Episode #233: Muscle Loss Is Aging You Faster Than You Think

In this episode of The Berman Method Podcast, the hosts discuss the frustrations of navigating the healthcare system, sharing real-life examples of how persistence helped them reduce costly medical bills. They encourage listeners to become stronger advocates for their own healthcare and question unexpected charges rather than accepting them at face value.

The conversation then focuses on sarcopenia, the age-related loss of muscle mass that begins as early as age 30. The hosts explain why maintaining muscle is critical for strength, balance, metabolism, independence, and longevity, emphasizing that muscle loss can significantly impact overall health as we age.

To combat sarcopenia, they highlight the importance of strength training, proper nutrition, adequate protein intake, and stress management. They also discuss the risks of losing muscle during rapid weight loss and stress the value of improving body composition, not just lowering the number on the scale.

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Transcript

The Healthcare System Rant

Speaker 0:00

And we're rolling baby with the Berman Method Podcast, treating problems, not symptoms. David going against Goliath. Goliath being the corporate medical system, big pharmaceutical companies, your health insurance companies, they do not have your best interests in mind. They'll choose profits over patient outcomes every single time. And the tides are changing. You've got to take the bull by the horns. You've got to do your own research. You've got to ask more questions. And I'm getting more bullish on this statement. If this isn't a life or death situation, avoid any place that takes your insurance.

Speaker 1 0:37

True.

Speaker 0:38

I mean, I'm getting really bullish. Hopefully, people aren't getting tired of hearing all of these horror stories that you and I are living with our kids and health insurance and getting bills from hospitals and doctors. I mean, it's just infricking sane.

Turning A $4,000 Lab Into $300

Speaker 1:00

So a few weeks ago, we talked about how we accidentally processed Walker's blood work the wrong way. Walker, our year and a half-year-old infant, had some blood work done and ended up getting a bill for $4,000.

Speaker 1 1:19

Yes.

Speaker 1:20

So fast forward, gray hairs, stressful conversations, literally hours on the phone on hold. What is the price down to now?

Speaker 1 1:33

What did I tell you? I think just over three hundred dollars.

Speaker 1:38

I mean, this is just freaking insane. If Jenni wasn't as tenacious and feisty as she is, and we were just passive, like a lot of Americans in this world, we would have had a $4,000 bill to pay. Like, okay, they gave us a bill, that's what we owe. Right. No. Right. Holy cow, stop it. Rerun it the right way. Run it out of network. We don't have insurance. Run it out of network. And it's $300.

Speaker 1 2:09

Yeah. And the same thing, I mean, Vera broke her arm January 5th, I think it was. So here we are six months later, and we're still fighting her hospital bill that we won't wanted to be run a self-pay out of network, and it didn't get run that way initially. And we're still fighting that bill. But I'm not gonna give up on it. I'm not just gonna sign up to pay $9,600 for an ER bill that should not even cost you know half of that. Less than half it should cost. So yeah, you just like, and anyway, we don't even have insurance anymore. See, all these things are so old, and we don't even have health insurance anymore, but we're still retroactively fighting these bills.

Speaker 2:53

And this is why I open up every episode with the rant. Your health insurance does not have your best interests in mind. The medical system doesn't have your best interests in mind. You've got to be your own self-advocate and run like hell. Run like hell if you need something done medically that's not emergent, and it's somebody that takes your insurance. I mean, you just can't do it. Right. You can't freaking do it.

Speaker 1 3:21

And I have to explain that all the time when our clients, you know, ask about doing labs, and we say, okay, this is what it's gonna cost here, and they're like, well, let me just go outside and use my insurance to do it. And I have to explain to them, you ain't gonna be happy with that, Bill. You know how much you're gonna spend here, and is it is, I will tell you, one-fifth of the cost that your insurance is gonna charge you if they decide that your labs aren't medically necessary, which probably are necessary, but they are making that decision, and they don't even know you from Adam.

Speaker 3:53

So, anyway, yeah, so the tides are shifting. One thing that we pride ourselves on is transparency. Before you ever swipe a credit card here, you know exactly what the cost is gonna be, and you know that there's not gonna be anything hidden anywhere. Like this is what the cost is, this is what the program is. Do you want this one or do you want that one? Okay, you want that one, that's it. There's no hidden fees, none of this other BS. You know what you're getting.

Speaker 1 4:19

Right.

Speaker 4:19

Right?

Speaker 1 4:20

Yeah.

Speaker 4:21

So good intro, good rant.

Sarcopenia Defined In Plain English

Speaker 4:25

Okay, let's get into what we wanted to do. We wanted to talk about sarcopenia. What the heck does that word mean? Sarco what?

Speaker 1 4:33

Sarcopenia.

Speaker 4:34

Penia. Doesn't that mean getting smaller, penia? Penia mean smaller. Sarco. Doesn't sarco mean muscle. Muscle. Yeah. Muscle smaller. Muscles are getting smaller. Muscles are getting smaller. Final answer.

Speaker 1 4:44

You got it. You got it. Muscles are getting smaller. So as we age, any time, well, as we age, there's a natural process of muscle decline. Muscle wasting is essentially what it sarcopenia translates to. Muscle wasting. So after we have hit 30 years old, generally, every year after that, we lose about 1% of our muscle mass if we are not doing the right things to support muscle mass and reverse this process of sarcopenia or muscle wasting. So as our hormones start changing, and especially if we're using certain medications, such as a GLP1, we are increasing the risk of muscle wasting or sarcopenia. Now, what is what doesn't matter, right? Why are muscles important?

Speaker 5:41

This is a good question, but let's bring this thing down to a fifth grade reading level. Muscles are literally the only way that you can move against gravity without some type of external device, without being hooked up to some AI robot, which might be possible here in the future. If you're just trying to move against gravity,

Muscle As The Key To Longevity

Speaker 6:00

you need muscles.

Speaker 1 6:01

Right. So, first and foremost, you have to be able to get out of a chair. You have to be able to get off the ground. You have to be able to carry your groceries inside. You have to be able to walk up the stairs to get to your doctor's office. You have to be able to get in and out of a car, right? We need muscles for those things. However, we can generally make it through life with limited musculature to do those activities. But there's even more important reasons to have muscle. And it's not vitality. It's not what you look like.

Speaker 6:32

No?

Speaker 1 6:33

I mean, that's important for some people. But that's not the point of having muscles or preventing muscle loss. One of the most important things is the amount of muscle mass that you have actually determines your longevity and how long you're gonna live. Not because you can just get yourself off the ground, which is important if you ever fall, right? Or to prevent falls, you need to have muscles to support your body, like you said, against gravity. But the amount of muscle mass you have also dictates your hormone levels and your metabolism.

Speaker 7:03

Don't miss what Jenni just said 15 seconds ago. The amount of muscles you have directly correlates with your ability to balance. So every one of you that's listening right now that's getting up there in age, there's you have to be thinking in some way, shape, or form. I don't want to be that person that falls because my balance gets so bad. Think about it like this. When have you ever heard somebody that is in phenomenal shape complain about their balance?

Speaker 1 7:36

Right. Or the fear of falling. It doesn't happen. Or not being able to walk up a curve because they feel like they're gonna fall.

Speaker 7:43

It doesn't happen. So there's a direct correlation. I wish that we could say causation, but I know that somebody would come at me like a spider monkey if I said that. Screw it, I'm saying it. Muscle weakness and sarcopenia causes shitty balance.

Speaker 1 8:01

Oh well, most definitely. Your muscles support the joints, and your muscles are what allows the body to balance. Yeah, 100%.

Speaker 8:10

Yeah. So balance is directly related to muscles. Yes. No way to argue against that.

Speaker 1 8:17

With muscle strength.

Speaker 8:18

Correct.

Speaker 1 8:19

Yes. So, yes, muscles are important for your balance to help you to be able to get up off the ground to carry your grochets, all those things that we just said, but they are also directly related to your metabolism, how good or bad your metabolism is, your hormone balance, and your vital your overall mortality rate.

Speaker 8:45

Your overall mortality rate. I've got an objective example, although I can't cite it and it's gonna drive me nuts. Barry, if you're listening to this podcast, you're the one that gave me this um this uh man. This guy this link. So Barry gave me this link to this guy that got hit. He was a pedestrian, he got hit by a car really, really bad. Like got smashed, should have died, was in the hospital for months and then clawed his way out of the hospital bed, fought through physical therapy, and got back to exercise. And this was a crossfitter. Uh I don't know if he was a crossfitter, but I know that he did heavy barbell lifts. And they interviewed the guy and they said, Well, why do you think that you survived this horrific car accident? He goes, Well, I worked my ass off to be harder to kill. And they go, What? What are you talking about? He goes, Yeah, that's why I trained as hard as I did. Is you never it's less likely that you die the stronger you are.

Speaker 1 9:50

Right.

Speaker 9:50

He goes, I just wanted to be harder to kill. And lo and behold, he should have been killed. But because he was in such great shape, because he had all the muscles and the strength and the ability and the vitality, he was able to survive this horrific, horrific accident. So yeah, the stronger you are, the more likely it is that you are gonna live through some type of trauma. It's gonna happen.

Speaker 1 10:14

Well, for sure. And when you're when you have this type of trauma and you're bedridden, the the more muscle you have, the longer it takes to break down with just being bedridden. When you're bedridden, your muscles waste extremely fast, right? So when you have more muscle mass, it takes longer for that muscle wasting process to get down to where you have no muscle and you don't have the metabolic function. Remember what I said that the muscles and your metabolism are directly correlated. So when we have more muscle mass, we have a higher metabolic rate, meaning our body is burning more calories at rest when we have more muscle mass. So, yes, we have a higher metabolism in a sense of being able to maintain our weight or lose weight or you know, whatever you're trying to do in that sense of weight management, but that means it's also protecting the visceral fat or the fat that is surrounding your organs. And so when we have less muscle mass, we have more visceral fat, more fat around our organs, which which you have to think about like just squishes your organs, right? The organs don't function near as efficiently when we have fat surrounding the organs.

Speaker 11:27

It just sounds disgusting when you say it like that, but it's so it's so true.

Speaker 1 11:32

Our all of our skeletons are the same, right? Like our skeletons differ a little bit with the length of the bones, right? But our our skeletons are all the same. The composition around the skeleton is what differs person to person, depending on genetic makeup in some sense, but how much muscle mass you have and how how you're fueling your body.

Speaker 11:55

I'll never forget this visual to go along with what you just said. It's probably around 10 years ago that I got this visual. I don't know where it came from, but it was an x-ray of an extremely obese person in the anatomical position. It was a full-body x-ray. And you could see the skeleton, and you're going, oh my gosh, that is a normal 150-pound person skeleton. And this person was morbidly obese, 400 pounds, and you could just see the rough outline of the soft tissue, because again, it's an X-ray, but you could still see the soft tissue, and I'm going, that's as clear as day, right there. Like this person's 400 pounds, but it's the same exact skeleton as somebody that's 150 pounds.

Speaker 1 12:41

Right.

Speaker 12:42

It's not meant to be that way. Look at the wild. These animals don't exist in the wild, right? In true wild, it doesn't happen. You never ever see a deer that's twice the weight of another deer in obesity. I mean, maybe muscular, like just straight up brute of a buck, but you don't see morbid obesity in the wild. It doesn't exist.

Speaker 1 13:07

Right. They can't they can't survive. So let's get back to talking about sarcopenia or the natural aging process. So as we age, we will lose about 1% of muscle mass per year after the age of 30 if we're not doing something to prevent it. And muscle mass is extremely important for your strength, your mobility, your balance, the metabolism, your brain function, and your longevity. When we have more less muscle mass, and again, as we age, hormonal hormonal shift happens as we age. That's inevitable for all of us, unless we go on take to taking hormone replacement, right? But as we age in a hormone shift, this is part of the reason that the muscle mass starts to break down. As muscle mass breaks down or we start to lose muscle, we often will convert that into fat. So muscle mass decreases, fat mass increases, unless we're doing the things to adjust that and to prevent that from happening. So as fat mass increases, then again, that's where we go to having more of this adipose or fat tissue that is affecting the metabolism, our organs, our blood sugar, and our brain function. And like you've already said, your balance, your mobility, and your strength overall for completing daily activities.

GLP-1 Weight Loss And Muscle Loss

Speaker 1 14:25

Then on top of that, things like taking medications. So let's pull out the GLP ones right now, because that's one of the most commonly things researched and taken at this time. GLP1 medications. So the medications like Ozempic, Wagovi, Manjuro, all of these medications, somaglites or zepatite or the compounded ones that are being used to help with weight management, blood sugar control, autoimmune disease. They have a lot of benefits. But one of the most common side effects is a loss of muscle mass. And that's because some people that don't use them correctly when they're using GLPs, is they're not fueling their body correctly. They're not eating enough, they're not getting enough protein, they're not strength training, they're just seeing the benefit of weight loss and they're like, oh, it's magic. I'm losing weight. But they're not fueling their body or strengthening their body correctly with taking this medication. So they're just losing muscle mass. And in terms of longevity, that's the worst thing you could be doing. It is going to, I don't gonna say this, although it's not really scientific. So don't take it to the to chat GPT, but it's like wasting your brain when you're taking this medication and not fueling your body correctly. Your brain is just shriveling up because your muscles are shriveling. So it's not really how it works, but essentially, like your death rate is going to be so much younger taking this medication without actually doing the right things to fuel your body. Versus, we use the medication in the office. We have clients taking it, but you have to take it correctly. You have to fuel your body, you have to make sure you're strength training. Anyway, that was a little soapbox. This wasn't the point of the podcast, wasn't GLPs. There's some benefits to GLPs. Don't be afraid of them, but you have to use them correctly. And when you're not using them correctly and you're after you're older than the age of 30, your muscle mass is just declining exponentially faster, which is actually reducing your longevity, not improving it.

Speaker 16:29

I'm glad that you said that because there's a lot of people that we know that are in their 50s and 60s that have struggled with weight issues over the years and then finally jumped on the vitamin O bandwagon, and the weight is just falling off, like just melting off. And they're all excited, like great, look at look at what's happened. Yeah, I'm on vitamin O, but look, I feel so much better. The challenge is weight not all weight loss is created equally. So you're losing weight, but you're also losing muscle versus what you, Jenni, works on here with her nutritional programs is we exchange fat for muscle, or at least we maintain muscle while we're shedding fat. So there's a lot of times where the number doesn't necessarily change as fast as somebody on vitamin O, but the composition is what changes because at the end of the day, once you lose the muscle, it is so much harder to get it back than if you just maintain it.

Speaker 1 17:38

Yes, and that's exactly true. And especially again with the hormonal shifts, it's harder to gain muscle mass, though it's it's definitely possible. And if you listen to last week's podcast, I said the number on the scale does not tell all. We have to see the body composition. And especially with our clients that are using GLPs with the with the dietary changes that we're making and the gut health that we're focused on, we can lose fat and gain muscle through a weight loss process. And so again, the number on the scale, the total number on the scale, may be decreasing slower, but the fat mass is just decreasing as quick as it would if you were just using the GLP, right? Or even faster, probably, because we're um we're, like you said, transitioning the fat mass to muscle mass. So the fat percentage is decreasing, whereas the muscle mass is increasing, the body composition is drastically improving, and we're getting stronger and not weaker taking this medication.

Speaker 18:43

That's the big one is getting stronger, not weaker, while you're losing weight.

Speaker 1 18:48

Right.

Speaker 18:49

Getting stronger, not weaker as you're losing weight. That is so important.

Speaker 1 18:54

Well, and not just with losing weight, because we have a ton of clients, especially on your side, that aren't trying to lose weight, right? But getting stronger and not weaker as you're going through the aging process.

Strength Training Protein And Cortisol

Speaker 1 19:05

So, what do we do to prevent sarcopenia?

Speaker 19:09

So you're asking me now.

Speaker 1 19:10

Yeah.

Speaker 19:11

You have to stress the muscle enough so that it rebuilds.

Speaker 1 19:16

Yeah, strength training, right? We have to essentially put create micro-tears in the muscle to allow healing to occur and the muscle to to increase, right? So anytime we're doing any type of strength training, we actually put little tiny micro-tears into the muscle, which brings blood supply and nutrients to the area, which allows healing and the muscle rebuilds and it gets stronger. So we have to constantly stress the muscle and build muscle to prevent muscle loss. That's number one, which means we have to incorporate some type of strength training into our daily regimen. It doesn't have to be seven days a week. It doesn't have to be for an hour at a time, it doesn't have to be 300-pound deadlifts. We could be lifting soup cans, right? We could be getting up and down out of a chair the right way, squatting up and down out of a chair and not falling into and out of a chair, which could classify as strength training. Walking is not strength training. Walking absolutely is not so for all you people that say, I exercise five days a week, I walk five miles five days a week, that's not strength training. No, that's not building any muscles.

Speaker 20:29

Here's the simplest way to think about it is if you're not physically sore the next day, then you didn't tear the muscles. Right.

Speaker 1 20:39

Yeah. Although Yeah, I mean, you're right. But you can strength train without being uh really sore.

Speaker 20:49

Let's just keep it really simple. DOMS, delayed onset muscle soreness. That's how you know for a fact that you literally created micro tears in the muscle. Yeah and the next day those muscles are regenerating back stronger than they were the day before. So you lit the listener, if you work out three days a week, five days a week, six days a week, seven days a week, when's the last time that you actually felt sore?

Speaker 1 21:13

So like good soreness, not bad soreness.

Speaker 21:16

You did a leg day today, and then tomorrow you're going up the stairs, and if you're not remembering your workout from today, then I don't know that it was intense enough or focused enough or gonna give you the benefits that you could have gotten if you would have done something a little bit differently.

Speaker 1 21:34

Right. And you know, muscle strengthening doesn't have mean that you have to lift heavier and heavier and heavier every time. It could be more sets, more reps, more intensity, or more weight. So there's different ways to strength train rather than again spending hours in the gym lifting weight that is unsafe for your body. And that's what you guys do on the physical side at Berman Health Club is really help you to identify the right strength. Strength training and right muscle activation for your body. But besides just the strength training and the exercise portion, we have to make sure that we're eating enough for our body, getting enough protein, balancing your proteins with your healthy fats to help with maintaining or gaining muscle mass as we age. This is also going to help to stabilize the hormones. And really, really importantly, is are we regulating our cortisol level, which is a stress hormone? Cortisol is catabolic to muscle, meaning when we have high cortisol or stress hormone levels, it breaks down the muscle. It breaks down the muscle to try to get energy. If we have high cortisol levels on top of not eating enough, and we're in a constant calorie deficit, then we're going to break down even more muscle and then add the GLP1 on top of that, and we're really breaking down the muscle, right? So we have to make sure that we're eating enough, that our stress response is controlled from outside stress and inside stress, gut health, vitamin deficiencies, right? So we have to make sure we're strength training, we have to make sure we're eating enough for our body. We have to make sure that our vitamin levels are optimized. And we need to be using the new far, mid, near red light therapy infrared sauna.

Speaker 23:29

Nice little shameless word there, though.

Speaker 1 23:31

To help with reducing inflammation and regulating that parasympathetic response. But for real, aging is gonna happen, hopefully. Hopefully everybody is aging, right? Because if you're not aging, the alternative's happening. But meaning you're dead. So hopefully you're getting older every day. However, age-wise, numerically, however, we want to reduce the aging process on the inside by making sure that we're not allowing our muscle mass to break down as we age.

Speaker 24:01

Yes, this is a big one, really, really big one.

Getting Bigger While Lifting Lighter

Speaker 24:04

So, right here, right now, is the most muscle mass that I've ever had in my whole entire life. I mean, I've just as far as muscle mass in my legs, back, all of these the big power muscles, I'm the biggest that I've ever been. Yet it's the lightest weight that I've lifted in my entire life for these past six months. I mean, we've just been killing lunges and wall balls and pull-ups and deadlifts, but light deadlifts light compared to what I used to lift. I haven't lifted over 200 pounds on a deadlift. I can't even remember the last time. I think you were close to lifting more weight than me the last time we did deadlifts last week. But it's the biggest that I've ever been. So you don't have to lift big heavy weight to gain muscle mass, but you do have to have the right recipe, the right combination of strength training and nutrition for the growth to actually occur.

Speaker 1 25:09

Correct.

Speaker 25:10

It's been fun putting on my shorts lately because I if anybody knows me on a personal level, I'll wear the same pair of shorts and the same shirt for 20 years. Every year for Christmas, Jenni and her mom gets me all a whole new wardrobe, and I'm going, well, I got the same three shirts that I wear every single week. So I don't know what you want me to do with these new ones, but I'm not wearing them. So my shorts over the past couple of months, they're fitting snug. Yeah. Like around my thighs, I'm going, holy cow, like this is actually happening. Like these muscles are getting bigger. So it's um nice little pat on the back because it's not fluff, it's straight up muscles and in the legs for sure. And I'm like, wow, there's an objective measurement right there. This is actually working, and it's the lightest weight collectively that I've lifted in my life.

Speaker 1 26:07

Right, right. And the difference is the I would say um metabolic confusion. So changing up the types of exercise that we're doing regularly, the consistency of the exercise, but also just the nutritional changes that we've been making, and primarily because we're following our blood work.

Speaker 26:30

That's a big one is we had an objective number to give us guidance. This is what is really happening on a cellular level. This is what your blood work says. Okay, well, let's make the adjustments.

Speaker 1 26:41

Right.

Speaker 26:42

And regenerative therapy, and regenerative therapy, and the boomers.

Check Your Longevity Score

Speaker 26:48

Oh my god. Two weeks in a row.

Speaker 1 26:51

The boom boomin' bourmin.

Speaker 26:54

The bermanboomers.com webpage and landing page helping you get your freaking number. I'm gonna go change that URL right now. It's the BermanBoomers.com landing page to go see what your score is. Are you on track to reach 80 feeling 40? And if you're already in your 80s, are you gonna kick your 90s ass? It's an objective number, zero to 100. If you're not between 80 and 100, you're not on track. 60 to 80, you you're getting closer, but you got some work to do. Anything less than 60, and you think you're doing good, you're delusional. Right. That's where the vast majority of us live is we think we're doing so much better than we actually are until we get our score back, and it's like, oh wow, it's 43. I'm not even halfway there. Like it's this is bad.

Speaker 1 27:48

Right. 43 is an F.

Speaker 27:49

Yeah, 43 is an F. An F minus. So go to BermanBoomers.com and see what your longevity score is. See if you're on track.

Speaker 1 28:02

Boomin' Berman's. Quit confusing everybody.

Speaker 28:06

BermanBoomers.com.

Speaker 1 28:09

Okay, ciao for now.