Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Micro wisdom delivered to your ears every morning in voice notes ranging from 3 to 15 minutes long. Wisdom on how to live a healthier and more fulfilling life. Every podcast will ground you in the present moment to ensure you know what's important, the here and now.
Hello everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. So the first thing is if you're listening to this, thank you for one and two, you are doing something good for your health. Well, I hope anyway this advice helps you, you're trying to put yourself in a good state of mind either at the start of the day towards the end, ten-fifteen minutes a day to prime your mind, to focus on the fundamentals, push away the stress you don't need, get the basics done day in day out and results will come. And it's proof of our with the many users getting results, so it's important that you realize that this action you're doing right now, listening to this type of stuff is over time a huge impact on your life hopefully.
Speaker 1:Now today's topic, I need to share it with you because it's such an important finding and I know a lot of our users in the app, we haven't got like many 18 year olds, 21 year olds, mainly people who are 30 plus thinking of long term health, not just about the Instagram picture on the beach, we're thinking of overall health here with the weight management. And this finding in this recent study shows that whilst the app has got the fundamentals laid down, if there were to be one extra thing added, it would be for you guys to do two strength workouts a week using either dumbbells, resistance bands, barbells, machines, whatever it may be. And the reason for this is because this new research wanted to find out if losing your muscle mass, also resulted in cognitive decline, so like your brain basically working worse. Is there a link between them? Which way does the link go?
Speaker 1:So does losing muscle and strength in old age cause cognitive decline or does the arrow point the other way and cognitive decline leads to muscle loss? So the new study has some answers. Get ready for this one. So they looked at ALM, appendicular lean mass, the muscle tissue in an individual's arms and legs as a marker for total body muscle mass. They looked at grip strength and they looked at walking speed and they did some analysis with a massive data source and tried to check out the relationship.
Speaker 1:So ALM, so muscle in arms and legs, has a casual relationship with cognitive function, grip strength and walking speed. So in other words, this means that your muscle mass can explain both your functional abilities, your strength, your power, your balance and your cognitive state which is your memory, reasoning and decision making. Grip strength does not have that relationship. So if you lose your grip strength, it doesn't mean you're losing cognitive function but losing your muscle in your arms and legs in the elderly does show this. This is important.
Speaker 1:This is important because when we get older, we don't necessarily want to be looking back at our life going, man, if I just did if I just did thirty well, sixty minutes a week on strength workouts for the last ten years of my life, how different would my cognition be right now? And that's all we want. We want health, we want to be thinking straight, we want decision making, we want reasoning, we want memory. Now, it's never too late to start working on this. There's huge improvements you can do joining a gym or doing some exercises.
Speaker 1:You don't have to for fat loss, but if you're thinking of total health and getting some habits in, it's important that you start looking. It doesn't have to be exactly today because typically what happens in elderly people is they get hospitalized and then they lose a lot of muscle, a considerable amount of muscle being in the bed and that's kind of when they leave with a far less muscle mass, cognitive decline kicks in. They can lose about 2% of muscle mass per day or 15% per week in intensive care. Obviously, that's a really bad situation to be in, but, yeah, it's important. Like, you don't want to be thinking when it's too late, wish I had more muscle and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:This is not muscle as in huge bodybuilder but muscle. This is not what I'm saying here. This is not what I'm saying. This is muscle in just general maintenance of the muscle you've had in your thirties or forties or whatever. So think of it this way.
Speaker 1:You're all in a situation now where you want to lose weight. Okay? You're walking around with the headphones in listening to the swash man going blah blah blah blah. Yeah. Wanna lose weight, Scott.
Speaker 1:Wanna lose weight. And you think, okay. What do I really wanna lose? I wanna lose fat. Okay?
Speaker 1:I wanna lose fat. Okay? Weight will come because if you most of your weight, a lot of your weight is going be fat and you lose fat you're going to lose total weight. But then you start thinking what other things are important and we say well, your muscle retention is important, that's why the protein target you have, not only do many of you say in the comments, oh my god, I've hit my protein target, it makes it easier to eat within my calorie allowance. That's a great side effect of protein, but it helps you maintain muscle mass, which has huge metabolic advantages.
Speaker 1:But also as we get older, like I say, it's actually linked if you can maintain your muscle mass. It doesn't mean if you turn into a bodybuilder, you're gonna be Albert Einstein at 80 years old. Do you know what I mean? It's not that it's not what it means. Okay?
Speaker 1:It just means if you can maintain the muscle mass that you need to function, you're gonna be able to have better cognitive function, grip strength, so forth. You're gonna be able to walk. And these things are like lifestyle stuff, know, sitting in the kitchen with your kids, having a cup of tea, having a chat, being able to walk around, oh do you want to go on holiday, granddad or grandma, grandmother, whatever you call them, mam and dad, as we say in Wales. Mam and dad, should we go to a city break? I know you've always wanted to go to parties.
Speaker 1:Oh, I can't. I can't. I'm too weak. I haven't got enough. I can't walk fast enough.
Speaker 1:You'll have to say no to some things if you end up not being in a state where you can do these things. You might lose this vitality. Vitality, if you think of what that is, of course it maintains sharpness of mind. Of course it maintains being able to walk or at least walk at a relatively decent pace. And this is excluding guys, excluding injuries and stuff like that that force these issues.
Speaker 1:These are things that I'm talking outside of that. Vitality of life, cognition, your strength, your power, being able to walk, being able to make decisions, you know. We don't have to live by the old world where, you know, 65 years old, you know, people say old. There's proof of people going to 70, 80, 90 sharp. My great auntie died like a week or two ago.
Speaker 1:I think I I only met her, like, when I was a kid. She moved away. She died at 99, I mean, I think 99 years old. And she was sharp in her nineties, still did things out and about. The reason I bring this study to you is I don't know where all of you are in your journey, obviously not.
Speaker 1:I know all of you listening are trying to improve your weight, improve your health. You take it one day at a time, your fat loss will be taken care of, your protein is going to help you with muscle retention, your steps are going to help you with activity, mindset. There's a quote by Nietzsche, German philosopher, he says, Never make decisions in the indoors. Only make decisions when you've gone for a walk. There's a truth to this because when you go for a walk, you feel a sense of calm, you get your brain moving, get your blood flow going.
Speaker 1:There's even one study I read that walking in nature, because you're looking left to right, left to right, it helps process things in the brain. Not too dissimilar to EDMR therapy, which is this rapid eye movement. It's not the same obviously, but they're trying to the theorise, hey, maybe it's something to do with that. Just relaxations, the eyes going left to right, being able to relax and process, let the mind do its thing. It's important I think walking, being able to do all of these things as we age is important.
Speaker 1:Like I said, I don't know where all of you are. Some of you are just in the fat loss phase right now, want to maintain things like, ah, you've got muscle. The last piece of the puzzle for many of you is to start thinking about the exercise you're going to do. What's going to help you maintain your muscle mass? And the good news is it doesn't have to be too extreme, it doesn't have to be crazy.
Speaker 1:The research is twice a week, full body workouts twice a week, two sets per body part, which means, hey, need to work my quadriceps. Okay, what should I do? Well, can do squats, do 10 reps of squats, and then you can go onto the machine, you do the leg extension machine, and I do 10 reps there and then I do two sets. So I do 10, have a two minute break and then do 10 and then I'm done. It doesn't have to be intense, it really doesn't have to be super intense.
Speaker 1:The weight needs to be challenging so often, but start very light, start very, very light. Don't kill yourself there because you're going to not be able to walk. If this is a nudge you need, ask a local PT, get someone who's helped people who are not trying to be Mr and Mrs Olympi, okay, because there's many PTs out there that will put you through a crazy training regime because they're 22 years old and they don't understand pretty much the science or the basics, want to understand what the client's trying to achieve, so they're just going to put you on this kind of cookie cutter plan. You can go up to a PT and say, Hey, can you listen to this podcast please? And it's an interesting new study and the study about full body twice a week.
Speaker 1:Can we work this into my gym schedule? Can I come and see you twice a week? Can we start off really, really light? Maybe not even any weight to start with, just do the movements. The next week we do something light.
Speaker 1:And after these workouts, remember you're going to think That was easy. For the first one or two weeks you want to kind of think that. You want to think, That was quite easy, that was quite nice, I'll do that again. You don't want to think, I can never do that again. It's a big mistake.
Speaker 1:So I just want you, as a result of this podcast, I don't know how old you are listening wherever, a little nudge to think, hey, I might become a protein in, I'm sorting my calories out, my steps are getting better, but the last piece of the total puzzle when we're looking at the future and we can't ignore this research, especially if you don't want your cognition to go down, is to start looking at some strength training twice a week. And that's it. And if you think, I want you all to visualize yourself, 78 years old, you're sitting on a couch, they ask him, sit down, visualise him, sit down, kids come running in and off, you don't go kids around, someone comes coming in and they go, how's, how are you doing? And you go, well, how's it going? You're going, well, going, oh, god.
Speaker 1:Memory's going, yeah. Do you wanna do you want something to eat? Something to what? Something to eat? No.
Speaker 1:No. I'm okay. Cognitive's gone down. Decision making's going down. Do you wanna go for a walk?
Speaker 1:No. I can't move. No. I can't move. I'm just gonna watch TV now and sit by you.
Speaker 1:And you go, Okay, so you don't want to walk, don't want to make any decisions, kind of not thinking straight. Okay, I'll just sit down with you then. And this can be your life, the last ten, fifteen years, man. Sitting on a couch thinking I'm old, thinking 'um'. But then I come along and I look at what's the famous Christmas Carol, the ghost, Benesus Scrooge.
Speaker 1:I say, Scrooge, dead. But things would change if we did these two things wake you up, so you're not 78 anymore. Think about it now. You were just 78 on the couch, couldn't make decisions, couldn't really speak, couldn't go for a walk because you had no energy and you just couldn't really walk well. 78.
Speaker 1:Now you're back to who you are today. And all you have to do between now to that future to change your all would be to do what the app says. Obviously the three things, don't stress off everything, chronic stress is not going be good for you, but start looking into doing two workouts a week. Okay, that's it. That could be the difference.
Speaker 1:I'm not saying it's definitely going to be the difference, but it could be a big difference. That's what the research is telling us. Local club, gym, classes they use, dumbbells or whatever. Can do body weight workouts. Go on YouTube.
Speaker 1:Light body weight workout for whatever your age group is. See what equipment you need buy. You can put some workers in the app for you if you want, but sometimes it's better that when you do the workouts is to find something locally to you, something you can go to because community is another part of it. Your social health is another big part of this puzzle we're trying to solve. Find something you like going to.
Speaker 1:If have friends, you can meet new people. A lot of fitness classes do this. There'll be for sure somewhere around where you live. You know? I don't go gym anymore.
Speaker 1:Do jujitsu every day. And I can do jujitsu everywhere I go in the world. In Brazil, Rio De Janeiro, the same company that does jujitsu in London. It's a big worldwide company. They've got the same values.
Speaker 1:You know what you're getting. You go to an Rio De Janeiro, you go to one in Sao Paulo, you go to one in Florianopolis, and you go to one in London, and you go to one in Newcastle, you go to one in The United States and you're part of this big family and you go and do this hour of training and it's a bit of this, bit of that and I haven't been going to the gym much. Go sometimes when I can't go Jiu Jitsu maybe, haven't lost much muscle mass at all because I'm still doing resistance training in jujitsu, I'm still doing pushing and pulling and you know that type of movement. I'm enjoying it and going frequently and I enjoy the people I meet and I've met many awesome people through it and I'm sure you can find the same from the local classes you can find near you. So you don't have to do everything yourself on an app, indoor, online.
Speaker 1:You can go and find something near you. So there's a mission from this message is to have a think. Have a think with your friends, your family, your husband, your wife, whatever it is. Can we do together maybe? What can we do twice a week?
Speaker 1:Start off once a week, but what can we eventually start doing twice a week that's a routine, that's part of our family thing, was part of my thing? And if I'm feeling anxious about meeting new people, think of the benefits of it. When you're older you're going to be much sharper. Sharper for god knows how much longer. Maybe many years longer.
Speaker 1:Maybe a decade longer. Who knows? But for sure, we know losing muscle mass in the arms and legs, which means you can probably lose muscle mass elsewhere, results in cognitive decline. It causes cognitive decline. Okay?
Speaker 1:It's not good. So let's do it. We don't have to be Arnold Schwarzenegger, but we have to do something to stop that decline. And it's not gonna be as much as you think, and that's the good news. So happy days, enjoy your day, hit your targets, don't stress about the thing I'm just saying now, work out too much.
Speaker 1:Just have a think about it, and I'll catch you back here on the podcast on Monday.