The Benefits Of Strength Training And How to Get Started

Coming up on this episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy.

Strength training improves your mood, helps prevent dementia, increases neuroplasticity, makes new brain cells, obviously improves your muscle strength, your bone health, so it can steam off osteoporosis.

And prevent you from being frail as you get older. It helps with sleep. Hey everyone, it's Dr. Mark. Now the basis of any healing protocol should be whole, real food, but with all the GMO foods and lung transportation, storage times and monoculture farming methods, depletion of our soils. Foods not as nutritionally dense as it once was, even good stuff. And that's why I recommend supplementing a Whole Foods diet with a high quality multivitamin as a basis for any health oriented program. And the product I personally use comes from methylenic greens. Their ag1 supplement has 75 different nutrients that work together to fill out the gaps in our diet. I take ag1 every day and I've noticed that I consistently feel better and have more energy throughout the day. Plus, it works with any diet keto, paleo, vegan skin, dairy free, even gluten free. Ag1 is a simple, easy way to optimize your health. Right now, Athletic Greens is giving away 10 free travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit athleticgreens.com forward slash hymen. Again, that's athleticgreens.com forward slash hymen. Now, I know a lot of you out there are healthcare practitioners like me helping patients heal using real food and functional medicine as the framework for getting the root cause of the issues. Now, in my practice, this often means looking at lots of internal variables to find the most effective path to health and reverse disease. But up until now, that meant we were usually ordering tests for one patient from multiple labs. Now, I'm sure many of you can relate to how time consuming and complicated lab ordering can be for functional medicine practitioners like me and our patients. That's why I love using Rupa Health. With just a few clicks, I can order from 30 plus lab companies. That's over 3,000 tests for free in one single portal. That means one invoice for all labs paid online up front. Plus, patients get practitioner pricing and receive full patient support through easier personalized collection instructions, automated follow-up, super and answers to testing questions and so much more. Just go to rupahealth.com, that's r-u-p-a-health.com, to sign up for your free account today. And now let's get back to this.

Week'S episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy. Welcome to the Doctor's Pharmacy. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman. That's Pharmacy with a place for conversations that matter. And if you ever wondered about what kind of exercise you should do to extend your life, to stay functional, to stave off and reverse chronic disease. Well, you better listen up because we're gonna talk about that today because we're talking about strength training. And now, if there were a pill for longevity that would treat every single one of the major factors that goes wrong as we age in that pill would be bottled up exercise. Now, certain forms of exercise are far more effective at optimizing our health, our metabolism, and making us live longer. Now, aerobic conditioning is really important, but there's strength conditioning, muscle mass, how much muscle we have, and our flexibility and agility. These are all important parts of our functional health as we get older and for staying functional. Because the key is you want to be able to get up the floor, off the floor. You want to be able to get out of your chair. You want to be able to play with your grandkids. You want to be able to do the things you want to do in life and not be restricted. by poor function. Now, one of the reasons exercise is so powerful in activating all of our ancient healing mechanisms and reversing disease and turning on all our longevity pathways is that it works by this process we call hormesis, which is essentially an idea that it's a stress that doesn't kill you but makes you stronger. When you run like a maniac, you're stressing your body, but you're also making it more efficient, stronger and better. When you lift weights or use your body weight or have resistance training, you're tearing muscle fibers but then end up causing a rebound effect to make you stronger. So these are really important and strength training is one of the best practices for hormesis. So let's talk about why it's important. Why is building muscle? Why is maintaining muscle? Why is making your muscle work better such an essential part of health and longevity? It's because of this process that happens if we don't do it, if we don't lift weights, if we don't use body weight, if we don't use bands, if we don't do some kind of resistance training, we end up losing muscle. We lose muscle progressively from our 30s right until we die if we don't do something to counteract it. And this process of muscle loss is called sarcopenia. Sarcopenia means just less muscle. Sarco means muscle in Latin, I think.

I don't remember.

Peony means less. So sarco peony like osteoporosis, osteopenia, sarcopenia. Now it's pretty much ignored by medicine. I didn't learn much about it in medical school. I learned about osteoporosis and people don't really talk about it. But it actually is the most important thing you need to learn because your muscle is an enormous metabolic organ. It's the biggest metabolic organ, an organ in your body, period. It has so many functions other than just moving your bones around and walking and mobilization. It's a profoundly active metabolic organ. It's a hormonal organ. It's an immune organ. It's a neurotransmitter organ. It's essential to work properly for you to be healthy and it provides all our energy. So when you lose muscle, it's one of the key accelerators of rapid aging disease. And unless we actually learn how to build muscle through the right diet, which includes the right amount of protein at the right time with the right balance of amino acids, which is super critical because not all protein is created equal. Just like all fats not created equal, all carbohydrates are created equal, all protein is not equal, right? If you have trans fat like margarine, that's deadly. If you have omega-3 fats, that's incredibly powerful healing compound in the body. Same thing, fat, but very different effect. Carbohydrates, broccoli is a carbohydrate. So is white flour or white sugar. They have profoundly different effects on the body. Same thing with protein. So it's important that all protein isn't lumped into one. Vegetable proteins are very different than animal protein. And by the way, it's the only nutrient we need at macro levels. We need omega-3 fats. at micro levels, a few grams a day. We need no carbohydrate. There's no biological requirement for carbohydrate. If you stopped eating any carbohydrate, your body would make what you need and you don't need any to get from diet. Protein is the only macronutrient you need in large amounts to survive. Like, you know, like a lot of it. So a hundred grams, not a few milligrams, right? So this is, this is really, really important to understand. And you have to have the right kind of protein, but you also need the right kind of exercise. Now, when you lose muscle, what happens? You get more insulin resistant, so more pre-diabetic. You slow your metabolism. You have higher stress hormone, cortisol. You have lower growth hormone, which is the hormone to repair, rebuild, and renew your tissues. You have lower testosterone, so you actually end up in a vicious cycle of losing more muscle. and having replaced with fat, you have increased inflammation. And so you have all these horrible things that happen that are related to aging that increase diseases in general. But when you lose muscle, you also get weaker and more frail and disabled and immobile and you lose your independence and you end up more in the hospital or nursing home. It's because of this muscle loss, sarcopenia. So we've got to fight this entropy related age related loss of muscle function and of muscle mass. And we have to do it with resistance training. Now, there's a lot of ways to do that, weights and bands and body weight, and there's a lot of ways to do it. But we have to do it in combination with eating the right amount of protein. Now, if we don't build more muscle, we're going to waste away, guaranteed. It's basically use it or lose it. Now, I personally thought, okay, I'm running, I'm playing tennis, I'm biking, I do yoga. that's kind of strength training. I'm like, I don't really like the gym. It's smelly, it's stinky. A lot of big guys with big muscles that kind of intimidate me. I just, I better not do that. I'm a skinny guy. So I basically never went in the gym. And on occasion, I was like, I'm going to try to lift weights or do push-ups and then I would do it and I would hurt like heck for five days or 60 days. I'm like, I'm not doing this. So it was really bad. But then I decided about 60 years old that I better get on it. And, and now at 63, I, I'm habituated to strength training. It doesn't take me much time. I've dramatically increased my muscle mass, my agility, my strength, my stability, my core. I mean, it's pretty amazing. And I feel way more fit and strong than I did when I was 40 or younger. So basically, how does this work? Well, the idea of hormesis is that when you stress yourself, the body has to respond by activating some kind of healing response to deal with the stress, which is a good thing. And it's kind of a miracle how it's designed. We have this innate healing mechanisms that are designed to respond to difficult situations. We've had to deal with way more stressors from an evolutionary point of view than we ever had Comforts. Right. We have way more genes that adapt us to starvation than to an abundance of food. right? So it's just how we're designed and you have to activate those healing systems and they're degraded by our diet, by our environment, by our lack of exercise. But the science is really discovering how do we activate these pathways? How do we do that? And one of the key ideas around health, around longevity, whether it's hot and cold therapy, whether it's hypoxia therapy, whether it's hyperbaric oxygen, whether it's fasting or time-restricted eating, and of course, exercise is these are stresses. And the idea that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger is such a central idea for longevity when your system's stressed a little, not too much. Obviously, you don't want to go lift like 300 pounds and throw out your back, right? You don't want to go in 30-degree water for two hours. You're going to die of hypothermia. So you have to have the right dose and the right amount and do it properly so you don't hurt yourself. But you have to understand how to use exercise to activate these hormesis pathways. There's two real important ways. One is HIIT training, which is intensive cardiovascular fitness, and that works by increasing the VO2 max and your mitochondrial efficiency and your ability to burn calories. It's really important. But strength training is also really important. If I would probably pick between the two, I probably hate to say it, but I probably pick strength training. especially as you get older, it's one of the most powerful things you can do. And you don't want to choose, but if you have to choose, and I do actually a HIIT strength training routine, which I get both cardio and exercise kind of strength, I kind of cheat, but it's okay. So we know really deeply how this works. What does strength training do? How does it improve all the hallmarks of aging? How does it look at the root causes of disease and aging? I talked about this. book Young Forever. If you haven't gotten a copy yet, please get a copy. It's the number one New York Times bestseller. Thanks to all of you. Thank you so much. And here's how it works. Exercise improves your mitochondria, which are important to produce energy in your body. And as we age, we lose mitochondria in terms of both their number and their function. So they become less efficient and we get fewer of them. So when we do strength training, we build up more muscle and we get more mitochondria and we make them work better. which is really, really important. It also improves your blood pressure, cholesterol, lowers risk of heart disease, strength training improves your mood, your motivation, your cognitive function increases something called BDNF, which increases like miracle growth for your brain. It helps prevent dementia by doing that as well and increases neuroplasticity, makes new brain cells. It's pretty impressive actually. Obviously improves your muscle strength, your bone health so it can stave off osteoporosis, and prevent you from being frail as you get older. It helps with sleep, helps with libido and sexual function because it helps testosterone boosting in men and women. There's a lot of benefits to strength training. So what should you do to incorporate strength training into your routine, into your exercise routine? Well, just first understand that preserving muscle, building muscle, optimizing muscle function are the keys to the fountain of youth. So try something, anything, please, weightlifting, resistance bands, body weight, those are the three main ones. And there's a lot of things like TRX and this is often using body weight. But I love it and I find my body works better, it feels better. And I don't really like going to the gym that much. Sometimes I go, but I basically do a home strength training program. I use Tom Brady's system called TB12 Sports. You buy the bands online. you can get the app for 50 bucks. I don't have any relationship with them. I'm not selling it for them, but basically it's changed my life. So that's why I love it. And it's portable. I travel with it everywhere. I can use it any place, a hotel room, any place. There's a floor and a doorknob, basically. And it's incredible. And I find I can do my routine in half an hour. I'm in and out, and I. I love it. And I feel so good afterwards. The bands tend to cause less injuries. Then you get older, you might be more prone to injury. You can start with lighter bands and work up to heavier bands, but if you haven't done any strength. training. And I started off working with somebody to make sure my form was right, that I was doing it right, that I had my body position right, because you can hurt yourself. So you want to make sure you do it properly. Never too late to start. My dad was like 89. He was, couldn't get up out of a chair. He was sort of frail. And I'm like, Hey, Dad, you know, I know you walk every day, but you need to do strength training. And I got him a trainer and he got so much fitter. We were end up playing tennis at 89 years old. Pretty impressive. So what puts people in nursing home is not a disease usually, it's their lack of ability to do their daily activities. And that's what you don't want, right? You want to have high function. What is the biggest risk factor for death as you get older? One of the things is falling. If you fall and break your hip, it's like getting a terminal diagnosis of cancer, like pancreatic cancer. You're basically 50% likely to die in a year. It's really bad news. So you don't want to fall. If you have more muscle, you can brace yourself. You can resist your falls. You probably won't fall. so basically try to do three times a week of strength training, 20 to 30 minutes and helps in every possible way in terms of your fat burning, muscle function, energy, longevity pathways. It's dope. So whatever you do for any of your health practices, aside from what you eat, this is one of the most important. And if I had to sort of pick two things to do for longevity, it would be cut out starchy sugar and and eat the right protein to get muscle building and strength training, do strength training. And let's just talk about protein for a minute. You know, I wish it were true that you could get all the protein you need from beans and grains and plant foods to get the proper muscle building as you get older. It's just not possible. You need to eat enormous amounts of plant foods. You have to have six cups of brown rice to get 30 grams of protein. You have to have two cups of beans to get 30 grams of protein. You just can't get enough. However, you can if you have protein powders, so you can get plant protein powders, and if they have added to them the right amino acids, particularly leucine, which is a rate limiting amino acid for building muscle, and that's super important to get. If you have seen all these big bodybuilders who are vegans, that's how they do it. It's not from eating greens and beans. They have all these extra supplemental proteins in order to actually build muscle. So it's possible, but you have to know what you're doing. You just need the right physiological compounds to build muscle and it's just science. There's no debate here about what the science is. You can go look in my book Young Forever. I quoted all the studies, look at the data, the review of all the data by the top world's protein experts and this is just how it works. So, make sure you have protein about an hour or two after you do strength training. And, I love whey protein. It's my favorite. I use goat whey but that's a great way to build your muscle. So, I hope you've enjoyed this health bite about exercise and strength training. A heavy lift, I know, pun intended, but strength training is one of the most powerful hormetic therapies you can possibly engage in. It creates health, extends your life, it's available to everybody. So if you want to be healthy, live a long time, and prevent frailty and disability as you age, get moving and get lifting. All right, that's it for today's health bite. Hope you enjoyed it, hope I inspired you, and tell us how you found strength training or Resistance training to help your health, what's happened to you, share this with your friends and family, leave a comment about that, benefits you found, and subscribe wherever you get your podcast and we'll see you next week on the Doctor's Pharmacy. Hey everybody, it's Dr. Hyman.

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