This Will Blow Your Mind About Aging - in a Good Way!

Buckle your seatbelts because I'm about to blow your mind about aging, and I'm going to give you some things that I think should make us all scratch our heads and ponder, so why aren't we doing these things? Because I'm going to share 3, at least 3 specific research studies and some other details pulled in from along the way about aging that we've known for decades. The question I think that I'm going to leave you with even before we begin is why aren't we applying these things that we've known for so long? You're in perimenopause, menopause, or post-menopause, and you're not slowing down. You're just getting started. But the old rules don't apply anymore. The workouts that worked before, they're working against you now. The advice you've been given, incomplete at best. I'm Debra Atkinson, and I'm the founder of Flipping 50, the pioneer in fitness for women in midlife. For more than 40 years, I've been in the trenches with women just like you, and for the last 12, right here on this podcast, and, and the founder of Flipping 50: The Stronger Way app and membership. Welcome to Flipping 50: The Stronger Way, where science meets strength, where you'll find the tools, research, and real talk to build the body and the life you want in your second half. Each week you'll get evidence-based exercise and nutrition strategies, conversations with leading experts, and honest answers to the questions your doctor didn't get answers to in medical school and doesn't have time to answer in an appointment. This is your show. Let's get stronger. This episode is fully intended to blow your mind. I hope in a good way that you realize you are in control. The words you've always wanted to hear, that in fact, whatever results you have right now may be in large part based on your own personal expectations. A self-fulfilling prophecy is one where you not only say it, but you believe it so strongly that then it comes true unintentionally or intentionally. You've attracted exactly what you have now. And I'm wondering about now, how well is that sitting with you? Because I am sure that every single one of us can look at things and maybe have gratitude for the moment we're in, be grateful for the body that can carry us and do the things that we can do, or, or the home or the family or the, the many, many things and ways that we've been blessed. However, I think we all also often spend a significant amount of time thinking about what we wish was different. Am I the only one? I try to tap into that gratitude on a much more regular basis, but it is very easy to say what I want, what I wish, what I am envious of somebody else about. So there, I've said that out loud. But I think what is most mind-blowing for me isn't reviewing these concepts, these studies. And if you've been here for a long time, you have inevitably heard me relay at least one of these because I know I've mentioned it before, but I'm going to pull all three of these together because they are indirectly very related. But reviewing these is that they occurred so long ago, and yet here we are decades later struggling with many of the same things right here, right now. And if it was so, which I think it was mind-blowing then, was it too soon? Were people not willing yet to accept it, which might have been the case in one of the studies? You'll understand better. But here's the deal. Why? My biggest question is, rather than leave you with a conclusion, why do you think we haven't adopted these habits that certainly seem so easy compared to the opposite of not doing anything and staying right where we are? And many of us somewhat unhappy in the moment that we're in. In 1990, 1990. So let's put a frame on that. I know where I was, but that is, you know, 35 years ago. A study done at Tufts University was published in the JAMA, Journal of American Medical Association, proved that frail institutionalized— we mean in a nursing home— older adults can safely do high-intensity resistance training and reverse their frailty and build muscle mass and functional mobility. It proved they could do all those things safely, no risk. 10— 10 started out, by the way, 9 finished, and we don't know why. But 10 frail nursing home residents on the average of 90, and I think they were 89 to 96, I believe, in an 8-week— just 8 weeks. I want you to think about that for a minute. So as I do this, it's toward the end of July. So if you did this till the end of September. That's all we're talking about right now. 8 weeks. They did 80%, so they lifted weights, and I believe they did 3 days a week. They lifted 80% of a 1-rep max. Now, what is that? That's the equivalent of about 8 to 10 repetitions. And back then in 1990, we thought it was 10. We thought that 10 was 80% because honestly, when I started talking and teaching about the best protocols for bone density back in 1994, '95, the National Strength and Conditioning Association, exactly right there, we sat there and it was 80% equals about 10 repetitions. You know, it's odd, but things have shifted. I don't quite understand how that could be possible, but we now think of 80% as about 8 to 10 repetitions. So just to give you an idea, it was probably— they did exercises, 10 reps to fatigue. Okay. Over 8 weeks. Here are some of the results. The average increase in muscle strength was 174%. That's not a typo. I'll say it again, 174% increase. I mean, I'm terrible at math, so doing this in my head without a calculator, almost impossible. But let's say they started them very conservatively and they were lifting something like 10 pounds to begin with. 174% increase. What? Crazy. 9% increase in mid-thigh muscle region. So mid-thigh, think halfway between your hip where you might be sitting down, you're flexing, and your kneecap. Halfway between. And we do that because that quadricep And leg strength is like one of the number one things correlated with your longevity. So the mid-thigh muscle area, 9% increase. Think about how that helps you get out of a chair. And then a 48% increase in walking speed. Now, why are these things in particular really, really relevant? Well, walking speed is very related to mortality. If in fact your walking speed is less less than 3.3 miles per hour, the mortality risk goes up incrementally. I mean, very, very significantly. So just even crossing that threshold and getting up there, even better. But also functional mobility increase evidenced by their ability to rise from chairs without the use of arms. So the chair may have had arms, but what they didn't need is to push on them and power themselves up. That mid-thigh muscle actually helped them. The 174% increase in muscle strength helped them. And a lot of them actually discontinued their use of canes after participating in the study. Now let's hope, you and I hope, they continued as opposed to stopping. And why wouldn't you? Because what else was probably going on that they didn't study? And we can't prove this because you can only isolate and look at so many factors at once. But what else probably improved? Probably their energy level, probably their sleep because they were doing a little more exercise. They were moving then more during the day. They probably slept better at night. Sleep is kind of elusive for older adults. Uh, appetite probably improves, so they're eating better, simply in some cases because they're eating more. But also, what happened to their cognition, do you suppose, and their blood sugar regulation? This episode is sponsored by the Flipping 50 Menopause Fitness Specialist. It is the framework that we designed our entire membership and program based on. Since 2013, I've been developing that after 30 years of working with women in midlife. That was born, and in 2018 we rolled out the Menopause Fitness Specialist to train other fitness and health pros on how to actually prescribe exercise. Here's where we're going next, in case you want to get started now, that we're actually training physicians on exercise prescription, knowing they get very little of it in medical school and hoping that it also bridges the gap for you who may be a fitness or health professional, or want to be, who works with women in menopause, because there is so much demand and so much room for you right now. If you are working with women in menopause but not getting all the results, don't have a reliable, predictable framework that gets you results over and over that people know, like, and trust, come and talk to us. We'll put the link in the show notes for today. That's the Flipping 50 Menopause Fitness Specialist. And if you want to head on over to fitnessmarketingacademy.com, it's where we have all of the content dedicated to you, health and fitness pros. So many things very likely improved that may have taken slightly longer to do, but we also know that memory Improves. When you improve your physical fitness, your hippocampus, which is memory central, actually grows. Yes, very cool. Okay, now study number 2. That was 1990, so to take yourself back for a moment, where were you? You probably still had a perm, you had big hair. Just gonna say it. Okay, now in 1979, so we were there listening to, you know, Seasons in the Sun with— who sings that? Terry Jacks, I think. In 1979, Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer— I have had her as a guest on the podcast more than once, or interviewed her more than once. I had her on the podcast. She has a new book, a newer, that I'm about to relay. And I interviewed her for the What, When, and Why to Exercise for Women 40 and Over Summit, I believe in 2023, the first one that I did of that. But it was Ellen Langer who conducted this study in '79, which was very small but also very powerful. And it was very expensive, or would have been, to do it in a mass scale. So honestly, right now in 2019, there began another study, and I'm not sure they've reached any conclusion yet, but Ellen Langer is also on this one. This one I don't believe was published in a journal because it was so small. It was only 8 men, and it was like they took a, an old monastery and turned it into a mansion that then they created a very unique environment. So her study was testing psychological priming effects on physical health. And priming— can I take you back to Psychology 101? You took it too, right? Basically, priming is setting the stage Right? It's, I mean, you prime your face, don't you? I do anymore. But priming is setting the stage, setting the mindset for this is where you are, this is how you feel. And it's interestingly enough, if I say, as I say that it's not hypnosis, you're wide awake, but we want you to act as if. That was basically what they told these, men. So 8 men, they were essentially transported in time where they spent a week together secluded at a location that was turned into like a 20 years prior environment in every way. They were surrounded by black and white televisions. So this occurred in '79, so they were taking them back to 1959, and however they would've felt or looked at that time, and they would've been watching black and white televisions. So they had them do that. They had them watch shows like Ed Sullivan that was popular in that time. They had magazines sitting around of that era, not new ones, not talking historical. Actually the historical magazines. They made them have conversations and debates about news, politics if you will, but anything that was of that time. So they spoke about it, talked about the political officials who was in the news, only about that time. They had to act as if they were there. They were instructed to bring pictures of themselves, their younger yous as if it were, 1959. Those things— there were no mirrors— were what they were surrounded with. And it was in this experiment, it was essentially an oversight. So Ellen Langer was there herself to greet these men, and they realized when they were getting off the bus or the van that brought them that there was nobody to help unload their suitcases. So their setting back, going back in time, happened immediately upon their arrival. So there was nobody to lift their heavier bags, so they had to do it themselves. So it was not intentionally a physical test. There was no physical exercise going on. It was meant to be a psychological One, all bite, the suitcase carry. They successfully got their own suitcases up the stairs into their bedrooms and packed away. At the end of one week, however, my statement that it wasn't physical, their physical health improved in several ways. Number one, their flexibility was better, grip strength, and I want to emphasize for you that every time I talk grip strength, somebody inevitably thinks I need to squeeze tennis balls, you know, and do that all day to improve my grip strength. That's not the way we improve grip strength. Grip strength is representative or correlated to your total body strength. We want you to be doing squats and chest press and rows in order to improve your grip strength. It shows up. It's just an easy and very safe and efficient way to test you. So their grip strength improved, flexibility improved, their dexterity, meaning almost agility, but instead of having them say jump over things, it might be taking your thumb to every finger and back again, things like that. Posture improved, their hearing improved. And visually, these men also looked younger when photographs of them before and after the week-long experiment— one week, 7 days— but to other people looking at those photos, they looked younger. I'm gonna give you this quote. There are those who think that age comes with a new set of rules, and then there are those disproving that it does. Which one are you? I'm gonna let that hang there for a moment because you may need a moment to think about it. Is it a conscious decision to think young or to maybe think ageless? Or is it better not to give it a thought at all? Like not to and just know that, well, I never even think, "Should I do it at my age?" But I personally, as a trainer, medical exercise specialist, as someone who has worked with aging adults for decades, I often am asked the question, "Well, I'm blank," fill in your age, "what should I be doing?" And I tell you, I have no idea because your age means nothing to me. I have 85-year-old friends who do Ironman triathlons. And I know 29-year-olds who are pretty sedentary and not in very good physical condition. So your age has so much less to do with it than many, many other things. I want to give you this. I'm going to leave you to ponder your own answer, but a positive relationship with aging is shown to increase longevity by almost 8 years. In 1975, researchers looked at how 338 men and 322 women, 50 years old and older, responded to several statements about aging. And then they examined how their responses predicted their survival up to 23 years later. To find that those with positive attitudes about aging increased their lifespan by 7.6 years. That's pretty significant. So if you are asking questions like, "What should I do? I'm X years old," it's the wrong question. If you catch yourself saying things like, "I'm getting old," examine whether you view that as negative or not. So I'd have to admit, I in the last week have said this. In fact, last Monday, Monday or Sunday, it was Monday, I told my kids, I said, we had had a really long day, so Sunday morning, a really early morning, a really long day out in the sun and the heat walking in a golf course, and then another, you know, 2-hour drive there, 2-hour drive back. I get home and I went to bed at 6:45. I didn't intend to. I was gonna watch some television, catch up with a couple of things, and I was like, I am falling asleep, I'm just gonna go to bed. And I told him the next day, and those were my words. I'm like, "I can't believe how that kicked my, you know what? I'm getting old." And, you know, how do I interpret that? Was I, or am I, negative in the way I think about age? I think in that statement I was, right? Assuming that older people will and do get tired, can't handle much. Because I was basically saying to myself, I am somehow a lightweight. I used to spend hours, you know, exerting far more physically intense activities than walking a golf course, standing around waiting, you know. And so I was alluding to the fact that aging is not necessarily positive. So, gotcha, really, is what I need to say to myself. I just was guilty of doing that. Now, given what we know, do I want that attitude? I don't think so. A positive attitude most of the time, but maybe when I'm trying, right? When I'm thinking about it. When I went for a walk this morning, I was playing some specific music, and some of it had affirmations over it. Just, you know, I'm grateful and I'm thankful, and every single day is a gift, and those types of things. And yes, it happens to be Sunday, so this is my church. But when I subconsciously— something like that slips into our verbal conversation, like, I'm getting old, Like, you know, I didn't plan to say that, it just came out, right? So you have to consider both pieces. I do think we change our subconscious by what we do consciously, but it is our subconscious that is controlling our every move, our every thought, and our every action. So if we want to change habits, we are going to have to learn to override that by providing ourselves with really positive examples of what aging is or can be versus what some people get. So I'm going to leave you with that. Do you catch yourself saying things like that? What matters to me as opposed to somebody asking the question, what should I do, I'm X years old. And I just want to answer this question because I can't leave it hanging. Your activity age matters far more than does your biological age, your birthday, and your personal mental capacity for can— the word can versus I can't. Which are you more of? You know, I can do this, or you're more, I shouldn't do that, or I can't do that, because you stop yourself thinking about your age maybe as opposed to your desire. And you may— we all have limiters of some kind. Maybe it's energy fatigue or joint pain that have to be considered with your activity and what you can do. However, I want to point out, younger individuals also have that. Younger individuals have also had accidents, and they have things they cannot and can't do. They have energy problems, and potentially we're going to see this younger generation have more problems than we did at their age because we lived a much more natural life with fewer toxins. Specific musculoskeletal changes that occur in menopause make your hormonal status a relevant consideration. When I hear you are perimenopausal, you're postmenopausal, or you're right there in menopause transition, to me right away I filter through, we want to make sure you're working on these things. And are we measuring those things, or were we? And let's get on that right away. There's this list in each of those categories that I would say, let's be sure when we talk we cover these things because they are going to be critical to your next step and your next step after that. Your biological age is not one of the 4 key factors that matter in the application of what we call at Flipping 50 the HALO method we use to support women in their choices for exercise when we have to budget time and energy. Every human does. I mean, if you had unlimited energy, then it wouldn't be any problem. If you had unlimited time, also no problem, but most of us don't. We have lots of interests. Even if there's no longer a job, we have lots of things we wanna do with our time. So we wanna be selective in how we do it. By the way, at the end of July, as I'm doing this Live 2026, I'm doing a special masterclass and I'm gonna share more about mindset because I think as you've witnessed with me, it is such a crucial part of what happens. So I've been trained in exercise psychology. It's always been at the forefront of my work with the physiology and kinesiology of the human body that we have to work on our beliefs and do some priming if we're going to actually get the full benefits of the physiology, the kinesiology, whether that is in order for us to be willing to comply and do the exercise, make time for the exercise, or it's actually getting better results from doing it by, for instance, focusing on the muscle group that I'm using while I'm lifting, not doing the grocery shopping, but literally in imagining the muscles getting stronger and tighter. So in this masterclass, it's called, by the way, What If It's Not the Diet or the Exercise? I will address how mindset can change the same exercise or diet application results, and I've seen it happen. Until then, I encourage you to catch yourself or to be aware of what exactly you say and what you don't say, but you think to yourself. So it's really your self-talk when it comes to aging. Do you ever— are you whispering to yourself, you're getting old, this is aging, or looking at crepey skin with, I hate that, aging sucks? Pardon my French, by the way, but those are words from a dear sister. So imagine my advice. And where I'm not running for it. What direction are your thoughts taking you about aging most of the time? If you want to register, I'll put the link in the show notes. And if that time has passed, inevitably there will be another one. So don't hesitate to come to the link and/or to the show notes and see if you can find another. Often we put a way that you can get started in an upcoming masterclass right on the homepage at Flipping 50. Quick recap of these studies. They were done in 1990. That was the newest study, right, that proved on average 90-year-olds can increase strength dramatically in an 8-week clinical trial, lifting pretty intensely, 10 repetitions to muscle fatigue. In a 1979 study, and this was a landmark study by Dr. Ellen Langer, proved that priming the mind changed physical attributes of aging. That is mind-blowing, friends. And then in 1975, researchers looked and started the beginning of what was then a longitudinal study showing that those with a positive attitude about aging increased their lifespan by 7.6 years. Pretty mind-blowing. So I'll leave you with this. What are your thoughts and what is your attitude about aging? The information shared on Flipping 50 the Stronger Way is for educational and informational purposes only and not intended as a substitute for medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always consult your physician or qualified health healthcare provider before beginning any exercise program, making changes to your diet, or adjusting any medications or supplements. Individual results may vary. Debra Atkinson and Flipping 50 are not responsible for any injury or adverse outcomes resulting from information presented on this podcast.