Erin O'Hara: naturopath and wellness expert explains sarcobesity

Sarcobesity refers to the coexistence of diminished muscle mass and increased fat mass, but what does that mean from a health-based perspective?

The condition can impact overall metabolic health, which comes with additional health implications and concerns.

Naturopath and wellness expert Erin O'Hara explains further.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudgin
from News TALKS'B.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
You're going to talk about sarcobesity, which is something which
is a little new to me.

Speaker 3 (00:18):
Yeah, might seem like a new sort of term, but
it's actually something that is that coiled between sycopenia, which
is the loss of lean muscle mass and obesity. And
this is actually a common thing with obesity, is that
drop and lean muscle mass and higher percentage of body fat,
which has a huge impact on your metabolic health because

(00:40):
we really need that muscle tissue to increase your metabolism
and that's what actually helps you stay lean as well.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
So the idea being that you lose a lot of
weight quite quickly and you lose that muscle mass.

Speaker 3 (00:54):
Yeah, so it can help people wrong, Yeah, it can
happen when people are losing weight, especially if they're not
being really careful around keeping up their lean muscle mass.
So if they are dropping calories quite quickly, whether they're
just doing it by crash diety or maybe using the
GLP one type of injection injection medications, these obviously allow
us to drop our calorie intake. However, that impact if

(01:17):
we're not kind of preserving our muscle mass is that
we then drop muscle mass and lean muscle mass in
the body, and we end up with a different proportion
in our body lean body mass, which means we've got
higher amount of fat tissue and less lean muscle mass,
which means if we are stopping these types of medication,
then that can be a problem because then we have

(01:38):
more body fat on our body, less lean muscle mass,
and then it's actually easier to put back the weight
on that we may have lost through this process.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
Okay, so what impact does it have then on our
metabolic health if we've got diminished muscle mass increased fat.

Speaker 3 (01:53):
Yes, so if you think about your muscle mass really
helping your metabolism, so it makes your muscle, your muscle
raally helps you burn calories, so you really want to
preserve it, So you don't really want to drop that
when you're trying to lose weight, because otherwise than in
metabolism slow and you actually have to eat less, So
you really want to keep that lean muscle mass up.
And when we do have a higher amount of fat tissue,

(02:15):
it also can cause insulin resistance as well, which then
can lead on to type two diabetes, which obviously then
has more serious health complications as well. So if we're
trying to maintain that lean muscle mass, it's actually going
to keep us healthier overall, helps us manage inflammation. And
then also we'll just keep our resting metabolic rate up,

(02:37):
so when we're sitting resting, maybe watching TV, we've actually
got a faster metabolism. When we have more lean muscle
mass on our body.

Speaker 2 (02:45):
We're burning through it. Okay, so how does low muscle
mass cause that impaired mobility?

Speaker 3 (02:53):
Yeah, so if you think about as we age, like
sycopenia or loss of lean muscle mass is actually really
common as we age, and so all we want to
do is as we're aging, we want to preserve the
lean muscle mass. But it's even worse when we're trying
to lose weight, especially if we're crash dieting and dropping
a lot of lean muscle mass, and we need that

(03:13):
for mobility. So literally just getting in and out of
a chair, moving around, we want to keep moving our
body because if we don't move our body, we lose
our lean muscle mass. So keeping up with some resistance
training is really helpful whether you're doing some sort of
diet or even if you are using these types of
GLP one medications. Is for a weight loss tool, is

(03:36):
actually keeping up with some weight training or resistance training
to really preserve your lean muscle mass, which will keep
them metabolism going, especially when you stop those types of
medications or when you kind of get to the point
where you're at your weight that you want to get
to if you've just done it through diet alone, that
you're actually going to have a good body composition at
the end.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
We hear people talking about the long term effects of
using these semiglu tides, these weight loss drugs and things
like that, and we're still learning an awful lot. We've
learned a lot about how to use them for diabet
eaties and other things, but this is still an area
where there's quite a lot of research needs to happen.
Is this kind of one of those long term effects
that people could to be aware of.

Speaker 3 (04:17):
I think it's one of the main respectors to really
be watching up for it, because if you have had
success with losing weight, you obviously then want to move
into a maintenance phase and you can't stay on those
types of medications, so you really kind of want to
combine still looking at not just using those types of
medications for a weight loss strategy, but actually put in

(04:37):
healthy eating, making sure you're getting enough protein in your diet,
put in the resistance or weight training, and keeping up
with your movement and exercise, because these will help you
have a better balance through that weight loss and maintaining
it long term, which is really what you want to do.

Speaker 2 (04:54):
But even if you're not losing weight and you're not
getting old work getting too old just yet, it's probably
important that we have good muscle mass at all times.
If you're not, if you're like you know, if you're
not planning on losing weight or anything like that, how
do we make sure that we've got good muscle mass
and reduce that's body fat.

Speaker 3 (05:14):
And it can be anyone, like it's not just overwheat,
but weight people that can have this imbalance between lean
muscle mass and fat tishy. You can actually have skinny fat,
which means that you're a skinny person, but you've got
a high amount of body fat, and that actually happens
as well. So some tools that can help you keep
up your body composition, particularly your lean muscle mass is

(05:34):
putting in regular resistance training or weight training a couple
times a week, so maybe two or three sessions a week.
Don't necessarily need to join a gym. You could do
things at home that use your own lean body mass
to like use it for resistance. Also keeping up your
protein intake, which I know protein's been such a big
thing through lots of social media and it's been the

(05:55):
main thing that people's focusing on. But actually, if you
are wanting to maintain lean muscle mass, protein is your
best friend.

Speaker 2 (06:03):
We're moving on to five and now you're moving on
to other things. That's all right, but we're ready to
eat our brota.

Speaker 3 (06:08):
Protein to keep like, especially if you've done the resistance training,
what do you need for a pair You need those
amino acids which are in your protein to knit the
muscle tissue back together to keep your lean muscle really high.
And then also just general nutrients is actually all your
other nutrients are actually helpful for muscle health and maintaining
a healthy, active lifestyle. So that can be making sure

(06:30):
you've also got enough fruits and vegetables for those phyto
nutrients that we're getting in through our foods. And that
will help you maintain your lean muscle mass and your
bone tissue as well, which is super important.

Speaker 1 (06:43):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudken, listen
live to use talks there be from nine am Sunday,
or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio