it is now. It was a big surprise to me, but it also led me to understand that I can work more. That is not what is stressing me out. Earlier, I would think that I didn’t need to work as much at the ER, but I can do that. It’s not so stressful for me.

Embracing Calm And Using Nicotine

You’ve done this for a long time, but what else would you attribute that to? Maybe it’s because you’re living out your purpose as you’re serving patients and having fulfillment and things like that.

Probably living out my purpose, but I’m probably also moving. Here we are sitting down, taking the history and noting down the findings, and so on. You go into the other room, and you go back and forth. You’re in a good pattern of movement. Also, I’m not sitting all the time, and I’m not walking all the time either, and it’s a little bit chilly. I think that’s part of it. As I’ve done it so much, I don’t have to concentrate that much. I’ve seen most things. I also know that to be able to do this work, I have to be calm because anything can get in the door at any moment. ER work teaches you to have some sense of calmness all the time. You’re trained to be calm here.

It’s the temperature in the room, the natural movement, and a sense of calmness in your mind. You’ve lived this out yourself. You’ve lost 40 pounds, and you’ve become a much healthier person overall over the years. What are the other interventions? Once people start tracking their HRV, and seeing the things that cause spikes in their stress levels, and others, what other interventions are you recommending that people follow or that you’ve seen work the best?

One thing that I did do earlier was use nicotine. In Norway, we have a bag that we put under the lid with nicotine. I used to think it would calm me down, but I could see from my readings, even at the ER, that if I was using that, the stress would be high because of the nicotine. It will raise the resting heart rate by ten points. I can see the people who quit using this go down from a resting heart rate of 60 to 50 and so on. It’s taking a toll on our physiology. That would also be the same whether you are smoking. Not so many people do anymore. In the US, you have vaping and other kinds of nicotine. You probably know more of that than I do.

After a cold shower, your heart rate will be lower. It is the coldest way to trick your body into the parasympathetic mode. Share on X

People use little pouches like that.

You would see that very clearly in your heart rate variability. You would have to choose, “Should my organism spend energy on dealing with this, or should I use that energy for other things?” When you see that so clearly that you are drained of a certain amount of energy without you even knowing about it, then when you see it, it’s easier to be like, “I want to shut down that energy leak and spend this energy on something more productive.”

Benefits Of Cold Water Therapy

That’s extremely helpful. Are there other interventions besides cutting things out, like cold therapy? What other bio hacks or other interventions do you do personally that you’d recommend?

I do cold water therapy. I do a lot of cold showers, particularly in the winter. I can see that it’ll affect my heart rate. For quite a long time after the cold shower, my heart rate will be lower. The cold is a way to trick your body into the parasympathetic mode, which is why many athletes use cold-water therapy to recover better.

When you have been exercising hard, for example, playing soccer or whatever sport you’re doing, then that will create some inflammation in your body. To dampen that inflammation, you can go into a cold shower. Cristiano Ronaldo, the soccer player, may also be famous in the States. He uses the WHOOP band, and he will log more than 200 cold therapies in a year. For more than 200 days, he will use cold water therapy.

That would be particularly important for people in these technical sports, where they need to have a lot of time on the pitch to train and get experience in different situations in the matches. If, for example, you are working on strength training and building muscle, that would not be beneficial. That would reduce your strength because then you would need inflammation for your muscles to build themselves stronger. For a normal ice hockey player or soccer player, it is the time on the pitch that is more important than the muscles themselves. You would need to put a lot of exercise on the pitch to get the experience.

That could be useful to have the cold therapy to dampen the inflammation so that you’re ready for the next match the next day. For everybody who would be in a stressful state for other reasons in sports, it is a way to get the inflammation down, which is why a lot of people with anxiety and depression find that cold water swimming and these kinds of activities will be good for them to get the inflammation down.

It’s personalized and individualized. It’s what your goal is, what you are trying to accomplish, and what issues are that you may or may not be dealing with.

That’s right. The same would be for a hot temperature. If you go into the sauna, that would be very stressful for your body. At the same time, it’s a way of building resilience, but it’s also a demand on your body. You should think of it like an exercise, even if you’re just sitting in the hot sauna. It’ll strain your body and build itself stronger.

You would need to know the total stress levels in your life. If you already have a stressful job, you have a busy family life, you may have some disease or other things that are hard for you, then maybe going to the sauna would add stress to that. You may not have the resources to deal with that. Maybe you should instead have a cold plunge or cold water instead.

We have more energy in the summer measured by HRV because the sun has an effect on our circulatory system. Share on X

As you say, this is very individualized. These devices show you how you react to a certain factor, like the cold plunge. In my experience, a lot of people who are in a fatigue situation, for example, tolerate that a lot worse than other people. You may have an adverse reaction. It could be completely different from your friend. That one person may benefit from having a cold plunge, while the other one would be stressed by it. The watch would reveal how you react to a certain stressor.

I love that because there are all these different tips, tactics, tools, and things that are available to us now. Everyone is promoting one thing or another, but using the HRV, using data to show how we respond to it, even, like you said, at different times of year or different goals. Maybe you said you take a lot of cold showers in the winter. I’m assuming you’re not taking as many in the summer. Do you have different goals throughout the year?

That would be because in the summer, with the sun exposure, you get a lot of energy. We can see that in the heart rate variability. The heart rate variability in the summer is better than in the winter. Norway is probably on the same latitude as Alaska, I would assume, or even maybe even further to the North with as little sun exposure as you could find. When they go on holiday to the Canary Islands or the Caribbean, their heart rate variability often doubles. Many of their symptoms go away.

We have more energy in the summer, as measured in heart rate variability, because the sun affects our circulatory system. It’ll affect our mitochondria and improve them. There will be so many effects of the sunshine on our bodies. Cold climate cultures will have some cold water and heat experiences in their culture. That may be a way to deal with living in the Northern cold areas.

Importance Of Getting Enough Sun Exposure

A couple of things there I want to come back to because I know you’re working on a new book that has to do with sun exposure. Before we go into that, what about people who live in a place like where I live in Southwest Florida, where it’s sunny 300-plus days a year and hot most of the time? What would be most beneficial for people in this climate?

At least make sure that they get enough sun exposure, which would be easier. I think you had eleven or something in the UV index the other day. In Norway, it is summer, and it hasn’t even reached six on the UV index. It has been five in the middle of the day on some days. How to deal with the sun exposure in our climate compared to your climate is very different. You may only need to be outside for a much shorter time to get enough of the beneficial effects. Maybe it could be better in the morning than in the middle of the day, where exposure may be too hard.

It would depend on how much melanin you have already had. If you’re inside all the time and then go out in the middle of the day, you may be sunburned, and you want to avoid getting sunburned, but you need a certain amount of sun exposure. I’m not sure if we know what level is optimal, but some sun exposure would be optimal. I would say at least half an hour or an hour every day without getting sunburnt. It’ll have lots of effects on many of the modern diseases that we are struggling with. The biggest migration in history has not been from Europe to the US, even though there were millions of people taking that voyage.

The biggest migration is from being outside and going inside. Now, we are all living inside, like 95% of the time. For our physiology, being inside is being in a cave. Although there’s enough light that we can see, I can see that this room is quite dark. To our physiology, this is darkness because until 200 or 300 years ago, you were either outside in the sun or inside, and it was dark. The intensity in lux measured inside our houses is not enough to get the benefits outside from the energy of the sun, the electromagnetic energy that our cells are developed or throughout evolution to take advantage of in many hundreds, if not thousands, of molecular processes in our body. We have underestimated that as doctors and healthcare professionals.

We need to get outside more.

We need to get outside. A lot of the benefits from being outside, we have been looking a lot at the benefits of walking, exercising, but it seems that 90% of the benefits from being out doing something come from being outside. You get an added 10% if you are running, walking, playing tennis, or whatever. The main thing is being outside and getting that energy.

This is what your new book is going to be about. It’s around sun exposure.

VO₂ Max is a good measurement for longevity and health. If you are among the worst 25%, you have a higher chance of contracting diseases and living a short life. Share on X

Being out in Florida in 110 degrees is stressful for your body, but at the same time, you’ll get the electromagnetic energy. You also have to take into consideration the heat effect because one of the hardest things for a body is to try to get rid of heat, to avoid a heat stroke, which can be lethal. You would be able to see these things on your watch, to be able to calculate what these 2 or 3 hours out in the heat mean to my physiology.

I was on the boat for a few hours. It was the middle of the day, and it was hot. I should be looking at my data and see what it did to my heart rate variability levels, and then track it.

For example, if you had planned an afternoon run, maybe that would not be good for that day. Maybe you have spent so much energy being on that boat in the heat that it would not be a good idea. You may overstrain yourself in some fashion by going for that jog at the time. Maybe just do it the day after instead.

How To Measure VO₂ Max At First Glance

It’s super interesting and super helpful. I have a couple of other questions for you. One is that you were able to look at me on the screen via Zoom and nail my VO2 max. You knew exactly what my VO2 max was just by looking at me for a couple of minutes on the screen. How are you able to do that, and how does that help you in your work with patients?

What the Garmin watch does is measure your VO2 max quite accurately. At least compared to Oura and WHOOP, they are not as good at estimating the VO2 max. Having been in contact with so many people since my book was released in Norway, one of the questions that I ask people is their VO2 max. I can usually look at them and estimate that because, as a doctor, the people who come in here, you’re used to seeing the skin quality, you’re used to seeing how they move and react, and you know so much about what’s going on inside.

I can usually look at the person and make quite a good estimate of what their VO2 max level is, which is a measurement of their fitness level, of how well they metabolize oxygen in their mitochondria. It’s usually quite visible. It’s a game for me that I ask people to reveal that, and then I guess it before. Usually, I’m quite good at that. Your VO2 max of 50 is excellent for any age, minus 44, which is still excellent for my age at 56. What you don’t want is to be in the lower VO2 max. VO2 max is a very good measurement for longevity and health. If you are among the worst 25%, you have a lot higher chance of contracting some diseases and living a shorter life. You need good mitochondria, and you need to be fit to be healthy.

The important thing about the Garmin watch is that if you start from the point of a very low VO2 max, you tend to overestimate your capacity. When you then start jogging or playing tennis or doing some strenuous sport, your body is not recovering as fast as if you had a VO2 max of 40 or 50. If you have a VO2 max of 50 and you go out and do a hard workout, you may recover in 10 hours or 12 hours.

For one, with the VO2 max of 30, which is what, I think, if you are like 40 years old or 45 years old and you’re not exercising, that would be quite a normal starting point. If you go all in and workout hard, it may take 4 or 5 days to recover. You could do it just in 12 hours because you have an efficient body that can deal with recovery much more easily.

Finishing A Trip With The Family

Having that data available is key for us to be able to measure. This is extremely helpful. I’m excited for people to read your book, The Pulse Cure, the template that you’ve put together for all of us to follow there, to optimize our health, and use HRV as a window into overall fitness, and VO2 max. As we wrap up here, though, I’m curious. Did you ever get to finish your trip around the world with your family?

We got halfway. We were lucky because as we put the boat in Panama, another company wanted to hire our boat. For four years, the boat went on charter in the Caribbean, and I was quite often the skipper on that boat, or we had other skippers. For four years, it was doing charter. We were sailing it occasionally. In 2017, we went for a seven-month trip from the Caribbean through the Panama Canal, Galapagos, and to French Polynesia. We also sailed some more months in French Polynesia, and then COVID came. We had to sell the boat and buy a new one.

We have bought a new one, and we still want to do the circumnavigation at some point. It’s still a dream that is there. We got halfway and sold the boat. We sold the boat without the broker, the seller, or the buyer being on the boat. We only sold it from YouTube videos that we had made with our children sailing. It was interesting. We got halfway. We’ll hopefully get all around at some point.

Congratulations on that. Being a world traveler with your family, what amazing adventures and memories, and truly embodying living fully alive. Thank you for the great work that you’re doing. I’m excited to learn about the new book that you’re writing on sun exposure as well. Where can people find you? I know your book is available on Amazon, The Pulse Cure. Where else can people find you, and what else can we learn from you?

It is also available as an audiobook and an eBook if you prefer to use those platforms. I’m on Instagram, @Dr.Torkil. I’m also on a more English-only site, which is @Doc_Torkil. I have a 40,000 Norwegian one where I occasionally put out English stuff, but the @Doc_Torkil, I will develop further with only English-speaking content. I’m also on LinkedIn and so on.

This has been an amazing conversation. I’m grateful for you spending the time with us. I’m excited to implement this in my own life. Thank you for the great work that you’re doing, changing lives and saving lives, and transforming lives. Thanks so much for being on the show.

Thanks for having me. It’s an important job, spreading good information to people. Thank you.

Thanks so much.

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What a great conversation with Dr. Torkil. He is just an amazing scientist, doctor, and researcher. I’m excited to dive into his work personally for myself. I love that we can have data that shows how the things that we’re doing are affecting our stress levels. Are we spending enough time in our parasympathetic rest and digest state? Are we chronically stressed out and spending too much time in our sympathetic nervous system, in that fight or flight mode, which probably many of us live in that low-grade chronic state of stress?

Using our HRV, heart rate variability, and we have this data available to us, just a simple watch, an Oura ring, a WHOOP band, there are so many wearables now that we can have access to that are not that expensive that can give us the data and show us how are these things that we’re trying impacting us. We hear a lot about cold plunges, saunas, different diets, gluten-free foods, and all kinds of things that we’re trying. We can see, “Is this helping us? Is this hurting us? Is my goal to gain muscle right now, or to recover quickly and get back on the pitch?” We can see how these are impacting us and how they are moving us towards our goals.

I’m excited about this. I hope that you have learned as much as I did. Dr. Torkil’s book, once again, is The Pulse Cure. It’s available on Amazon and gives us that template that we can easily follow to implement some of the things we talked about. Check that out or check him out at @Doc_Torkil. We’ll have to follow his adventure and see if he can finish his trip around the world with his family as well. Thanks so much for reading. I hope that you’re enjoying living as fully alive as possible. We’ll see you next time.

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About Torkil Faero

Torkil has written the book Pulskuren and is the driving force behind the social website pulskuren.no.

He is a general practitioner, emergency doctor, documentary filmmaker, author, photographer, and globetrotter.

As a medical student, he was the first to go abroad for Norwegian Doctors Without Borders when he worked in war-torn Angola in 1996. For 25 years, he has been a freelance doctor, working in municipalities all over the country, conducting tens of thousands of consultations, and gaining a unique perspective on the diseases that plague us. He has learned that the cause is most often found in a lifestyle that stresses our body. He wanted to do something about that.

Torkil is concerned with how we can get the most out of life. In the book The Pulse Cure, he explains step by step how we can use the heart rate monitor or the smartphone to get to know our own body better and gain better control of the stress balance and the autonomic nervous system.

Torkil has been given a new life by making several intelligent lifestyle changes. He hopes that everyone who wants better health and more energy to live life to the fullest will benefit from the measures he enjoys so much. He also has a big wish for the healthcare system: that it works preventively to a much greater extent and provides more self-help resources than is the case today.

Torkil Færø is also an award-winning photographer who has published photography art books, held exhibitions and held photography workshops in many countries. He is an enthusiastic long-distance walker and has made the NRK films about pilgrimages to Nidaros and Santiago de Compostela. In his previous book, THE CAMERA CURE, he combined medical and photographic knowledge into a unique book about therapeutic photography, combining coping with life with taking good pictures. Faroe has travelled by backpack, bicycle, motorbike, kayak, boat and car in over 80 countries and speaks eight languages. Torkil is married to Tone, who is also part of the team at Pulskuren.