Top Weight Training Secrets for Overall Health & Longevity | Dr. Mark Hyman

Having and using muscle is one of the most effective ways to slow the whole aging process. Now, after age 30, you lose as much as 5% of your muscle mass per decade. But muscle is the organ of longevity. It's the currency of longevity. Those with lean muscle tend to live longer. Welcome back to another episode of the Doctor's Pharmacy and Health Bites, where we take juicy little bites into current health topics. I'm Dr. Mark Hyman. Today we're going to talk about an important topic that has transformative effects on your health. weight training. I'm not talking about being a muscle head in the gym and getting Arnold Schwarzenegger muscles. I'm talking about building strength and why that's important. And it's important because we have this enormous rise in metabolic health issues. And it's so important to understand why our metabolism is busted and how strength training and building lean muscle can be a transformative game changer for your health. Now, here's the exciting part. Weight training isn't just about achieving a certain look or fitness aesthetic. It's about creating a strong healthy foundation that can protect you against a host of diseases like diabetes, heart disease, even Alzheimer's. We're going to explore how building muscle can improve your metabolic health, enhance your mental well-being and help you age gracefully and do whatever you want when you get older. Like I just going to turn 65 this year, but I did heli skiing for the first time in my life and I could do it because I'm strong. And I want all of you to have that opportunity to not to go, oh, I'm too old. I can't do that. That shouldn't be in your sentences that you use at all. In fact, my favorite guy on Instagram is a guy called Anand Gustav who's like 78 and ripped. I'm jealous actually. Now, the benefits of strength training are profound and the science really backs it up. So coming up, I'm going to break down the basics of resistance training, how to make it accessible and manageable no matter what your fitness level. I'm going to also talk about practical tips and strategies to help you get started to stay motivated and see real results. So stay tuned as we unlock the incredible benefits of weight training for your body and your mind. Now, why is it important to focus on strength training or resistance training or weights or body weights where you have to build muscle? Why is that important? Well, we have a metabolic health crisis. That's why 93% of Americans have a busted metabolism or metabolic dysfunction. Six in 10 Americans have one chronic disease and four in 10 have more than one. Even worse, one in 10 Americans have type 2 diabetes and probably one in two have pre-diabetes or maybe even more if you're looking at the 93% depending on how you define it. So that's terrifying. 43% of Americans who are adults in here have obesity, which is terrible. That's frightening to me. We also have a diet of too much ultra processed foods, about 60% of our diet. We also have those foods accounting for about 90% of the added sugar in our diet or about 150 pounds per person of sugar per year. That's a lot of sugar. Fewer than 23% of Americans are actually meeting the recommended amount of exercise, which is defined as 150 minutes of moderate or 75 minutes of vigorous exercise per week. Our diet combined with our sedentary lifestyle is absolutely wreaking havoc on our metabolic health. And metabolic dysfunction is the root cause of obesity, of type two diabetes, of Alzheimer's, other dementias. fatty liver, kidney disease and early death. So it's just basically the thing that kills most of us, right? From cancer, heart disease, diabetes, dementia, kidney disease, many, many other things. Even high blood pressure is caused by this. Now, metabolic dysfunction leads to certain things that go on in your muscle. It becomes filled with fat. It's more like a rib eye than a filet mignon, which you do not want. Maybe to eat it, it tastes good, but not to have it in your body. Now, intramuscular fat, which is basically what most of us have, it's called being skinny fat if you're not overweight or being overweight with marbled fat. It's really associated with this phenomenon of insulin resistance, which is the biggest driver of all age-related disease and aging. It's also associated with lower amounts of strength and loss of muscle. We call it sarcopenia, one of the biggest drivers of all diseases and aging. almost never gets diagnosed. We're going to talk about how to diagnose it, what to do about it. It also drives more inflammation. So the less muscle you have, the more inflammation in your body you have, and the more risk for heart disease and many, many other diseases like dementia, cancer, diabetes, all of these are inflammatory diseases. It also makes you more tired because your mitochondria aren't working. When you have this problem of insulin resistance in the skeletal muscle, it can often be there decades before you ever see a rise in your blood sugar or get type two diabetes. so what if building up lean muscle mass with resistance training could help us avoid this metabolic health crisis? Well, it can. Muscle is more than just about looking good or portraying a fitness aesthetic. It's really a metabolic organ that secretes molecules that promote health or create disease, depending on its health and functionality. There's something called myokines you probably never heard of. Maybe you never heard of them. You've probably heard of cytokines, cytokine storm from COVID well, myokines are molecules that help regulate inflammation and your muscles secrete their own messenger molecules. There's over 600 peptides that have been identified to be secreted by the skeletal muscle. This is huge. These are called myokines. They're messenger molecules that regulate everything in our body and they're released in response to healthy muscle contraction. And the good news is they exert health promoting and metabolism enhancing effects and they're also anti-inflammatory and that's good for us. Myokines talk to our bones, they talk to our brain, they talk to our fat tissue, they help balance our hormones, our blood sugar, they support our detox system, they help our blood flow and our mental health. Now, many of the protective benefits of exercise in short and long term come from the secretion of myokines. Now, these myokines are particularly effective in the elderly. It's really important because they go down when you get older and you want to build up more of them. So let's talk a little bit about muscle. and longevity. I wrote about it in my book, Young Forever. It's a really important topic. It's something I actually didn't really want to pay much attention to until I was older, but I bit the bullet and I've done a whole effort for myself on strength training, which has really transformed my own agility, strength, stability, capacity to do things, and it's quite amazing. I wish I'd gotten into it earlier, but better late than never. Now, after age 30, you lose as much as 5% of your muscle mass per decade. most men will lose 30% of their muscle mass in their lifetime. That's a lot. But muscle is the organ of longevity. It's the currency of longevity. Those with lean muscle tend to live longer. Those with more lean muscle tend to live longer. Having and using muscle is one of the most effective ways to slow the whole aging process. Now, what else is exercise good for in strength training? Well, it's good for your brain. Now, one of the things we see a lot in people with Alzheimer's and dementia is sarcopenia. and the loss of strength. And that's why in studies, resistance exercise has been shown to improve cognitive function and memory in the elderly with cognitive decline. So what's the mechanism here? How does it actually do this? Well, it boosts something called BDNF. That stands for brain-derived neurotrophic factor. It's like miracle growth for the brain. Now, in human studies, resistance exercise for about 12 weeks to about six months has been shown to increase this BDNF, or brain-derived neurotrophic factor. And that promotes neuroplasticity, which is the reorganizing, rewiring of your brain's neural networks, which is good connections between brain cells. It also helps stimulate neurogenesis, which is the formation of new nerve cells. So basically you get new brain cells and you get better connected brain cells that are smarter. One study found much higher levels of BDNF even just after one resistance training session. That's not bad. Now it also reduces the expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines. that are bad for your brain. Exercise also enhances the clearance of something called amyloid beta plaques, which is one of the known pathologies of Alzheimer's. And it doesn't just hold up for older folks, right? We don't just want older folks to exercise, everybody needs to do it. It also works on young people too. A systematic review and meta-analysis reported a small but positive effect on the cognitive and academic performance in adolescents who participated in resistance training and association between muscular fitness and academic achievement. that's pretty interesting. If you're more muscularly fit, you do better in school. Not bad. Same is reported for university students. Resistance training is associated with improved attention, concentration, memory, with enhanced language and math skills. Not bad. And the way it works is it's regulated by the production of certain neurotransmitters and neuromodulators, things that affect your brain function that are resulting from exercise like lactate. BDNF, something called IGF-1, which is a growth hormone regulator, vascular endothelial growth factor, or VEGF, which helps your blood vessels stay healthy. Acetylcholine, which is a neurotransmitter, dopamine, epinephrine, serotonin, all these are neurotransmitters. So that's all good. It also increases blood flow in the brain. Now, there is something called a healthy user bias, so that may be a factor, but maybe it's the students who do resistance training tend to be more physically active, maybe they eat healthier, maybe that's why they're doing better in school possible, but I guarantee you exercise is having a role. What else is strength training and exercise good for? Well, your mental health. We know that resistance training has antidepressant effects and research actually tells us that exercise is as more effective than counseling or medication for alleviating depression or anxiety. That's pretty damn good. So better than counseling, which makes you cheaper, and better than medications, which often have side effects. In fact, one review published in the British Medical Journal included more than a thousand randomized clinical trials. There are about 120,000 people in those trials. It was the most comprehensive study on mental health and exercise ever done. And what they found was moderate intensity and what we call HIIT training, which is high intensity interval training, offered more mental health improvements than lower intensity exercise. So workouts weren't long, just 30 minutes daily most days of the week. And I did one this morning, it was a super high intensity workout. with bands and strength training where I also did cardio as part of it because I'm doing it very quickly and you get your heart rate up like mine was up to 167. All that counts. Now, all types of physical activity were helpful, but resistance training offered the biggest benefit for depression. Now, studies report greater self-acceptance. They report personal growth, flow state, social affiliations and connections, and autonomy in your life from lifting weights. Not bad. What else is strength training good for? Well, the list goes on and on. It's good for your heart. The American Heart Association recently released a scientific statement that resistance training can actually reduce all cause and cardiovascular mortality. It means death from any cause and death from heart disease. Now, when you combine resistance training with aerobic exercise, you get double the benefits. A 40 to 46% reduction in all cause and cardiovascular mortality versus about a 29% benefit from strength training. alone or 18% from cardiovascular exercise alone. Resistance training also improves other factors that relate to cardiovascular health like blood pressure. It reduces your diabetes risk. It improves your triglycerides and cholesterol. It helps your mood, your body composition, your blood sugar control, inflammation, sleep, blood vessel health, the quality of your life and overall level of fitness. So, it's pretty darn good. And what else is strength training good for? Well, sex. It's good for your sex hormones. Aging beyond 30 to 40 years is associated with a 1 to 3% decline per year in circulating testosterone concentration in men. So as you get older, your testosterone levels drop if you're a guy. Now this decline really results in a condition known as andropause, which is just like menopause but for men. And studies show that immediately after resistance exercise training, your testosterone levels can increase significantly depending on the intensity and duration of that strength training. The acute spike is temporary, lasts about 30 to 60 minutes after exercise, but over time, resistance training and doing it regularly has increased resting baseline testosterone levels in men, especially when combined with adequate nutrition and recovery. And that does a lot of good things for you. It improves your libido and sex drive, your blood flow, sexual performance. So when resistance training is combined with aerobic exercise in a series of trials, men experience a 50% improvement in their erectile dysfunction which is great. You don't need Viagra. Resistance training helps counteract age related declines in testosterone because it preserves muscle mass and strength as men age. And maintaining lean muscle mass is really important to maintain and sustain healthy testosterone production because that's what happens when you exercise your muscle, you make more testosterone. On the other hand, endurance based exercises like steady state cardio don't really increase testosterone levels as much. In women, same thing. Resistance training stimulates the release of testosterone. It also helps increase estrogen, which is important for maintaining bone health for postmenopausal women. And it balances the ratio of estrogen to testosterone and improves insulin sensitivity, which helps a lot of women's health issues like PCOS and irregular menstrual cycles. So in a review on resistance training in women with PCOS, which is common and causes infertility, irregular cycles, acne, facial hair, and a lot of things. Researchers found that resistance training interventions improved insulin sensitivity in these women, improved their functional strength, and led to fat loss around the belly we call visceral fat, which is really important for managing PCOS because it's really not an ovarian problem, it's a nutritional problem related to insulin resistance. Exercise and strength training is also good for your immune system. Now, resistance training boosts immune function. It helps the body better fight infections. It reduces inflammation throughout your body, so it's great. And it also has been shown to improve the function of various immune cells, such as your natural killer cells, which are roaming around fighting cancer and infections, and your T cells, which enhances your body's ability to fight infections and all sorts of diseases. It also boosts your body's production of antioxidant enzymes, your body's own antioxidant system, like superoxide dismutase or SOD, glutathione peroxidase. These are enzymes your body makes, but when you exercise with strength training, it increases their activity. And by enhancing these antioxidant defenses, resistance training lowers your oxidative stress levels, it protects your cells, it helps your mitochondria stay protected, and helps them from all the damage that can accelerate aging. Okay, so that's a lot of benefits. Your heart, your brain, your mood, sex, pretty much everything, weight loss, metabolism, it's just kind of a panacea, right? It's amazing. If there was a drug that did all that, It would be a trillion dollar drug, trust me. And yet, you know what? It's available to you anywhere, anytime. All you need is your body weight and you can do it. I mean, you can do other stuff too, but it's easy to get started. So let's talk about how to get started with strength training. You don't have to lift like a bodybuilder to get the benefits. You don't have to be in the gym all day. Studies actually show that people can maintain strength and muscle with as little as 30% of their one rep max, as long as they push themselves to momentary fatigue. So you've gotta kinda get your muscles tired. So what is a one rep max? I think of it as a point where you can't do another repetition with good form. You might be able to get the weight up one or two more times by sacrificing technique and contorting your body, but that's not necessary and it also puts you at risk for injury. So you don't need to worry about the amount of weight you're lifting. That's why bands, light dumbbells, even your body weight can all be effective ways of working out. Now how much resistance training do you need to do to see results? Well, in terms of minimum effective dose, it's actually not a lot. If you just want to maintain the strength you have, research shows that just one workout per week, one set per exercise is gonna do the trick. So it's really a minimum viable dose. I don't recommend that low dose, but that's just to maintain where you are. Now, the caveat here is that the one set needs to be all out. So again, you push your muscles to fatigue so you can't do another rep, or if you did it, it would be bad form. Now, if you're a beginner, you can just do a full body workout plan using all the muscle groups in your body, all the major muscle groups one day a week. And you can do more. And there's just common simple exercises, right? Squats, pushups, we call bent over rows, lunges, planks, dumbbell shoulder press, bicep curls, tricep dips, super simple set of things. You might not need to know everything about how to do them. You can learn on YouTube. You probably want to get I'm gonna show you if you don't know what you're doing, but it's really important. Now, what about maintaining your muscle? So you just wanna maintain your muscle, you know, basically one day a week for 20, 35 year olds is fine. But as you age, you're gonna need more. It's just the way it goes. That's the bad news about aging. You can stay fit and healthy and strong, but you need to eat more protein and you need to do more exercise, so not less. 60 to 75 year olds will need two workouts a week with two to three sets per exercise. And I encourage people to actually do more, probably three to four times a week. One day you can do upper body like bench press, bent over rows, overhead press, bicep curls. One day you can do lower body like squats, deadlifts, lunges, leg press. What about increasing strength and muscle size? If you just want to increase and not just maintain, for most people lifting weights three to four times a week is going to help you significantly increase muscle and strength and give you lots of the health benefits that we talked about associated with resistance training. It's also a good strategy when you're trying to lose weight. Now some resistance training is better than none. So make sure you set realistic goals that align with your life, break down bigger goals into smaller parts, where are you currently, where do you want to be, what's the best way to get there, take baby steps and so forth. You know, I actually never liked resistance training. I never liked the gym. I thought it was smelly. I was intimidated because I was kind of a skinny guy and I didn't really feel good going to the gym with all the big guys with all the muscles. So I kind of avoided it. But I started doing straight training. I joined a gym, I got a trainer, I learned the basic mechanics. I worked then with bands, especially during COVID and I got really strong, just doing three to four days a week at home. It took me 30 minutes in and out, really simple. And I didn't even have to drive to the gym. So I think encourage you to learn how to do this. It's critical. And there's just so many resources out there. There's just no excuse. So how do you make resistance training work with your schedule? Well, I travel a lot. I bring my bands with me everywhere. They're basically a pound or less this big, and I bunch them up and they fit in my suitcase even a day. carry on or a light suitcase. You can use body weight workouts, plank, squats, push-ups and also block out the time that works for you. Even if it's only 15 minutes broken up into five minute chunks throughout the day, just do something, right? Maybe you look at your roadblocks, work, your kids schedule, events, holidays. You know, I want to start doing push-ups and I just was busy and I just didn't like exercise and I'm like, okay, I'm gonna take it every day. I take a shower and I usually takes a minute for the shower to heat up my house. So I have like a couple of minutes while it's warming up. And in those couple of minutes, I would get on the floor and I would do push-ups as many as I could possibly do. And that was great. And it really helped me get into the string training at a very low friction level, or I would do tricep dips just in my bathroom on the bench. So really simple stuff to get started. So you just make sure you do a commitment to yourself and hold yourself accountable and do something, right? A fast-paced walk around the neighborhood. with weights on your body, just do 15 push-ups, 25 air squats, something, just do something. Okay? Now, what else do you need to do to build muscle? Strength training for sure, and 75% of our muscle mass is related to strength training, but the other 25%, and this is a key 25% comes from our diet. Now, we need to make sure we're eating enough protein to build muscle back up. You need to eat muscle to build muscle. It's just how it goes. It contains all the building blocks to build muscle. you can get plant protein, but you have to supplement it with amino acids that you find in animal protein in order to have the right combination to build muscle and turn on the muscle building switch or what we call muscle protein synthesis. And you need about 1 gram per pound of ideal body weight if you're trying to build muscle. You can do 0.7 if you're already there and maybe you don't need as much, but basically 0.7 to 1 gram per pound of ideal body weight is what you want to do. If you don't like working out of the gym, which I don't really like, try other things. You can do rucking. It's probably the best exercise most people don't know about. That's putting a backpack on with weights. Add loads for your muscles and bones, increases demand on your heart for a brisk walk. So it's great. And it's been shown to be helpful for back health and it doesn't require a lot of special skills. You just get a weighted vest or something that actually maybe is better. You can throw weights in a backpack. That can be a little hard on your body sometimes. and just go for a hike somewhere where there's mountains or hills. Yoga also can be helpful. I did a lot of yoga for my life. I didn't find it to build a lot of muscle, but if you're really aggressive with it, I think you can. Now, does all this sound too intimidating? Maybe you don't have time in your schedule. Maybe you can try exercise snacks. Now, what are exercise snacks? Well, exercise snacks are isolated bouts of vigorous exercise lasting less than a minute. and they performed periodically throughout the day. Just like snacking, right? But this is a good kind of snack. Exercise snacks can help offset the effects of sitting all day. Now, the feasibility and time efficiency of exercise snacks makes them really suitable for incorporating between activities of daily life, right? And it leaves you the need for planning and allocating all kinds of leisure time for structured exercise. So every hour, maybe have 10 to 20 air squats, stand at your desk, get your heart rate up by going for a brisk walk. take the stairs, bring resistance bands to your office, you know, do all those things. It's all possible to incorporate into your life. So bottom line here, folks, is that if you're a human being, you got to build muscle. We evolved using our bodies. When we don't use them, they disintegrate and dissolve, and that leads to rapid aging and a whole host of diseases and adverse health outcomes. And it's entirely preventable. And like I said, my, my heroes on Instagram, I don't really look at Instagram that much, but. My heroes are the the older bodybuilders and weightlifters. I'm just so amazed. I saw some 90 year old guy deadlifting like 400 pounds. I'm just blown away. So we have the capacity. We just have to use it or we lose it. And if we get the problem of sarcopenia, it's the beginning of the end for us. So so I hope you got the message and you'll take it seriously. So that wraps up today's episode of Health Hacks. I hope you're excited as I am about the incredible benefits of weight training. Remember, just incorporating 150 minutes of moderate exercise every week can significantly impact your health. And thanks to weight training, you can improve your insulin sensitivity, you can reduce the risk of chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease, and you can promote the secretion of these things called myokines, which are amazing. They have anti-inflammatory effects on the body and many other things. And regular resistance training can help you maintain strong bones, supports cognitive function, boosts your mood, and lots of other good things, even helps your sex life. So keep tuning in for for more insights into how you can take control of your health in ways that empower and rejuvenate. Thanks again for joining me today and see you next Friday for another juicy episode of Health Bites. If you loved that last video, you're gonna love the next one. Check it out here.