August 13, 2025 • 21 mins
Vital signs are the indicators of how well our bodies are functioning. This week we talk about an important measure of your health and longevity. If you want to improve the functioning of your immune system, decrease your risk for alzheimers and other chronic diseases, improve your insulin sensitivity, and be more injury and debility resistant, this episode is for you. This is a high-leverage asset that affects so many body systems, so you don’t want to miss the opportunity to optimize it!
visit my website: www.healthcouragecollective.com
email me directly: healthcouragecollective@gmail.com
Free mini-course: “6 Thoughts People Who Consistently Rock Their Health Habits Think” https://healthcourage.ck.page/mini
Are you ready to give your cells their best chance to not have to stop living before they die by allowing them access to physiologic levels of hormones, but aren't sure how to even get started? Join the waitlist for my new beta program here and help me figure out how best to help wonderful women like you get the hormone care they deserve!
Come visit me: www.healthcouragecollective.com
email me: healthcouragecollective@gmail.com
visit my website: www.healthcouragecollective.com
email me directly: healthcouragecollective@gmail.com
Free mini-course: “6 Thoughts People Who Consistently Rock Their Health Habits Think” https://healthcourage.ck.page/mini
Are you ready to give your cells their best chance to not have to stop living before they die by allowing them access to physiologic levels of hormones, but aren't sure how to even get started? Join the waitlist for my new beta program here and help me figure out how best to help wonderful women like you get the hormone care they deserve!
Come visit me: www.healthcouragecollective.com
email me: healthcouragecollective@gmail.com
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Vital signs are the indicators of how well our bodies
are functioning. There is an easy to measure vital sign
that can tell you a ton about the functionality of
your immune system, your risk for Alzheimer's and other serious
chronic diseases, your insulin sensitivity, and your likelihood of becoming frail, fragile,
(00:20):
and dependent on others. This is such an important high
leverage asset. If YOU'RS is low, you're definitely on the
path to living less and less as you get older.
You're listening to The Health Courage Collective podcast, episode two
hundred and fifteen, Your sixth Vital Sign, originally published July sixth,
(00:41):
twenty twenty two. Welcome to the Health Courage Collective podcast,
the show for women who are too busy to slog
through hours of generalized and applicable and often contradictory health information,
but too smart to ignore that a few minutes of
focused attention now can prevent years of suffering in the future.
I'm your host, Christina Hackett, a pharmacist who doesn't want
(01:04):
you to live on prescriptions, a certified coach specifically trained
to maximize your potential, and a compulsive learner obsessed with preventative,
cutting edge, holistic and integrated medicine. I'm on a mission
to increase your physical and mental resilience so you can
fearlessly look forward to your next forty plus limitless years.
Your time is now. Let's go Hello, Hello, how are
(01:29):
you today? Welcome to the podcast. I'm so happy that
you're joining me. I really appreciate your support and your
openness to learning. I think that you're awesome. It says
a lot about what a great person you are that
you're willing to spend your time listening to a podcast
about optimizing your health. As you get further along this
journey of life, how has your weak been? How has
(01:51):
your thinking about the fixing of your problems gone this
past week? Have you started to see through new eyes?
So today we're going to talk about your sixth vital sign.
This is something that I'm pretty passionate about, especially for
smart women like you. But first, if you remember what
(02:11):
our other vital signs are, or maybe we should start
with what vital signs even are. I'm sure you know,
but vital signs are body measurements we take to determine,
on a general level, how well someone's body is functioning.
We think of them an emergency of medicine. A lot
paramedics watch vital signs closely. If someone is crashing, one
(02:33):
or more of their vital signs are signaling that their
body is not functioning, like not well enough to keep
them alive. That is a problem. But I typically think
of there being four vital signs temperature, pulse, respiratory rate,
and blood pressure. Some people include other things like pupil
(02:53):
size and reactivity to light. If you happen to have
listened to my episodes thirty one and thirty two, you
know what your fifth vital sign is. This is a
great indicator of how well everything is working together inside
your body. It's your menstrual cycle. The regularity and details
of it can tell us a lot about your physiology.
(03:16):
It's worth paying attention to. So if that's the fifth,
what do you think the sixth the vital sign would be?
What can be measured that can tell us a lot
about how well your body can function and thrive. It
could be a lot of things. I've heard that it
should be pain. This makes sense if you're an EMT
evaluating a patient in the back of an ambulance, but
(03:39):
here's something said by doctor Carla Prato. The thing that
it should be another vital sign in regards to overall
health and as you'll see, resilience, which is huge. We
can do a lot to prevent some unwonted health outcomes,
but sometimes bad stuff still happens. If your sixth vital
sign measures in the optimal category, you'll both avoid many
(04:04):
and bounce back well from the other health challenges. Like
a professional, this is the measure of the volume of
the largest endocrine organ in your body. The bigger, the better.
Well to a point, extremes aren't great, but I'm pretty
sure none of you listening are at the upper extreme,
(04:26):
like to the point of being unhealthy. So what is
this endocrine organ? Can you guess? We've heard that the
skin is the largest organ in the body, but it's
not an endocrine organ, Thank goodness, because I don't really
want to increase the size of my skin. Other than
(04:46):
becoming larger, you'd have to become like a sharpay human
or something. Can you imagine if that were the new thing?
Pretty confident it's not going to be. Luckily, we're also
not looking to increase the size of our pan creus
or are thyroid or thymus. The size of this endocrine
organ directly correlates with how well you will age on
(05:11):
several different levels subcellular aging, inflammation, immune function, which is
hugely important, cognitive abilities, and aesthetically might as well look
good as you decrease your risk of cancer, diabetes, and
chronic pain. If you haven't guessed by now, we're talking
about your muscle mass. How much do you think about
(05:33):
your overall muscle tissue volume. It's important for way more
than just appearance, and you don't have to look any
certain way to have a healthy amount of muscle mass.
I don't care about this for you because of how
you look. You look great the way you are right now.
Low muscle mass can happen at any body weight, so
(05:54):
it's important to directly measure it. Hence the idea of
being another via sign. Hundreds or maybe thousands of medical
studies show that patients with low muscle mass experience very
different outcomes from patients with healthy muscle mass. Want to
have a forty percent higher chance of dying of breast
(06:15):
cancer get diagnosed when you have low muscle mass, want
to be more likely to get Alzheimer's, and if you
do to have a more severe case, have low muscle mass,
want more post surgical complications, longer hospital stays, longer time
required on a ventilator in the ICU, lower quality of life,
and poorer overall survival rates. Well, you get the idea.
(06:39):
People who have low overall muscle mass have impaired immune
system function. This is bad news for catching circulating viruses,
but even worse news for your innate ability to spot
cancer cells and keep them from setting up shop and
starting to multiply. It's so crucial to keep our immune
system in top gear, especially as we get older, because
(07:01):
if we do nothing, it starts to decline with age.
There are several different interesting ways that skeletal muscle mass
promotes healthy immunity. One is that lymphocytes and macrophages need
the non essential amino acid glutamine, which is produced by
our muscles when they are active. So a bigger glutamine
(07:21):
pool in the form of larger, more active muscles strengthens
those immune cells. Another has to do with cytokines. We've
all gotten a lesson in cytokine storms from COVID, but
cytokines are meant to be saviors and they generally are
as long as they stay in balance. There are pro
(07:41):
inflammatory and anti inflammatory cytokines, both of them are important.
We do need acute inflammation. Sometimes the problem comes when
there are too many pro inflammatory cytokines relative to the
anti inflammatory ones. Interlucin six has both pro and anti
inflammatory types depending on which tissue it's released from. And
(08:06):
I didn't know this before, but an essential source of
the anti inflammatory interleukin six s is skeletal muscle. When
there is more skeletal muscle present, more anti inflammatory aisle
six can be released, which helps keep pro inflammatory aisle
six in check, promoting a more rapid and thorough healing process.
(08:31):
Pretty cool, right, Something I hadn't thought much about before
is that if you have a traumatic event like an
accident or surgery, or even an infection, your body needs
a sufficient and immediate supply of amino acids to use
for repair. Amino Acids are the little protein building blocks
that are essential to being able to construct disaster clean
(08:54):
up structures. Your muscles are readily available abundant source of
amino acids that can be tapped into for this. If
you have sufficient muscle tissue, you have on site repair
materials ready to use in case of catastrophe. It's kind
of like having a seventy two hour kit in addition
(09:14):
to all the other awesome things your muscle mass can
do for you. It's like having a fifty pound bag
of dry beans on your body just in case. Maybe
it's more like an mre. You know what those are?
The military rations chickenala king or burrito beef that can
be eaten without heating if necessary and last for decades. Yummy.
(09:35):
I actually really love emergency preparedness stuff. I won't go
off on a big tangent, but I live in an
earthquake zone and I've been evacuated from my house twice,
almost three times due to wildfires, and I feel a
lot better about the possibility of earthquakes, pandemics, civil unrest,
extended power outages, and general apocalypse type stuff like the
(09:55):
Domino's pizza that exploded near my house, because I know
that I have the base six on hand to take
care of myself and my family. I've never thought of
muscle mass on my body in that way before. I
have thought of strength and endurance as assets, which they
totally are, but the idea of carrying around extra building
blocks for emergency repairs is pretty cool. Our bodies are
(10:19):
so efficient at recycling, it's amazing. There are all kinds
of studies that show that muscle mass is highly correlated
with development of mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's. In one
study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association
that I looked through, they measured muscle strength of senior
adults with a bunch of different tools to measure grip, strength, inflection,
(10:41):
and extension of all kinds of muscles, and they gave
them each a Z score. I'm not super familiar with
muscle Z scores. Z scores in general just have to
do with health, like where you fall on a bell
curve of averages. But I'm not super clear about how
much more strength you have to have to go up
or down one unit in muscle Z score. But each
(11:03):
one Z score muscle strength unit above the average showed
a forty three percent decrease in the risk for Alzheimer's disease.
Forty three percent. That's insane. If there were a pill
that could do that, it would be a blockbuster drug.
Something else that would be a mega blockbuster drug would
(11:26):
be something that could sensitize you to your own insulin
in a healthy way, something that could gobble up glucose
so that your blood sugar isn't high, but your insulin
level doesn't have to go up to accomplish that. The
greater proportion of your life you can live with a
lower insulin level, the more insulin sensitive you're going to be,
The more insulin sensitive you are, the longer and more
(11:48):
healthfuly you're going to live. It is uber uber important.
Staying insulin sensitive, by keeping your insulin level low most
of the time, may be the most important thing you
can do for yourself. More muscle mass means more tissue
that loves to consume glucose. Eighty percent of the reason
(12:10):
that glucose starts to come down after a meal is
because glucose is being pulled into the muscle. People with
higher muscle mass have their glucose levels come down more
quickly after meals, which is a good thing because their
muscles are hungry for it. Having your glucose level come
down in a shorter amount of time is good. This
is part of a longer discussion, But we need insulin
(12:30):
on sometimes and off sometimes. We can't build muscle without insulin,
but generally most people live their lives in a state
of chronically elevated insulin and it's killing them literally. One
way to optimize this issue is to own more muscle mass.
Don't go minimalist with your muscle collection. Unlike your beanie babies,
(12:54):
they are useful, attractive, socially acceptable, They appreciate in value,
and they send the physiological message that you have a
good reason to keep living. Since muscles exist to move
our bones, having good muscle mass is generally associated with
having good bone density. Having our muscles put stress on
our bones by pulling them around is a very good
(13:16):
thing to do for our bone density. We all know
that having strong bones is super important, especially as we
get older. So while it's the activities we do to
grow our muscles that make our bones strong, muscle strength
and bone strength typically go together. Good muscle mass by
itself is also associated with lower risk of injury and fracture.
(13:39):
Being strong makes you more injury proof and resilient. Of course,
we all know that we don't want to be so
frail and feeble that we can't get ourselves into and
out of bed or the shower. Or the car when
we're old. That's a good thing to be aware of
and prevent from happening. Our quality of life will be
so much better if we can perform our acts activities
(14:00):
of daily living by ourselves when we're really old. I
would suggest that you don't stop there and plan to hike, bike, ski, parasaale,
rock climb, cage, fight, whatever float you about when you're
in your eighties and beyond. But that's up to you
and what you like acting now. To have good muscle
strength forty years from now is a good reason to
(14:23):
strength train, but it might not be an effective reason
in terms of motivation strategy. If you haven't watched my
free sixteen minute mini course on six thoughts, people who
consistently rock their health habits think, then what are you
waiting for? And by talking there about research by doctor
Michelle Seeker, who has proven that people who exercise for
an abstract distant future reason are statistically significantly less likely
(14:49):
to stick with their workouts than people who exercise for
a benefit they get right now. This is helpful to
you to get sticking with your exercise plans, reason why
it makes you feel good today, and do it for
that reason. As far as strength training goes, I'm so
passionate about you realizing what your body is capable of.
(15:12):
Forget about what you look like or the endless mind
chatter that tells you that what you need is for
your body to be smaller. Focus on the power that
you're able to generate. I know for me what changed
everything with my relationship to exercise was barbells and the
power lifting lifts. I was so lucky to sort of
stumble into it in the best possible way. But once
(15:34):
I started to see the immense power of writing something
down in a notebook, I was hooked. Never again did
I think of exercising as something I should do. Not
once since then have I tried to find an excuse
to skip my workout. I do it now because I
love it. You couldn't pay me to not work on
(15:57):
my lifts. I love feeling cape of producing force and
watching that capability increase over time. It's the best. When
I think of where I started and where I am now,
it makes me feel so proud. I realize that we're
all different, and that's a good thing. What makes me
jump out of my bed with excitement at six am
will be different than what fires you up, and it
(16:19):
should be. But I hope that you can find something
that you love about what your muscles are capable of doing,
that you can track and systematize and watch improve. Then
remember to celebrate as your capacity increases. Focus on what
your body can do rather than how it looks. Let
(16:39):
the cosmetic benefit of muscular build be a byproduct of
your joy, not the cause of it. If you haven't
found a muscle building activity that you deeply love, yet,
don't give up. Keep trying things and be open to
new ideas, and maybe at first you can convince yourself
to do a few minutes of exercises you don't necessarily
love for the sake of increasing your strength, But then
(17:01):
make sure you're deliberately work in a way to learn
to love those things. If you want to be part
of my beta program to get consistent doing the things
that you've been avoiding but you know are good for
your future self, send me a message at health Courage
Collective at gmail dot com, or come to my website
health Courage Collective dot com and join the waitlist. Now
(17:22):
is the time to finally get consistent being the person
you know your future self needs you to be okay.
To improve your sixth vital sign, you need some kind
of resistance or load. It is possible to have the
load be your own body weight or bands, but don't
be afraid of barbels. They really are the best. And
(17:43):
remember the principle of progressive overload. If you want to
get stronger in a meaningful way, you can't just lift
the same weight every time. Your body will adapt to
that and you'll stay where you are. And you can't
do a bunch of random things and expect to see
focused results. It's to be some intentionality behind what you're doing.
(18:03):
That planning and focus is so so worth it. I
promise all movement is good. Well, I guess that's not
really true, is it. Some movements sprain your ankle or
tear your icl. But all forms of exercise that are
done correctly and feel good for your body have their place.
It really is true that the best exercise for you
(18:24):
is the one that you'll do follow your bliss and
all of that. But remember that all cardio and no
weights don't make for a very muscular body. You can
be an endurance athlete and have low bone density and
low muscle mass. In fact, many of them. Do I
think everyone should do some resistance training? The benefits are astounding.
(18:50):
What resistance exercises have you tried? What do you want
to try? Is there a way you can make resistance
training more fun? What is it about the other types
of movement that are fun to you? Can you use
one of those elements to make your resistance training more fun? So?
How much muscle mass should you have? The quote normal
(19:11):
amount to have is about thirty percent of your body
mass should be muscle mass. What is considered normal decreases
over time from thirty three percent when you're eighteen to
twenty six percent when you're seventy six. The typical is
to lose four to eight percent of muscle mass every
decade after age thirty. But just because that's normal doesn't
(19:33):
mean that that's optimal. I say, don't be normal. Have
the muscle mass of an eighteen year old when you're
eighty years old, gain three to eight percent muscle mass
every decade after age thirty. Yeah. The only way to
know your body composition for sure is to get a
body analysis. There are a few, and I'm a big
fan of the DEXA body scan. You can probably find
(19:55):
one by you. It's about seventy dollars and it's totally
easy and painless. It will give you very specific data
about your body composition. You might think you don't want
to know, but you do, I promise, because you love
yourself as you are, no matter what, and your body
composition is not a measure of your value, or your
(20:15):
worth or your okayness. It's just data. And once you
know what data you're working with, everything becomes clearer. You
can still choose to do nothing if you want to,
but it's always better to operate with all the facts.
Gain lean mass just because you think it would be
a cool thing to watch yourself do, not because it's
(20:37):
something else you feel like you have to add to
the long list of things you don't really want to
do in order to not be a bad person. Thank
you so much for being here today. I know that
you're busy and you have lots of choices of how
to spend your time, so I really truly appreciate you,
and I admire you for spending time up leveling your
physiological functioning so that your biological age days younger than
(21:01):
your chronological age and you're able to step up and
shine brighter instead of shrinking back and slowing down. Don't
forget that you are awesome. Next week we're going to
talk about the antidote to worrying about aging. Until then,
keep rocking your sixth vital sign and don't be normal.
Thank you so much for tuning into the Health Courage
(21:23):
Collective podcast. I am truly honored that you have paid
me the enormous compliment of your time and attention. I
would be so grateful if you would share this podcast
with someone you know and subscribe so you never miss
an episode. This podcast is for entertainment and information purposes only.
Statements and views on this podcast are not medical advice.
This podcast, including Christina Hackett and producers, disclaim responsibility for
(21:46):
any possible adverse events by use of information contained here
it If you think you have a medical problem, consult
a Licensed Positions
Vital signs are the indicators of how well our bodies
are functioning. There is an easy to measure vital sign
that can tell you a ton about the functionality of
your immune system, your risk for Alzheimer's and other serious
chronic diseases, your insulin sensitivity, and your likelihood of becoming frail, fragile,
(00:20):
and dependent on others. This is such an important high
leverage asset. If YOU'RS is low, you're definitely on the
path to living less and less as you get older.
You're listening to The Health Courage Collective podcast, episode two
hundred and fifteen, Your sixth Vital Sign, originally published July sixth,
(00:41):
twenty twenty two. Welcome to the Health Courage Collective podcast,
the show for women who are too busy to slog
through hours of generalized and applicable and often contradictory health information,
but too smart to ignore that a few minutes of
focused attention now can prevent years of suffering in the future.
I'm your host, Christina Hackett, a pharmacist who doesn't want
(01:04):
you to live on prescriptions, a certified coach specifically trained
to maximize your potential, and a compulsive learner obsessed with preventative,
cutting edge, holistic and integrated medicine. I'm on a mission
to increase your physical and mental resilience so you can
fearlessly look forward to your next forty plus limitless years.
Your time is now. Let's go Hello, Hello, how are
(01:29):
you today? Welcome to the podcast. I'm so happy that
you're joining me. I really appreciate your support and your
openness to learning. I think that you're awesome. It says
a lot about what a great person you are that
you're willing to spend your time listening to a podcast
about optimizing your health. As you get further along this
journey of life, how has your weak been? How has
(01:51):
your thinking about the fixing of your problems gone this
past week? Have you started to see through new eyes?
So today we're going to talk about your sixth vital sign.
This is something that I'm pretty passionate about, especially for
smart women like you. But first, if you remember what
(02:11):
our other vital signs are, or maybe we should start
with what vital signs even are. I'm sure you know,
but vital signs are body measurements we take to determine,
on a general level, how well someone's body is functioning.
We think of them an emergency of medicine. A lot
paramedics watch vital signs closely. If someone is crashing, one
(02:33):
or more of their vital signs are signaling that their
body is not functioning, like not well enough to keep
them alive. That is a problem. But I typically think
of there being four vital signs temperature, pulse, respiratory rate,
and blood pressure. Some people include other things like pupil
(02:53):
size and reactivity to light. If you happen to have
listened to my episodes thirty one and thirty two, you
know what your fifth vital sign is. This is a
great indicator of how well everything is working together inside
your body. It's your menstrual cycle. The regularity and details
of it can tell us a lot about your physiology.
(03:16):
It's worth paying attention to. So if that's the fifth,
what do you think the sixth the vital sign would be?
What can be measured that can tell us a lot
about how well your body can function and thrive. It
could be a lot of things. I've heard that it
should be pain. This makes sense if you're an EMT
evaluating a patient in the back of an ambulance, but
(03:39):
here's something said by doctor Carla Prato. The thing that
it should be another vital sign in regards to overall
health and as you'll see, resilience, which is huge. We
can do a lot to prevent some unwonted health outcomes,
but sometimes bad stuff still happens. If your sixth vital
sign measures in the optimal category, you'll both avoid many
(04:04):
and bounce back well from the other health challenges. Like
a professional, this is the measure of the volume of
the largest endocrine organ in your body. The bigger, the better.
Well to a point, extremes aren't great, but I'm pretty
sure none of you listening are at the upper extreme,
(04:26):
like to the point of being unhealthy. So what is
this endocrine organ? Can you guess? We've heard that the
skin is the largest organ in the body, but it's
not an endocrine organ, Thank goodness, because I don't really
want to increase the size of my skin. Other than
(04:46):
becoming larger, you'd have to become like a sharpay human
or something. Can you imagine if that were the new thing?
Pretty confident it's not going to be. Luckily, we're also
not looking to increase the size of our pan creus
or are thyroid or thymus. The size of this endocrine
organ directly correlates with how well you will age on
(05:11):
several different levels subcellular aging, inflammation, immune function, which is
hugely important, cognitive abilities, and aesthetically might as well look
good as you decrease your risk of cancer, diabetes, and
chronic pain. If you haven't guessed by now, we're talking
about your muscle mass. How much do you think about
(05:33):
your overall muscle tissue volume. It's important for way more
than just appearance, and you don't have to look any
certain way to have a healthy amount of muscle mass.
I don't care about this for you because of how
you look. You look great the way you are right now.
Low muscle mass can happen at any body weight, so
(05:54):
it's important to directly measure it. Hence the idea of
being another via sign. Hundreds or maybe thousands of medical
studies show that patients with low muscle mass experience very
different outcomes from patients with healthy muscle mass. Want to
have a forty percent higher chance of dying of breast
(06:15):
cancer get diagnosed when you have low muscle mass, want
to be more likely to get Alzheimer's, and if you
do to have a more severe case, have low muscle mass,
want more post surgical complications, longer hospital stays, longer time
required on a ventilator in the ICU, lower quality of life,
and poorer overall survival rates. Well, you get the idea.
(06:39):
People who have low overall muscle mass have impaired immune
system function. This is bad news for catching circulating viruses,
but even worse news for your innate ability to spot
cancer cells and keep them from setting up shop and
starting to multiply. It's so crucial to keep our immune
system in top gear, especially as we get older, because
(07:01):
if we do nothing, it starts to decline with age.
There are several different interesting ways that skeletal muscle mass
promotes healthy immunity. One is that lymphocytes and macrophages need
the non essential amino acid glutamine, which is produced by
our muscles when they are active. So a bigger glutamine
(07:21):
pool in the form of larger, more active muscles strengthens
those immune cells. Another has to do with cytokines. We've
all gotten a lesson in cytokine storms from COVID, but
cytokines are meant to be saviors and they generally are
as long as they stay in balance. There are pro
(07:41):
inflammatory and anti inflammatory cytokines, both of them are important.
We do need acute inflammation. Sometimes the problem comes when
there are too many pro inflammatory cytokines relative to the
anti inflammatory ones. Interlucin six has both pro and anti
inflammatory types depending on which tissue it's released from. And
(08:06):
I didn't know this before, but an essential source of
the anti inflammatory interleukin six s is skeletal muscle. When
there is more skeletal muscle present, more anti inflammatory aisle
six can be released, which helps keep pro inflammatory aisle
six in check, promoting a more rapid and thorough healing process.
(08:31):
Pretty cool, right, Something I hadn't thought much about before
is that if you have a traumatic event like an
accident or surgery, or even an infection, your body needs
a sufficient and immediate supply of amino acids to use
for repair. Amino Acids are the little protein building blocks
that are essential to being able to construct disaster clean
(08:54):
up structures. Your muscles are readily available abundant source of
amino acids that can be tapped into for this. If
you have sufficient muscle tissue, you have on site repair
materials ready to use in case of catastrophe. It's kind
of like having a seventy two hour kit in addition
(09:14):
to all the other awesome things your muscle mass can
do for you. It's like having a fifty pound bag
of dry beans on your body just in case. Maybe
it's more like an mre. You know what those are?
The military rations chickenala king or burrito beef that can
be eaten without heating if necessary and last for decades. Yummy.
(09:35):
I actually really love emergency preparedness stuff. I won't go
off on a big tangent, but I live in an
earthquake zone and I've been evacuated from my house twice,
almost three times due to wildfires, and I feel a
lot better about the possibility of earthquakes, pandemics, civil unrest,
extended power outages, and general apocalypse type stuff like the
(09:55):
Domino's pizza that exploded near my house, because I know
that I have the base six on hand to take
care of myself and my family. I've never thought of
muscle mass on my body in that way before. I
have thought of strength and endurance as assets, which they
totally are, but the idea of carrying around extra building
blocks for emergency repairs is pretty cool. Our bodies are
(10:19):
so efficient at recycling, it's amazing. There are all kinds
of studies that show that muscle mass is highly correlated
with development of mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's. In one
study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association
that I looked through, they measured muscle strength of senior
adults with a bunch of different tools to measure grip, strength, inflection,
(10:41):
and extension of all kinds of muscles, and they gave
them each a Z score. I'm not super familiar with
muscle Z scores. Z scores in general just have to
do with health, like where you fall on a bell
curve of averages. But I'm not super clear about how
much more strength you have to have to go up
or down one unit in muscle Z score. But each
(11:03):
one Z score muscle strength unit above the average showed
a forty three percent decrease in the risk for Alzheimer's disease.
Forty three percent. That's insane. If there were a pill
that could do that, it would be a blockbuster drug.
Something else that would be a mega blockbuster drug would
(11:26):
be something that could sensitize you to your own insulin
in a healthy way, something that could gobble up glucose
so that your blood sugar isn't high, but your insulin
level doesn't have to go up to accomplish that. The
greater proportion of your life you can live with a
lower insulin level, the more insulin sensitive you're going to be,
The more insulin sensitive you are, the longer and more
(11:48):
healthfuly you're going to live. It is uber uber important.
Staying insulin sensitive, by keeping your insulin level low most
of the time, may be the most important thing you
can do for yourself. More muscle mass means more tissue
that loves to consume glucose. Eighty percent of the reason
(12:10):
that glucose starts to come down after a meal is
because glucose is being pulled into the muscle. People with
higher muscle mass have their glucose levels come down more
quickly after meals, which is a good thing because their
muscles are hungry for it. Having your glucose level come
down in a shorter amount of time is good. This
is part of a longer discussion, But we need insulin
(12:30):
on sometimes and off sometimes. We can't build muscle without insulin,
but generally most people live their lives in a state
of chronically elevated insulin and it's killing them literally. One
way to optimize this issue is to own more muscle mass.
Don't go minimalist with your muscle collection. Unlike your beanie babies,
(12:54):
they are useful, attractive, socially acceptable, They appreciate in value,
and they send the physiological message that you have a
good reason to keep living. Since muscles exist to move
our bones, having good muscle mass is generally associated with
having good bone density. Having our muscles put stress on
our bones by pulling them around is a very good
(13:16):
thing to do for our bone density. We all know
that having strong bones is super important, especially as we
get older. So while it's the activities we do to
grow our muscles that make our bones strong, muscle strength
and bone strength typically go together. Good muscle mass by
itself is also associated with lower risk of injury and fracture.
(13:39):
Being strong makes you more injury proof and resilient. Of course,
we all know that we don't want to be so
frail and feeble that we can't get ourselves into and
out of bed or the shower. Or the car when
we're old. That's a good thing to be aware of
and prevent from happening. Our quality of life will be
so much better if we can perform our acts activities
(14:00):
of daily living by ourselves when we're really old. I
would suggest that you don't stop there and plan to hike, bike, ski, parasaale,
rock climb, cage, fight, whatever float you about when you're
in your eighties and beyond. But that's up to you
and what you like acting now. To have good muscle
strength forty years from now is a good reason to
(14:23):
strength train, but it might not be an effective reason
in terms of motivation strategy. If you haven't watched my
free sixteen minute mini course on six thoughts, people who
consistently rock their health habits think, then what are you
waiting for? And by talking there about research by doctor
Michelle Seeker, who has proven that people who exercise for
an abstract distant future reason are statistically significantly less likely
(14:49):
to stick with their workouts than people who exercise for
a benefit they get right now. This is helpful to
you to get sticking with your exercise plans, reason why
it makes you feel good today, and do it for
that reason. As far as strength training goes, I'm so
passionate about you realizing what your body is capable of.
(15:12):
Forget about what you look like or the endless mind
chatter that tells you that what you need is for
your body to be smaller. Focus on the power that
you're able to generate. I know for me what changed
everything with my relationship to exercise was barbells and the
power lifting lifts. I was so lucky to sort of
stumble into it in the best possible way. But once
(15:34):
I started to see the immense power of writing something
down in a notebook, I was hooked. Never again did
I think of exercising as something I should do. Not
once since then have I tried to find an excuse
to skip my workout. I do it now because I
love it. You couldn't pay me to not work on
(15:57):
my lifts. I love feeling cape of producing force and
watching that capability increase over time. It's the best. When
I think of where I started and where I am now,
it makes me feel so proud. I realize that we're
all different, and that's a good thing. What makes me
jump out of my bed with excitement at six am
will be different than what fires you up, and it
(16:19):
should be. But I hope that you can find something
that you love about what your muscles are capable of doing,
that you can track and systematize and watch improve. Then
remember to celebrate as your capacity increases. Focus on what
your body can do rather than how it looks. Let
(16:39):
the cosmetic benefit of muscular build be a byproduct of
your joy, not the cause of it. If you haven't
found a muscle building activity that you deeply love, yet,
don't give up. Keep trying things and be open to
new ideas, and maybe at first you can convince yourself
to do a few minutes of exercises you don't necessarily
love for the sake of increasing your strength, But then
(17:01):
make sure you're deliberately work in a way to learn
to love those things. If you want to be part
of my beta program to get consistent doing the things
that you've been avoiding but you know are good for
your future self, send me a message at health Courage
Collective at gmail dot com, or come to my website
health Courage Collective dot com and join the waitlist. Now
(17:22):
is the time to finally get consistent being the person
you know your future self needs you to be okay.
To improve your sixth vital sign, you need some kind
of resistance or load. It is possible to have the
load be your own body weight or bands, but don't
be afraid of barbels. They really are the best. And
(17:43):
remember the principle of progressive overload. If you want to
get stronger in a meaningful way, you can't just lift
the same weight every time. Your body will adapt to
that and you'll stay where you are. And you can't
do a bunch of random things and expect to see
focused results. It's to be some intentionality behind what you're doing.
(18:03):
That planning and focus is so so worth it. I
promise all movement is good. Well, I guess that's not
really true, is it. Some movements sprain your ankle or
tear your icl. But all forms of exercise that are
done correctly and feel good for your body have their place.
It really is true that the best exercise for you
(18:24):
is the one that you'll do follow your bliss and
all of that. But remember that all cardio and no
weights don't make for a very muscular body. You can
be an endurance athlete and have low bone density and
low muscle mass. In fact, many of them. Do I
think everyone should do some resistance training? The benefits are astounding.
(18:50):
What resistance exercises have you tried? What do you want
to try? Is there a way you can make resistance
training more fun? What is it about the other types
of movement that are fun to you? Can you use
one of those elements to make your resistance training more fun? So?
How much muscle mass should you have? The quote normal
(19:11):
amount to have is about thirty percent of your body
mass should be muscle mass. What is considered normal decreases
over time from thirty three percent when you're eighteen to
twenty six percent when you're seventy six. The typical is
to lose four to eight percent of muscle mass every
decade after age thirty. But just because that's normal doesn't
(19:33):
mean that that's optimal. I say, don't be normal. Have
the muscle mass of an eighteen year old when you're
eighty years old, gain three to eight percent muscle mass
every decade after age thirty. Yeah. The only way to
know your body composition for sure is to get a
body analysis. There are a few, and I'm a big
fan of the DEXA body scan. You can probably find
(19:55):
one by you. It's about seventy dollars and it's totally
easy and painless. It will give you very specific data
about your body composition. You might think you don't want
to know, but you do, I promise, because you love
yourself as you are, no matter what, and your body
composition is not a measure of your value, or your
(20:15):
worth or your okayness. It's just data. And once you
know what data you're working with, everything becomes clearer. You
can still choose to do nothing if you want to,
but it's always better to operate with all the facts.
Gain lean mass just because you think it would be
a cool thing to watch yourself do, not because it's
(20:37):
something else you feel like you have to add to
the long list of things you don't really want to
do in order to not be a bad person. Thank
you so much for being here today. I know that
you're busy and you have lots of choices of how
to spend your time, so I really truly appreciate you,
and I admire you for spending time up leveling your
physiological functioning so that your biological age days younger than
(21:01):
your chronological age and you're able to step up and
shine brighter instead of shrinking back and slowing down. Don't
forget that you are awesome. Next week we're going to
talk about the antidote to worrying about aging. Until then,
keep rocking your sixth vital sign and don't be normal.
Thank you so much for tuning into the Health Courage
(21:23):
Collective podcast. I am truly honored that you have paid
me the enormous compliment of your time and attention. I
would be so grateful if you would share this podcast
with someone you know and subscribe so you never miss
an episode. This podcast is for entertainment and information purposes only.
Statements and views on this podcast are not medical advice.
This podcast, including Christina Hackett and producers, disclaim responsibility for
(21:46):
any possible adverse events by use of information contained here
it If you think you have a medical problem, consult
a Licensed Positions
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