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Colin Renaud, PA-C and Dr. Sasha Rose work through why energy, strength, focus and recovery change with age, and why so many people are told that is simply what getting older looks like. Patients describe the same pattern: the body and the brain feel like they are slowing down and nobody has looked deeper into why. What muscle actually does beyond strength, why maintaining it takes deliberate attention, how hormones and thyroid markers fit in, why one lab value is rarely enough, and what a full workup looks like. Functional medicine for adults in Maine and New Hampshire.
Colin Renaud, PA-C and Dr. Sasha Rose work through why energy, strength, focus and recovery change with age, and why so many people are told that is simply what getting older looks like.
Patients describe the same pattern: the body and the brain feel like they are slowing down, and nobody has looked deeper into why. What muscle actually does beyond strength, why maintaining it takes deliberate attention, how hormones and thyroid markers fit in, why one lab value is rarely enough, and what a full workup looks like when someone says they feel older than they should.
In this episode:
Med Matrix is a functional medicine practice serving Maine and New Hampshire. Learn more at medmatrixusa.com
This episode is for educational purposes only and is not medical advice. It does not create a patient provider relationship. Always talk with your own qualified healthcare provider before starting, stopping or changing any treatment, medication or supplement.
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We are talking about aging, as we kind of do a lot. It's kind of a big part of what we do. So if you're just tuning in, welcome to the MedMatrix Method podcast. As I said, we're here to talk about everything functional medicine. And today's episode is called How to Stay Strong, Sharp and Energized as You Age. And we've been looking forward to talking about this because it's something we see all the time. And I talk about this all the time on this podcast. You do, too. Patients who feel like their body and brain are just slowing down, but have never had anyone look deeper into why their energy, strength, focus and recovery are essentially changing as part of the quote unquote aging process. I'm your host for today. I'm Colin Renard. I'm one of the lead clinicians here at MedMatrix, and I'm excited to be joined by my esteemed colleague, Dr. Sasha Rose. We are going to break down what patients should actually understand about healthy aging, muscle metabolism, cognition, energy and how functional medicine helps people support long term vitality. So here's a little breakdown of the episode for those are just turning in. We're going to start with our discussion between Dr. Rose and myself. And as we go, if you have questions, if you're listening to us live on YouTube or Instagram, please make sure to drop them in the comments section. We will have a live Q&A towards the end of the podcast. And just a reminder, before we get started, this episode and all of our episodes of the MedMatrix Method are educational only. This is not meant to be personal medical advice. And it should not replace medical advice from your medical providers. If you are interested in receiving personalized medical guidance from myself, Dr. Rose, or one of our other esteemed colleagues in the practice, we would love to help you. You can go to our website MedMatrixUSA.com and book a discovery call and start the process of becoming a patient here at MedMatrix. So let's get started. Dr. Rose, for those tuning in for the first time or that don't know you well, who are you? What do you do? What's going on with you? I'm Dr. Sasha Rose. I'm a naturopathic doctor. I'm a licensed acupuncturist. I'm one of the lead clinicians as well here at MedMatrix. One thing I sometimes forget to mention in my introduction is that I'm a published author. I published about 10 years ago, so I think that's sometimes why I forget. But I wrote a book about the connection between the mind and the gut. And this is, yeah, just in kind of reviewing this topic for today, super excited. I had some feedback, not feedback, but I have a patient who's in her early 70s, and she told me a few weeks ago, she said, I listen to all of your podcasts, all of them. She's like, I love them. She said, I feel like they're a little bit geared towards younger people. What, like, and I thought that was really interesting. So I think, you know, I'm really glad that we're doing this topic. I don't know that I completely agree with her, but that was her experience. So I hope that the more that we do some of these topics that are kind of not just about inflammation in general, or inflammation as we have said, but, you know, really specifically kind of about aging. I hope that she feels like we're targeting her a little bit more. I think that's a great point. Because I think we talk, I was going to say, I feel like we talk about the aging population a lot, especially like women that go through menopause, or like perimenopause, and men, you know. But that's still kind of in your 50s and 60s, right? Maybe, right. Maybe not quite into that. Because I say all the time, like, I want to be that person when I'm 80 in the gym, like squatting is what, you know. You know what, Colin? I think you will be. I'm like 100% certain of that. So yeah. So for your 70 plus year old patient and beyond, we are here for you. And we are definitely supportive of you. Like I said, I'm the host for today. I'm Colin Renard. I'm one of the lead clinicians in the practice. I have a pretty unique background. I have multiple board certifications. I'm fellowship trained in functional medicine and anti-aging. I hold a master's degree in nutrition. So that's a little bit about us. We can get started if you're ready, Dr. Rose. And like I said, if you're listening live, please drop a question on Instagram or on YouTube. We'd love to hear from you. So let's start with just what are we talking about? Like when we are talking about patients wanting to age well, when we're talking about vitality, when we're talking about staying sharp and strong, what in your view as a doctor, as a clinician, what are you trying to understand the patient like looking for? Like what does that mean to you when they talk about aging well, essentially? Yeah. And both you and I, and I think all of the providers here, I think it's a very common goal for our patients coming in is wanting to age well. Now, maybe this is, again, somebody in their 50s, 60s, 70s, or even I think both of us have patients in their 80s. I know I do. And you still deserve aging well, no matter what decade you're in. And I think that the kind of in terms of broad categories of what they're really trying to maintain, protect would be energy. And that can be kind of physical energy. It can be mental energy, physical strength. Physical mobility is a big one. Memory. We talk a lot about memory and just kind of that, again, mental clarity focus. Independence and whatever form that takes for an individual. Overall metabolism. And then, again, these are so interrelated with each other, but mood and sleep and body composition. And we all are unique individuals. We all have those specific hobbies, activities that we love, and that enrich our lives. And I think all of us in our own way want to just kind of be able to keep doing those things as long as possible. I do. Yeah. Like I said, I want to be that guy in the gym when I'm 90, like squatting. And I think it's a really important point because, you know, things like strength and brain health and energy need to be talked about together because they're deeply interconnected. I think, you know, muscle affects metabolism and blood sugar, and blood sugar affects brain function and hormones affect blood sugar, and energy and inflammation can affect your recovery and then your cognition. And, you know, if you have poor sleep, how does that all play into it? But if you can't sleep, is that going to affect your energy and your vitality? So there's a lot of interconnection here. And I think as functional medicine clinicians, right, we really do this well when we talk about healthy aging and vitality, because that's, I think, a tenant of our medicine, right, from a functional perspective that I think the conventional world just doesn't do a great job of. Obviously, if you're in aesthetics, if you're a plastic surgeon, if you're like a cosmetic dermatologist, right, if you do facelifts and plastic surgery, I mean, there's an aging component there. But when we're talking about aging, we're really talking about your whole body, right, and your vitality and how strong you are and how sharp you are mentally. So from your perspective as a functional medicine clinician for over 20 years, by the way, you didn't mention that in your intro, what does functional medicine mean when we're talking about aging and healthy aging and vitality? From your perspective in this realm, what are we really talking about? Yeah, well, I think you make a good distinction in talking about kind of how conventional medicine versus functional medicine looks at aging and looks at vitality, because currently in our current system, the conventional model is kind of geared towards disease management. And so once somebody has a disease, what medications, what surgeries, what procedures, are going to be used to kind of manage basically. And we in functional medicine are trying to step in long before that disease actually manifests. And so we're looking to avoid disease and support all of these functions that we have been outlining that you outlined really well in terms of preserving muscle and metabolism and all of those things. And so regulating blood sugar and reducing inflammation and these things that if we can optimize those, manage those years or decades earlier, then those diseases aren't so much less likely to happen. There's obviously no guarantees, but in terms of how well somebody's living, that's our goal, right? It's like we talk about lifespan versus healthspan. And so we're not just interested in keeping somebody alive for a certain period of time, but how well are they living while they're living? So they can, again, go to the gym and do what they want when they're in their 80s. They're not wheelchair-bound necessarily or chair-bound. Yeah, I think it's a really great point because so many people assume that these issues of like fatigue and weakness and brain fog are just normal. And certainly, we're not robots, right? We are organic matter as human beings. We do decay, I guess, over time. That's not a secret, but maybe I shouldn't use that word. It's a little, yeah, it's a little morbid. But because these symptoms are so common, people think that it's supposed to quote-unquote happen, but common doesn't mean it's optimal, right? So I think the way you sort of introduce this is really important because functional medicine really asks what systems are changing underneath everything instead of sort of just saying, well, you're getting older. And this is really, as you pointed out too, where we're not, again, poo-pooing on the conventional medical, you know, our conventional medical colleagues, not at all. It's really just if you present to your, say, primary care doctor and say, well, I'm 50. How do I age better? They might not have a great answer for you. They might have some things. You know, maybe you should eat better. Maybe you should have less stress. Maybe you should, you know, try to sleep more. And all that is totally important. But I think we take it a little bit of a step further to look at all the biochemical changes of the body, to look at, you know, how things are changing from a really molecular level. I think that's really where we're distinguishing ourselves. So why does this matter, I think, is really important for us to discuss too. And from your perspective and how, and when you talk to patients, why is like something like staying strong, right? We talk about that all the time. There was a study that was published a couple of years ago that I thought was amazing. If you have really strong legs, you'll live really long time. That's like, it was a direct indicator of mortality. I was like, yes. So do your squats and you'll live to be 100. But why is something like staying strong one of the most important parts of aging well in your experience? Yeah, I mean, right. Why is being physically strong and having optimal muscle mass? Why is that such an important part of this discussion around aging? And we did a podcast on this a couple of days ago as well, specifically about kind of metabolism over the age of 40 and how muscle plays a role in that. And there's so much out there about the importance of maintaining muscle when it comes to your metabolism, your insulin sensitivity. I was gonna say maybe this is obvious, but maybe it isn't obvious, but that muscle strength has a direct correlation to your mobility and mobility and balance are tied together and as well as bone health. And so all of those things are often kind of, unfortunately for older people, kind of the beginning of the end when there isn't optimal muscle strength, there is not optimal mobility or balance and the bones are weak. And so a fall is often, unfortunately, kind of the beginning of the end and independence. And so all of those things are really kind of interrelated. And if there's not attention paid towards maintaining muscle, we are going to lose it. Like it just happens as we age, if you just don't focus on it at all. And so losing muscles, we see, you and I see this all the time, it can just make aging, no matter what, just feel that much harder. And that's both from kind of a metabolic perspective and a physical perspective. So I think it does need, the more we can keep talking about the importance of muscle strength, I think the better. Yeah, the stronger you are, the longer you'll live, basically. Yeah, that's it in a nutshell. Yeah, to sort of, I think a good segue to sort of talk about, you know, from the physical to sort of the mental. Yeah. Because that's another important part. So staying sharp too, like mentally is really important. It's more just kind of like your memory and stuff like that. So, you know, things like cognitive health in terms of your focus or processing speed, your mood, your motivation, mental clarity and resilience. Because if you don't have some of those things, then physical health can decline too. And vice versa. You know, if you're not feeling motivated, if you're not feeling, you know, like yourself mentally, you're not going to really feel like you want to do something physical. And things like brain fog. I mean, how many patients do you see at, you know, in any given time span where it's like, my chief complaint is brain fog. Okay. Yeah. Get in line with everybody else, right? So brain fog is highly connected to things like blood sugar regulation, your sleep, inflammation, hormones, gut health, stress, nutrient status. So I think it's really important for people to understand that this isn't necessarily staying young from a physical perspective, which is important, but also staying young and vital from a mental perspective. Because it's really, really both the internal, I guess, from a mental and then the external from physical. If you want to look at it that way. Absolutely. And they're both important. They're both so important and play off each other. For those that are just tuning in, we are live talking about staying strong and sharp as we age. If you have questions, if you're listening to us live on YouTube or Instagram, please drop a question. We will get to it towards the end. We love hearing from people. So why, sort of in this vein of what we're talking about with mental and physical, this kind of all stems back to energy. Sort of energy expenditure and how much energy you have, physical, mental energy. Why, in your opinion, or how do you talk to patients about energy becoming such a major issue as we age? Yeah, and it absolutely is, right? I mean, energy, I think, for my patients of all ages, but I think probably if I were to do an actual study on my patients and do some kind of correlations between age and how often somebody is feeling like they don't have enough energy or it's not what they used to, then there's definitely going to be, those concerns go up as somebody gets older. And as we've said, so many things can contribute to it. And I think it's one reason, important reason why we have such a comprehensive panel of blood work right off the bat and that it's something that we monitor somewhat frequently. So we're looking at somebody's blood sugar, we're looking at thyroid function, we're looking at hormone levels, mitochondrial function, nutrient deficiencies, inflammatory markers, and then always really digging deep into the quality of somebody's sleep, quality and quantity of somebody's sleep. And then, as we mentioned, even having low muscle mass, that can contribute to low energy. Those patients that come to us who have what we call in the medical realm polypharmacy, so the laundry list of medications and potential interactions and just how that affects metabolism, liver health, that's going to unfortunately probably more often than not contribute to fatigue. And then, of course, there's the mental, emotional aspects. And for example, lots of stress. I had a new patient today actually who her primary concern is fatigue and in her mind kind of unexplained fatigue. And the long and the short of it is for this individual, it is largely kind of decades of stress kind of coming to a head. And so for her, it's really like a nervous system dysregulation and it's manifesting in her life right now as fatigue. So I guess my point on that is that it's just so multifaceted and it's different for everybody and that it's a super common concern and there's not the same reason, there's not the same cause for every individual. Totally. Yeah. And I think that's a really great point to sort of segue us into talking about what the symptoms and the root causes of these aging issues really are because certain symptoms might suggest someone is not aging well as they or aging well as they could be, such as fatigue or brain fog or poor sleep. We mentioned muscle loss. You mentioned as we age or sort of the elderly population, there's more prone risk of like falling. And if a person is of a certain age and they have a fall or they break something, that's a huge functional decline and a lot of people don't recover from that or recovery is very, very poor or it kind of puts them at a whole new baseline of functional need. So when we talk about someone not aging well as they could be, we're trying to look at all these different parameters because we don't want to get to that point. Right. And when we have to consider things like weight gain and we have to consider things like how well you recover from exercise or how much joint pain do you have? Or we just talked about the mental part. You know, are you having mood changes? Are you having, you know, more anxiety, more depression, more changes in how you feel? Right. Is your overall mood low? Are you more anxious? Are you more depressed? Is it from a fatigue? Is it from not sleeping? And then sometimes people can present from an aging perspective with a lot of frequent illness. I've seen that too, where, you know, just as I get older, I get sick more. And, you know, what is that all about? And one of the most common things we see too is, I know you see it too, and in both men and women is libido. Yeah. I don't know how many times in a week I'll be told that from new patients, like, yeah, my libido. And I'm seeing it in younger people, especially younger men, you know, 30s, 20s. And it's like, I'm only 27 and I'm having low libido. That doesn't seem normal to me. So we have to try to understand, and this is not someone that's 70, but you have to understand, OK, there is an aging process, right? You're, no matter what age you are, you are aging. So what parameters are affecting you at a certain age, right? What kind of hormonal change could be affecting you or what we should expect if you're 20 or 70. So that's definitely an important distinction. And one thing I want to talk about too, as a part of a root cause is muscle. You mentioned muscle. We talk about this all the time on this podcast. I talk about it all the time. Give me your quick thoughts about what root causes can affect strength, muscle strength. You mentioned the falls and those things. What are you seeing? What are the big things that affect people's muscle mass? I mean, the big things that I know you and I both ask our patients about is their, you know, when we're trying to assess somebody's strength and their muscle tone, muscle strength, is their protein intake. And I think you and I are both really good at, again, not just stopping at that, but like what kind of, you know, like a quality protein and what does that mean? You know, how are you, how are you measuring that and what's the, what are your sources of protein? Obviously resistance training, how, what is this person doing, not just for movement, but specifically for resistance training? You know, maybe they kind of could kind of get away with cardio and that's really kind of the only, that's what they've been doing for years, but it's gotten to a point where they really need to shed some intention on that additional aspect of that form of exercise. The, you know, you, again, we talk so much about hormonal fluctuations, hormonal changes, hormonal decline. That's a big one. Mostly testosterone, as you know better than anybody. And insulin resistance, inflammation, so many things can kind of go into it. Some ones that I think maybe you wouldn't necessarily think of as affecting muscle and strength, but things like poor sleep and chronic dieting can all kind of over time contribute. So it's protein, it's other nutrients. And yeah, again, I think the big part of this, what point we're trying to make here is that it's not like what you do or don't do in one month. It's what you've been doing over years. This kind of has a cumulative effect. Yeah, I think that's a huge, important point to make because I think, and I don't, this is not everybody, this is not all patients, but I do think there's a certain subset of patients who kind of think, well, if I do this for a couple weeks, I'll be okay, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No. Yep. Sorry. Diet, that's why I'm not a big fan of diets. Diets, yeah. I hate that even that word. The word, yeah. You don't need to go on a diet. No, no, you don't need to go on a diet. You need to change your entire way you exist and live and eat. So, and that kind of brings me to another point that I think is important is blood sugar. We talk about blood sugar all the time and how it affects your strength and your energy and your cognition because blood sugar instability can really drive your fatigue if you have a lot of sugar cravings or cravings for certain foods. People can get irritable. They can really feel very mentally foggy if they're totally addicted to sugar and they're not having it sustainable over time. The big thing we see with people is I'm getting overweight or I have this belly fat or something like that. That's directly affected by blood sugar. And then we talk about energy and fatigue. People crash, right? Those people that eat a really not great lunch and then by three o'clock, they're falling asleep at their desk at work kind of thing. So stable blood sugar is really a foundation for aging. And one thing that will age you significantly from a cellular level is being diabetic or pre-diabetic. Any sort of insulin resistance, I think you touched upon this earlier, insulin resistance of any kind will automatically age your cells at a molecular level. It even changes the way you look kind of. People that have more insulin resistant diabetes, the skin changes, the texture. So it's really, really important. So you mentioned this when you were talking about muscle, but you mentioned hormones. And I want to dive into that a little bit and talk about how you see hormones and how you educate patients on how hormones affect people as they age. Because we see that every day in both men and women. It's so important. What are your thoughts? Yeah, I mean, I think whether we're talking about perimenopause or andropause or just hormonal fluctuations. What's andropause for those listening? It's the steady decline of testosterone in men. And male menopause. Male menopause. That's a good way to put it. So I think it plays a huge role. I mean, I think when we're having, again, those fluctuations, the decline, it's going to affect your muscles, it's going to affect your metabolism, and it's going to affect certainly sleep. We certainly see that. Definitely libido, mood, cognition, even your recovery. We know about that strong relationship between estrogen and testosterone to bone health, body composition. So shifts and changes in all of these, testosterone, progesterone, estrogen, thyroid hormones, even cortisol, it's going to really kind of impact how somebody functions and therefore feels how they age. So yeah, I mean, we have talked a lot, and for good reason, about hormones in a lot of different contexts, but I think in terms of aging, it's a pretty big piece of that. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't know how many, we don't know what the percentage is of our patient population comes to us because they recognize some sort of hormonal decline, but it's a lot. We have a lot of, I mean, between the both of us, we have a lot of patients, men and women, that are struggling with hormone decline, hormone deficiency, and I say this a lot on podcasts, on the podcast, and I say this to my patients too, is they really are intuitive when hormones start to decline. I don't know if it's like an evolutionary thing. I don't know if it's part of just like a more intuitive side or what people are reading about, but it happens so often where people will sit in front of me and say, I think I have a hormone problem. It's like, oh, it's so funny you say that. You do. How did you know? I don't know if it's just people are more educated or they're, especially for women, there's this expectation of menopause or perimenopausal change. It's sort of more understood that women will go through this. Men, I think it's maybe a little bit more challenging to understand because there's such a wide age range where men could start to experience hormonal decline. And unfortunately, as I said earlier, I'm seeing hormonal decline in men. I mean, women too, but in men so much younger. Men are expecting, oh, my hormones will decline like when I'm my grandfather's age. You could be 40, you could be 35 and start to experience hormone decline and you could be symptomatic of it. And it's really, I think it's almost kind of a struggle I think for people because it's like, wait, I'm only 35 or whatever and my hormones are declining? For the rest of my life kind of declining? It's like, yeah, maybe. And it's almost you have to kind of look at your mortality a little bit. So the hormonal piece of aging I think is really, really a huge piece of this and it's fascinating because I see it, you see it too every day of how hormones change people for the better. So I think it's a really important point to make. So I want to shift gears and talk about the conventional approach to aging a little bit and how it sort of falls short. We talked about it a little bit but I want to dive deeper into it and I just want to remind people for those that are listening to us live, if you're on YouTube or Instagram, you can drop us a comment. If you have a question, we're happy to answer it. We'll get to them towards the end. So let's shift gears a little bit and talk about conventional health care. And we do not talk about conventional health care on this podcast or any of our podcast episodes to poo-poo on conventional medicine. That is not the med matrix method way. We very much respect and acknowledge and work with conventional medical practitioners but we understand that conventional medical health care, the conventional medical health care setting doesn't always look at optimum health. As you said when we started, conventional medical practice is great at saving your life. If you have a chronic disease, if your leg has fallen off because you were in a car accident, if you need a surgery, if you have an infection, conventional health care does a great job but a lot of patients now, we're living longer. We're living decades and decades longer than we used to and we want to try to be healthy and live really healthily and feel good. So in your opinion, you have talked a lot about this on this podcast. We have together. Where does conventional health care fall short for patients when they talk about some of these concerns that they have like fatigue, I'm weak, I'm brain fog. Where does the conventional care model not match what they're looking for? Yes, what I'm seeing from when patients come into my office and I hear what they're from them, what their experience has been going to their conventional medical providers and they're coming with basically the same concerns that they're coming to me with and unfortunately, or for better for worse, they often come to us because they have not received what they needed. They have not received the support that they want when they started with their conventional provider and so they're presenting to their provider, their conventional provider, feeling like there's brain fog, feeling like they're tired, feeling like they're physically weaker and what I'm hearing is that they might get some basic labs so they might get something that's kind of ruling out anemia say and they are often told that everything is normal. They might be told again depending on the individual's age that it's just kind of suck it up, it's just part of aging and kind of for the patient to kind of lower their expectations in terms of energy level or physical strength and that's usually it. So I think, yeah, I mean it's just what I'm hearing. I've heard it enough that I think that what we see is that sometimes these people are, these patients are told that your labs are normal and again, as you and I have talked about a lot that the ranges, what we like to see in terms of being optimal from a functional medicine perspective versus the standard ranges are sometimes different and so sometimes those looking at the same results, the interpretation is different and so because of that, oftentimes the routine panels might not have, they're not nearly as comprehensive as what a functional medicine panel looks like and even within those kind of labs that are being run, our interpretations are potentially different and so we're looking at optimal levels, we're also looking at optimal nutrient levels, we're looking at fasting insulin, fasting blood sugar, we just finished talking about hormones, those are rarely, I don't know how often you and I have had patients come in and tell us that they've been trying to get their doctor to order hormone panels for years and they won't for whether they don't think it's useful, the insurance won't pay for it, whatever the reason and then the whole issue with a thyroid and getting a full panel, not just one TSH marker on that and so normal labs doesn't really mean the same thing, I think, in a conventional medical setting as it does in a functional medicine setting. Yeah, totally and I think you make an excellent point to talk about how certain symptoms can kind of correlate to the labs not being optimal, right? So the perfect example I give of this all the time and I educate patients on, specifically my male patients, but I talk about this on the podcast too, is a man presenting to his healthcare provider, a family doctor, internist, whoever it is, with very classic signs and symptoms of low testosterone, which could be, you know, lack of physical strength, lack of muscle tone, feeling tired a lot, feeling under motivated, feeling anxious or depressed, low libido, erectile dysfunction and the testosterone is checked and it's say 350, right? You and I both know that's not good because testosterone for a man goes from 300 to 1200, you know, give or take, depending on the lab. So if the man is presenting with all the classic signs and symptoms but his conventional practitioner is looking at just the normal, quote unquote, right? It is going to probably result in that patient potentially being dismissed and like, no, you're fine. Look, your testosterone's in the normal range but we know very clearly from the medical literature that an optimal testosterone for a man is probably at least 500 or 600 and beyond, up to like 1000. So that's where this like symptom by symptom approach kind of misses the bigger picture, right? If you have an aging person and hormones are being affected and they're fatigued, brain foggy, it's not sleeping well, they have muscle loss and you're not looking at this from an optimal perspective, you're going to miss the mark and potentially this patient, this could be a 40 something year old male, right? He could live that way essentially the rest of his life. Oh yeah. And that is just not acceptable, right? And I say this to my female patients too all the time. I think female healthcare of women of a certain age is widely under appreciated in the American healthcare system. When women turn 50, 60, your 70 year old patient we talked about earlier, it's just they are so dismissed. Well, your menopausal, you're supposed to feel this way. It's supposed to happen, it's natural, get over it. Like you said before, lower your expectations and I think it's so, so sad because especially for women when they go through menopause at say 45 or 50, they could live another three decades or beyond and for our healthcare providers to tell them, well, sorry, you're just going to feel like crap the rest of your life, I think that is horribly unfair. Even if a medical provider doesn't know what to do about it, I think it's horribly unfair to just tell a woman or a man, anybody, well, sorry, you know, you're 50, you're stressed, you got a tough job, you got kids, you got a spouse, it's just the way of life. I think it's really, really sad. Really, really sad. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. So let's spend the rest of our podcast on a positive note and talking about how we do things from an aging perspective, staying strong, sharp, and energized. As a functional medicine clinician, Dr. Rose, how does functional medicine, how does the approach help people stay strong, sharp, and energized? How do we do this differently? Yeah, I mean, I think we've touched on it a little bit of what we do and how functional medicine is different when the goal is, and this is really a goal for all of our patients that we have for all of our patients to stay strong, stay sharp, maintain optimal energy. We're looking at, like we do for all cases, we're looking at the full picture and we're looking at metabolism, we're looking at blood sugar, we're looking at hormones, we're looking at thyroid, inflammation, nutrient status, we're looking at gut health, stress, sleep, we've talked about the muscle mass, the importance of muscle mass, medications, overall lifestyle, and I would put in kind of health history as a big part of that as well. And for that individual, what's that individual's long-term goals? You know, as I said earlier, everybody's different, everybody wants different things. You know, some of my patients, their goal in coming to us is that they want to be able to get down on the floor and play with their grandchildren. Somebody else's goal might be that they want to be able to continue to play pickleball with their partner. And we want all of that and any of that for each person. So again, it's not a quick fix, it's not a one-size-fits-all, but we're looking at all aspects of an individual and I think that does really differentiate us from the conventional care model. Yeah, it's a great point because we talk about all the time how we do things different and we are really looking at labs and markers that evaluate people aging just at a much deeper level. I just think it's what we do and because we don't necessarily have to confine to insurance payments, we can stretch labs, you know, for people. We can order those tests that people are looking for that they beg their doctors to run, but, oh, well, I don't want to because your insurance isn't going to pay for it or I don't find it necessary. So, you know, markers like blood sugar or, you know, the A1C, which is so important, which is a marker of diabetes and insulin resistance and all your cholesterol markers. You mentioned thyroid a few minutes ago. I mean, so important. Most patients get a TSH, which represents how the thyroid is basically functioning, but it's not looking at your thyroid hormones. We look at all hormone markers for all patients, testosterone, progesterone, estrogen for both men and women. We didn't touch too much on it, but the vitamin levels, vitamin D, vitamin B12, iron, ferritin and also inflammatory markers and you mentioned liver and kidney markers earlier as well. I mean, it's so, so important. And then something we do at MedMatrix for every new patient is get a body composition. And some people don't necessarily want the information. It's a little bit like, oh, when I see it on paper, it's not as good as I want it to be, but that's why they're here. So we can assess like how much body fat do you have? How much muscle mass do you have? How much water do you have in your body? Are you dehydrated? Are you not? So that's like a huge part of what we're doing is assessing body composition and muscle mass and those types of things. So we talked a lot about muscle mass. We talked a lot about strength. We talked a lot about being strong. And this is, I think it's been a huge part of today's episode, but why do you think or how do you educate patients on muscle preservation being such a major part of the functional medicine plan? We sort of touched upon this a little bit earlier, but I want to make sure we cover it fully because I think it's so important. So what are your other thoughts? Yeah. Yeah. I'm happy to kind of help drive this point home about the importance of muscle preservation. And it is something that we talk about so much in functional medicine, or at least I know we do here at MedMatrix. And the importance in muscle regulating blood sugar, overall metabolism. It's a big part of my conversation with my perimenopausal and menopausal women in terms of bones and joints, strength and that kind of mobility and agility and down the road, therefore independence, right? So it's a lot of, you know, we have culturally such a focus on weight. And I hope that, I mean, maybe it's just the circles that I move in, but I hope that the conversation is shifting somewhat from weight to muscles and to actual body composition. And as you pointed out, that's where kind of our in-body scan is just so much better than a scale because of what you outlined. So, yeah, I think it's just that muscle preservation, that muscle mass is just such an important piece of the conversation. Yeah, and it's just something that I think people don't, a lot of patients just don't know how, from my perspective anyway. I don't know if you have a different perspective, but I feel like so many patients, and I've said this on the podcast a dozen plus times, where people think that working out is just like, all right, I gotta get on that elliptical for an hour. No, I'd rather you didn't, right? I'd rather you go lift something. You know, I'd rather you do like a body weight exercise or do something that has some sort of resistance to it because we've talked a lot about and talk a lot about how muscle is really one of the biggest anti-aging organs in your body. The more you have, the longer you will live. And it also protects you from things, right? We talk about menopausal and perimenopausal, postmenopausal women and how their low estrogen might be affecting their bone matrix and osteoporosis. Well, you gotta lift some things to get that muscle definition and supporting your bones and so, so important. So it is a huge point of the aging process. I think that we, just as a clinic, I think that's one of our biggest philosophies. Yeah, absolutely. You gotta stay strong to be healthy and age well. So one other thing we didn't talk too much about but I wanna make sure we drive home the point to talk about as part of that strength training and aging and muscle is nutrition and protein. You mentioned this a little bit before. These are totally foundational. This is so, so essential. And protein supports muscle, it supports recovery, it supports strength training and protecting the metabolism, the bone health. So you're not only getting the muscle protection and the muscle support from protein, but you're also helping to regulate your blood sugar, inflammation, energy levels, your body composition. As you mentioned, I do think there is a cultural shift that's happening where people are not necessarily trying to quote unquote, lose weight. Obviously they are, but it's how can I build muscle? I hear that from more people as I advance in my career. Especially women, which I think is awesome. I love that women are like, yes, I need to be strong. I want to be strong. I feel good when I'm strong. I wanna be in the gym with the guys. It's like, yes, do that. I love that. So I think that's a really, really important piece of this to mention. So before we run out of time, I thought before we kind of wrap things up for this episode, I thought it would be a little fun to play a quick little game, an anti-aging game with you. You didn't even warn me about this. I didn't. There's no prep. I did it on purpose. I did it on purpose because I didn't want you to have to think about it. So a few true or false questions, just to kind of drive some of the points we've talked about home for our listeners. So first one, you naturally lose muscle every year after age 30, but strength training can dramatically slow or even reverse much of that loss. True. Woo, yes. If your blood work is quote unquote normal, you're probably healthy. Not necessarily. Yeah, not necessarily. Feeling tired is just a normal part of getting older. False. Walking every day is enough exercise to maintain muscle mass. False. Blood sugar spikes can contribute to accelerated aging. True. Yeah, we talked about that a lot. Wait, I have to put it. So on that note, this is just a little, one little thing. You and I both recommend and prescribe continuous glucose monitors for our patients, our non-diabetic patients. And I just think that, and they are more accessible now. You don't need to have a diagnosis of diabetes. I don't even know if you need a prescription anymore. And they're like $35 at the pharmacy. And they stay on for like 10 days. So just a little plug for CGMs or continuous glucose monitors. I love seeing, we should create Instagram, like CGMs in the wild of people I see in the grocery store with their CGM on or in the gym. It's like, hey, can I take your picture to be on Instagram? It's like, there's so many everywhere. So CGMs in the wild. I see them all over the place. It's awesome. Is it too late to improve your health after age 60? Shout out to your 70-year-old patient. False, false, false. Chronic stress can physically age your body. Oh, big time. True. Big time. More supplements always equal better health. False. And this is another thing we should make a note of to do a podcast on in the future. But loneliness increases your risk of dying early. True. Yeah, that's a big one. There's such good research on that now. I know. Yeah, the talk about social connection and how it's such a strong predictor of longevity. I think that's a great podcast episode. We should make a note of that. Hormones naturally decline as we age. So there's just nothing you can do. Well, it's true that hormones decline as we age, but it's not true that there's nothing to do about it. Right. Your brain can continue making new connections throughout life. True. Yes. The biggest predictor of how long you will live is your genetics. I'm going to say false. I agree. I think genetics play a role. Do we know the answer on that? I don't think it's the biggest predictor, is it? You made it up. OK. Yeah, I made up these questions. So I mean, I think that genetics play a role, but lifestyle environment account for the majority of chronic diseases. I would have to agree with that. Yeah. One of my functional medicine professors when I was doing my master's degree in nutrition, it's not a great analogy, but he used to use the analogy of your genetics are a loaded gun. Not great, I know. But your lifestyle and nutrition is like pulling the trigger. So it's like the potential is there, but if you let it happen with what you're feeding your body, then that's the real problem. Strength is one of the strongest predictors of healthy aging. True. Good. And then healthy aging is mostly about living longer. False. What do you think? Yeah. I don't think, as I said earlier, it's like how well you live, not necessarily how long you live. You used the word lifespan. So it's about extending. That's how I look at it. It's about extending your lifespan and living more years where you are strong and you are independent and you are cognitively functioning. I had a conversation about this with a patient the other day where the typical nursing home environment, my grandparents sadly were in it and a lot of people experience this, but you go in a nursing home, people are just in wheelchairs parked in a corner. And that's their life. It could be a long time. And it's really, really sad. That's another thing about society. When you reach a certain age, you're just not as appreciated, right? Or because your health has declined. In this society. Yeah. The American society. So it's like I am going to do everything in my power not to be one of those people. And I take it upon myself to educate my patients to say, you don't want to be that person either. So let's do as much as we can. So to wrap up our episode for today, Dr. Rose, when someone comes to MedMatrix wanting to feel stronger or talks about aging well or staying sharp and energized, and how does this process begin for them? What does that look like for our patients? Yeah. So when somebody is new to MedMatrix and they come in with the goals of wanting to feel stronger, wanting to feel mentally sharper, more energized, where does the whole thing begin? Really, we start with the full comprehensive, we do our full lab panel, our full comprehensive panel. And then in conjunction with that, it's the full health history, pretty extensive symptom review. We look at the nutrient assessment. We look at their medications and supplements that they're on currently. As we mentioned, the quality and quantity of sleep. I always say stress resilience. So yes, what are the stressors on your plate? But also, or more importantly, how are you handling those stressors? Your exercise, your movement history, like what you've done historically, what are you doing now? We review that in-body, the metrics on the in-body scan. So what's the body composition like? And we really go from there. So it's a lot. It's a lot of information. It is a lot. And it's very thorough. Yeah, it is a lot. And then what we sort of do with that information is create a personalized healthy aging plan, right? And no matter the patient's chief complaint, I'm always thinking about how to make them age better, no matter what the chief concern is. We talk about protein targets. We talk about strength training. We talk about sleep and blood sugar and stress regulation and hormone optimization and nutrients and gut health and inflammation. So by looking at symptoms, energy, sleep, strength, cognition, labs, body composition, blood sugar markers, we can really get a sense of what patients feel capable of and how resilient they can be and how we can optimize that, right? We have to take all these parameters and put them together to try to create a really long-term plan of, okay, you're in my office right now. You're 50 years old. I'm thinking about what you should be, who you're gonna be when you're 70, right? And that's really, I think, the driving home takeaway of this podcast is, you know, when someone wants to stay strong and sharp and energized, we're looking at who you are today to then become who you will be in 10 years, 20 years and beyond. Because aging, as you mentioned, it doesn't happen overnight, but it doesn't happen by accident either. And, you know, we talked a lot today about how if people are declining, they shouldn't be just accepting that. I think you should be asking for more of yourself and your life. You know, if you've lived a long, prosperous life and you're of a certain age and you feel like, oh, you know, and this is just how it's supposed to be, I don't think that's acceptable. And I don't want my patients to feel that that's acceptable. And I want them to ask for more. And I think really functional medicine identifies the root cause behind these things. And I think we do a really good job of it. And then we take in, you know, to account how we can help people live a long, vital life. So before we end today, Dr. Rose, do you have any other quick thoughts for our listeners, for our audience? Any other takeaway points to make? I think we've covered so much. We've covered a lot. Awesome. Yeah. I think we've covered a lot. I think, I hope that our listeners have a sense of how we look at aging and how that perspective is different than kind of the conventional medical approach to aging. And I mean, this is probably a given, but like the younger somebody starts thinking about this, the better they're going to live, right? So yes, it is often our patients in their 60s, 70s, and 80s. But, you know, I love it when people come in in their late 30s, their 40s, and they're already thinking ahead to, you know, like as you put eloquently, so eloquently of, well, what am I going to be? What is my life going to look like at 50, 60, and 70? And so when people have that ability to look ahead, it's just like, we're good. Like we have, there's so much we can do right now. And you're doing just the fact that that person's coming in with that preventive attitude is really fabulous. Yeah, yeah, I think it's, I think it's really, really exciting because I love, I love understanding, you know, how people are looking at their own lives from almost like a social construct kind of perspective. It's really fascinating, the change that people are exhibiting in how they look at themselves and their life and their vitality and I think anti-aging was so much, like I said before, you know, what kind of procedures can I get? Yeah, right. What kind of skincare can I use? Do I need a facelift, a little Botox? You know, who doesn't love a little Botox? You know, but this isn't necessarily about that. It's about feeling really good and feeling young and really the notion of like age is just a number, I guess. That's what I, it's kind of corny, but it's so true. There's some truth to that, yeah. Yeah, yeah, totally. So this was so much fun, Dr. Rose. As always, as always, Colin. Always, always. I hope people learned something. I hope people got something, you know, from this and I hope that people can really, you know, understand how they can improve their own lives to feel good and feel vital. So if you are interested in becoming a patient of MedMatrix, either for myself or Dr. Rose or some of our other clinicians who are also now featured on our podcast, you can go to our website, medmatrixusa.com. You can book a free discovery call to see if we can help you. If you're interested in this podcast in the future or other podcasts that we record, we are here every week. Me or you or one of our other clinicians talking about all things functional medicine and health, you can stream us on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. Just as a disclaimer, if you are interested in being a patient currently for MedMatrix, we are accepting patients only in Maine and New Hampshire, but go to our website for more details. The next episode of our podcast will be next Monday, July 13th. If you're listening to this in real time, I will be on the podcast with our director of marketing. We will be talking about muscle again. It's the theme right now. It's something I love to talk about. So why strength is really key to aging. We're going to dive really deep into that. So thank you so much, everybody, for listening. And thanks, Dr. Rose. It was so much fun. We'll see everybody next time. All right. Good night.