Testing Your Longevity: Older or Bolder

Real quick, before we dive into this episode, I have a little sleep secret I want to tell you about. Look, sleep is crucial for your fitness, but it's crucial for just plain old everyday life and function.

And I find I sleep great unless I have a migraine.

And I've had more than my fair share since perimenopause all the way through postmenopause. My secret weapon was Blue Sky CBD sleep gels. Each gel contains 25mg of CBD and 25mg CBN for deep restorative sleep. Something about it helps to reduce inflammation, which I believe for me was key in helping me get to sleep. But the biggest thing is so many of the over-the-counter solutions, whether for sleep or migraines, can ruin gut health, and liver health. Neither one of those did I want to be problematic for me. So this option is recommended by healthcare providers worldwide and backed by thousands of happy customers, many of whom come from our Flipping 50 community. There is zero THC, so it's non-habit-forming. It's made by a trusted family-owned company that we all can feel good about. Third-party tested for purity and potency.

And if you're interested, you too can try a sample for just $6.

But even better, you can get 30% off forever with discount code FLIPPING50.

That's FLIPPING50.

Just go to flipping50.com/blueskycbd. We'll put that link in the show notes and you'll find it everywhere on Flipping 50 at My Favorites.

What are you waiting for? Good night. Happy New Year, friends. This episode kicks off the new year with something that we all seem to be so interested in, well, right behind belly fat, and that is longevity. Is it me? Just me? Or is it even 30-somethings right now seem to be trying to reverse aging? Unpacking all that, and that it is and isn't, could be a philosophical episode all on its own. But instead, no matter when you're listening, I thought we'd take a look at 4 ways to test your longevity at home if you want to. Now, these tests are not foolproof, so if you have old injuries or a condition, you won't be able to do one or more of them. And yet, say some researchers, that's exactly the point, that it's the reason to pay attention, close attention to the things that you can control. So knowing is good, but also please don't let this discourage you. It's not too late. An article in Inc. magazine recently got my attention the other day. Apparently a 60-year-old startup founder. So you're 60, you decide you wanna start a business this year in 2024, go you. Right? A 60-year-old startup founder is 3 times as likely to found a successful startup as a 30-year-old startup founder, and 1.7 times more likely to have it wind up in the top 0.1% of all companies. What? Yes. So if you're closer to 60 and you're thinking it's too late for me, not so much. You have better odds of having a successful company than somebody who's 30. That message is to all of those who are contemplating second careers, getting in later in their career to the Flipping 50 Menopause Fitness Specialist. I love it. So you can't do that though— found a successful company, start it, run it, operate it— sick, old, tired, or with stale ideas. So whether you're one of our healthpreneurs or not, you're at an advantage if you're truly healthy, no matter what you're doing in your life. Can you do 20 pushups? Can you sit and stand barefoot on the floor? And can you walk a minimum of 3.3 miles per hour? And could you hang from a pull-up bar for at least 30 seconds? Do you know the answer to that? Listen, you're not only going to live longer, but you can probably run your business or family or home and organizations that you volunteer for like a boss if you can. The first quarter of 2024, the Flipping 50 membership is going to focus on benchmarking, improving, and retesting. In addition to testing those progress chart tracking that we always encourage. Those are your measurements, and generally we do that on the right side— say your triceps, your thigh, your calf. Super important. We also look at body composition, percent body fat, and if you can wiggle deeper in that with your smart scale. You also want to look at your lean muscle mass, not as a percentage but as an absolute. I want to know if your lean muscle mass in pounds, or depending on where you are in the world, kilograms, went up, went down, or stayed the same, and you at least preserved it, because never ever ever do I want your lean muscle mass to go down from this point forward. I know, and you have to work a little harder, be a little bit more conscious in order to do that, but you will never know if you're not tracking it. And that's a really important thing for you to start doing in 2024. Set that on a must-do, must-have— a smart scale. And you also want those objective measures of your health. We ask questions about your sleep, your digestion, elimination, because gut health is also really, really important, but also your stress, your libido, and so many other things. We are targeting these longevity tests so you can join us. And actually, you can join us in the membership if you're listening before January 6th. So January 5th is our last day. We're open enrolling for annual membership or the monthly option, and It is a renewing subscription, but with monthly, you can cancel at any time. I don't know why you would, 'cause we want you to love it. But you can also start this at home or inside the membership, we're having a virtual retreat on the weekend of the 13th and the 14th, so you're all invited. All right, so here's number 1 of this test, are you ready? So pushups, can you do 20 pushups? For females, this is the goal. And it's an estimated, based on male-only study, of course we're still behind, finding 40 push-ups for men significantly decreased the risk of cardiovascular issues. Further, it was a better indicator than a submaximal treadmill test, which notoriously— if that doesn't really mean anything to you, I mean, think about the direct, you know, relationship between being on the treadmill doing some kind of cardio exercise, you would think, and we always have, that you're actually giving a— getting a better measure of your cardiovascular fitness by doing so. But apparently not. So while your VO2 capacity, and that is your ability to use oxygen, your maximum ability— we lose it over age. So, you know, you at 50 You don't have the same VO2 you had when you were 20. It's associated with longevity. Assessing VO2 max is limited to those at first with access to a lab and a clinical setting where you're supervised. Generally, there's a doctor on hand. Yeah, that ought to hint how, uh, challenging it is. And it has to be given to somebody who is highly motivated to endure the discomfort that a true test requires. So imagine this, you're on a treadmill and, you know, if you've had a heart event or someone you love has, you've probably been through this. There's a cart, like a metabolic cart next to you. Do you know what that means? That means like paramedics could use it in case. But you are hooked up to potentially two electrodes in that case. But if you are just doing a VO2 max, you are basically up at this helmet on, your nose is clipped so You absolutely can't breathe from that. You're breathing in through your mouth and expiring through your mouth. So they're measuring the CO2 and then taking you up levels of exercise. So it's certainly not like going out for a walk or going out for a run. Even if you're a runner, you're uncomfortable doing this test. You could also do the same thing on a bike, no less, no less uncomfortable. It's just, you're drooling, you're hot, you're sweaty. You want that helmet off, your nose is plugged. It's, Have I painted a picture that's so attractive you can't wait? Okay, so push-ups are so much easier, maybe. So what's the pro, you know, in a push-up test? Because there's pros and cons to each one of these. The push-up test is, it's really a test of multiple things, including your upper body strength, of course, but your core. Your core is responsible for about 60% of good form and ability to do a push-up. So overall, it's a functional use of your body. If you can do it horizontally, right, then good form and posture vertical is far more likely. So the cons of a push-up, if you're at all compromised, as many are, with the ability to stabilize your shoulder blades, your scapula, or with shoulder rotator cuff issues, you know, you can't maintain good form from head to toe, the push-up can be injurious or worse, you know, poor body mechanics at best, you know. And so why would we ever throw a test at you that we know might cause an injury? I think that's something we always have to ask in fitness. It's like doctors first do no harm. So I would much rather— here's my flip— I would much rather see that we can do pull-ups than we do push-ups. Pulling our own body weight up, I mean It's our body weight, we should be responsible for that. And a lot fewer injuries occur doing that. Second test, okay? So you could do this one at home, by the way, jotting this down, or you're gonna do it with us on the 13th and 14th if you can. The second one is your walking pace. Can you walk a pace between 3 and 4 miles per hour, which is an interesting way to relay it, but this is the way the study actually relayed it. To get serious, in previous studies that I've delved into related to bone density, because we talk about that so much in masterclasses throughout the year, it's actually a speed of 3.3 that supports bone density. And we've got to be going a brisk enough pace. And I, for many of you, I would not call 3.3 brisk, but it depends on a lot of things. You know, it depends on your body weight, you know, your body size, your mobility. 3.3 can feel very fast depending on who you are. So take this into account: 3.3 supports bone density while slower paces don't. And there is some mobility, you know, we lose much of this mobility and stability as we age. Gait changes are something that's very related to likelihood to fall. You know what's called the senior shuffle, you've watched it, you know, they're keeping their feet mostly on the ground. And/or when I think of this, I think of some, an older person more stooped forward and leaning on a walker, moving the walker forward and then sliding the feet forward as well. But those who are ambulatory and walking on their own means still often do this. So if you're over 60, pay attention. The effect of slow versus fast walk— so they're defining fast as at least 3 miles per hour. They, they say this is 3 to 4 miles per hour, which is ridiculous. I mean, it— when you give a range, that doesn't say much. So it's got to be at least 3 miles per hour. It's even more pronounced in reducing all-cause mortality. So if you can walk at a fast walk, you're 53% better off. If you're walking slow, you're not quite at 3.3. And what this is, is not just for a minute or, you know, a bit. It is for a mile. Can you sustain it? What's your average pace? So do a mile on a treadmill or map out a relatively flat surface in your neighborhood, warm up and test your speed. Most of our watches will now do that for us. And when returning to retest, be sure you do the exact same thing. So if you've marked out, you know, a course around your neighborhood, do the course, pre and post-test. So the pros— this is directly related to our independence later in life— being able to walk at a respectable pace. And I wouldn't designate this as fast again necessarily, but it's a factor of weight, your body weight, your mobility, your muscle and joint and metabolic health. Inability to perform this one already indicates a need to to buff up your other areas to compensate. So of course you may have, you know, a knee issue, a hip issue, an ankle issue, and really that is partially the point here. That, okay, if this is true, number one, can we heal it? Can we make it better? Can't do that, then let's look beyond that. What else can we control and make it better? Maybe that's your diet, your sleep, the other things tied to longevity. The cons for this test if you are compromised due to previous injury or condition in your feet, your ankles, your knees, or hips, or you're significantly overweight. There's already a limited ability to walk, and this test is not even a possibility. So next up for testing your longevity is a challenging one, and I'm going to back up one step. So I want to say this: if you're not yet at 3 miles per hour related to longevity, or 3.3 related to improving your bone density with your walking. Monitor where you are. We can all stand to improve. So if the test is doable and feasible for you and it makes sense to work on improving, benchmark. It's all you're doing. Then let's see how you do later. One of your limiting factors may be cardiovascular fitness right now, so work on it. And let's retest again. The third test— okay, I hope you're warmed up because this one is a challenging one. This one is challenging for me. Sit to rise test. So a study in the European Journal of Preventative Cardiology found how well you do the sit to stand test indicates your risk of mortality. Stand barefoot Cross one leg over the other and lower yourself to a sitting position and then try to stand back up. Pregnant pause on purpose. It's a hard one. Okay, so attempt to do this without touching the floor with your hand, your knees, your elbows, forearms, or the sides of your legs. So I know some of you got down there. Fine. I mean, maybe with a thud, right? There was some acceleration on the way down. But getting back up, you're probably going to be tempted to cheat or say, well, I can rock this way and then that way, or I'm going to rock to my knees. And that's cheating. So here's how we score this one. It's just like the Olympics. You begin, you have 10 points. So your job is to not screw it up, right? Subtract half a point each time that you use a body part. To shift to one side before levering up. And also subtract a half point if you lose your balance. So just got to be honest. In the study, those that scored less than 8 points— so that would mean 4 different touches, right? So they touched a knee or a hand or, you know, an elbow. Maybe they got creative, I don't know. They were twice as likely to die within the following 6 years. This is bad news. Those that scored less than 5, so that means they had 10 different touches, you can do better than that, they were 3 times as likely to die within the following 6 years. So I want you to think about this, picture it in your mind. So if to get to the floor, you're crossing one leg over the other, basically you're sitting down in crisscross applesauce fashion, right? And standing from that, boom, standing up, right? So an increase in your score of any kind, though, and this is where you have to say, "Wait, I can't do that yet," but you can improve. So this is like, who was it, Dennis the Menace or Charlie Brown? I think Dennis the Menace. And the idea was, get a really bad score in the first day because then you go nowhere but up. You'll be most improved, right? Right? So an increase of your score of any kind reduces your mortality rate by 21%. 21%. So let's say the first time you try this, you get a 7. You've touched something 6 times to get up. Okay, improve that to an 8 and you still reduce your mortality rate by 21%. Pretty good. Okay, so goals. The pros of this test, well, it requires flexibility, balance, mobility, and muscle strength. It's testing a lot of things. Any lack of balance, flexibility, strength, or being overweight makes this test harder. So each of these components is correlated to risk of mortality. So it is a pretty direct test, and yes, it has disadvantages. Compromise in joints that limit performance of this test may not reveal that some level of those functional components are present in other joints or evidenced in other activities. You need a tool for testing your longevity with this next test that I'm going to give you here. They aren't costly. But gyms also have them. Or I'm going to give you a secondary option, but I want to come back just to the crisscross sit-to-stand test, you know. And for some, if you've got compromised knees, that may be the biggest limiting factor. I think I find that for, for honestly, for myself even right now. But I also find that I find myself thinking when I, when I was doing that, and I will be doing that before the 13th and the 14th when I'm demonstrating it to all of our members, by the way. But I find myself thinking, why did I ever stop doing yoga on a regular basis? Because I feel like I could have easily done this then, easily. And, you know, I think That's exactly the wake-up call that we all need. You know, whatever you're not doing, start doing, you know, and just regularly practicing. We have to make time for these things. And as we get closer to, you know, whatever the end is for each of us, the sense of urgency should increase. So the goal is not perfection today, but it's knowing where you are today and what you can work on. Okay, so this last one is grip strength. And in 2018, the grip strength test was determined to correlate to overall strength, muscle strength, and muscle mass. So low overall strength— not a good thing— is correlated with the grip strength, is a health hazard to all health outcomes except for colon cancer prostrate cancer, and lung cancer. You can buy what's called— and this is a tongue twister, let me, let me see what I can do here. I have certain words, this is one of them— dynamometer. I'm not going to try it again. To test grip for an easier at-home or gym option, and they're anywhere between about $20 and $30. It's pretty easy. So if there's more than one of you at home, this is potentially a good thing to get. But go to your gym first. They ideally should have one. So when I was, yeah, personal training director decades ago, two decades ago actually, I think I started, you know, I was like, we need to have body composition analyzers, you know, and we need them to be really accurate because this is like life and death right here. We're showing them how important this is. But now I would also say we need this because it's going to tell you muscle, and if we know muscle, we also know bone. The, the two go hand in hand. So you can buy one for, you know, less than dinner out, you know, for one almost, right? Or you can also try hanging from a pull-up bar. And even if you don't have that at home or the gym doesn't have that, the gym most likely has pull-up bars. You probably go to a playground and do that. The challenge will be the monkey bars is going to be bigger. So if you are a woman with smaller hands, you're probably not going to get your hands around it quite as easily. For men, 60, and for women, 30 seconds is a good target, suggest some of the researchers. And yet it's an increase or a decrease in what you're doing now that you want to watch. So again, don't be defeated by the fact that you could only hold it for so long. Think, okay, here's my benchmark, this is my PR. You can't screw it up, right? You get a PR the first time you do anything. So then you want to look at improving it. All right, so a 6-pound decrease in strength, and that would be tested by the dynamometer with the handgrip tool, but that also would correlate with any decrease in the time that you're able to hang, correlates with 16% higher risk of dying from any cause. Right, so if we're losing grip strength or we're losing the ability to hold that grip with a pull, then we're, we're more at risk. We want evidence, we want to know. So don't hide yourself here from doing this test. To improve your grip strength though, you don't want to just work on grip strength by walking around the house squeezing tennis balls. That's not the idea. So, you know, squeezing those hand grips That's not the idea. The idea is the grip strength makes it easy to assess whole body strength without having to do a one repetition max, which would be injurious. I mean, notoriously in the fitness industry, one rep max has always been it, but it's really hard to get, first of all, an accurate one rep max because you got to do some kind of warm-up. So then what Do we know that we really adequately warmed up so we won't injure? And/or did we warm up so much that now we're actually— we wasted some of that absolute strength? And so it's, it's just challenging. But never ever ever would I want a, you know, a 60-something woman— I'm loving that number right now, can you tell I turned 60 this year? I would never ever want a beginning weightlifter to do a 1-rep max. No. And you can do 3, that's another test to err on the conservative side. But what we prefer— I, I always have preferred and had my, my personal trainers, if we were testing and this made sense, I would have them do a 10-rep max because the equivalent of that is 80% of your total. So we could then do the math and figure, you know, forward and backward, what, what do we want them to do for lifting? Where do we start them? How are we progressing them? And we learn what we learn., from doing that, but with a whole lot less risk of injury. So grip strength is far easier. You don't have to get tired, you don't have to get sore, you don't have to, you know, be prepared really. You're just gonna have a grip strength in the same clothing you're wearing right now will work. It's all just so much easier. So I want you to be sure that you're looking at that Um, you know, here's, here's what you want to do is you're, you're going to focus on major muscle groups. Your chest press, your bent over row, your pull-ups if you can do them, your lat pulldown, your leg press or squats, your lunges. Those major muscle group exercises should also help improve your grip strength. Now, there also may be a need for some of you who have a little more tendency toward arthritis in your hands Squeezing those tennis balls may be helpful. Holding on to plates, you know, I happen to have my phone here and not a weight plate, but holding on to that, you know, and doing so with different fingers, not always the same fingers to hold on to grip strength. You may indeed want to do that, but the bigger achievement is grip strength is correlated with total body strength, and that's really what's That's the important piece is. Okay, so question for you. Grip strength, number one, is far less intimidating and less injurious than a, a one-rep max test. But the question is, when we're looking at all these tests, a push-up test, a walking test, you're looking at a grip strength test, and you're looking at a hang test Um, potentially, but the sit to rise test is the one that really gets me. I don't know about you. Tell me which one it is for you. Are you built to last and to love it? Right? So none of us really wants the longevity without loving every minute. This small battery of tests, there's simple ways to assess your function, and every test has limitations. Every test, not just these 4, but you may not be able to do one or more of these. The best use of them, in addition to outcomes like body fat percent, you know, knowing that 30% or more body fat is labeled as obese. We know that's a heart health risk. Many diseases are at risk for that. Waist girth for women, 35 or more inches, significantly includes— increases health risk. The amount of muscle mass in pounds or kilograms, primarily to know if you're gaining, you're losing, or at the very least preserving. Is an additional, um, measure. And measuring objective measures also very important, like your sleep, your stress level, your libido, your digestion elimination. Those tell a lot of clues actually for me as a menopause fitness expert about how do— how should we manipulate your exercise to optimize what's going on here? Because each of those things often is related to your hormonal balance. So what can we do to improve it. Hormones influence exercise, exercise influences hormones, and it can be that you can have a hormonal imbalance of just one hormone, or most often it's relative to another hormone. For instance, your estrogen levels go down, so do progesterone levels. But when you're apparently healthy, potentially, and you're in perimenopause primarily because this is before estrogen is really tanked, your cortisol levels. Higher cortisol levels may be blocking progesterone, and you may be what's called estrogen dominant. And that seems peculiar to a lot of women hearing it the first time, that you would have more estrogen at a time when your estrogen is beginning to go down. But it's more estrogen relative to progesterone, which should be in a balance together with it. But all of these things suggest something about your muscle status, and what you can do to maintain it. So the point in measuring and interpreting is realizing the habits that you've had to this point got you the results that you have to this point. And if you want to change the outcome, you change the habits related to them. An injury or a condition may have limited your ability to perform a certain test. The awareness can still be an asset if it highlights the need to strengthen some other areas of your health and longevity. So important. So Flipping 50 members have access to this progress tracking chart for both objective and subjective measures of their progress. If you're not inside the members area or a course area with a course, a membership, or some kind of downloadable freebie that you might have gotten for us, you can start here. And I'll include the flipping50.com/login link right in the show notes, as well as some of the other resources I've mentioned. The S.M.A.R.T. Scale, I've got 4 picks for this coming year if you wanna look at that. Hand grip that I use and keys to an upcoming masterclass. We hold one every single month. The one in January on the 10th is called Older and Stronger, and I'm talking specifically about what it is that you need to become older and stronger, not just to endure it. I'll also put a link to the Flipping 50 membership. We call it the cafe. I hesitate to use that word because it's, it's a little more cute than it is clear, but all the members love it and refuse to let me change the name because it feels like a collective place and a community where they're getting support, they're asking questions, getting answers in real time, and It's like a cafe where you go stop in and you get what you need and pop back out. So there you have it. But inside you've got access to, you know, more than 9 12-week programs, 2 exclusive masterclasses that are complimentary as a part of your membership, challenges, recipes, all the things that are right there for you. And I'll link to that for you in the show notes. But for now, I'd love you to go to the show notes and you'll get that description of how to do each of these tests, and I would love for you to post wherever you've seen this, if it's in Instagram or it's in Facebook, and you did any of these tests. I want to know how you did. All right, so are you built to last? You can find the show notes at flipping50.com/testingyourlongevity, and I hope to see you at an upcoming masterclass. RA.