Episode 109 - Muscle Is the Organ Nobody Told You About

I got a DM a while back about a woman's mom who had ankle surgery. She'd been told to build up her upper body strength beforehand and didn't. Now she doesn't have enough strength to use crutches, so she scoots up and down her own stairs on her bum. Right after that, a friend told me about her mom — knee surgery, but she strengthened everything around the joint first with a physio. Her recovery was incredible, and her other knee, which has the exact same damage on imaging, is doing so well she might skip that surgery entirely.

Same age. Same kind of injury. Completely different outcomes. That's muscle.

In this episode I'm breaking down why muscle might be the single most important thing you can do for your health — not for how it looks, but for what it does. We're talking blood sugar regulation and your risk of type 2 diabetes, brain health and cognition, bone density and whether you can get yourself on and off a toilet at 85, cardiovascular health (no, I'm not telling you to stop your cardio), and mobility as you age.

I'm also getting into the real numbers on how fast menopause is taking your muscle right now, why the Gen X "20-minute workout and a diet" approach isn't going to cut it anymore, and the hard truth about hip fractures after 60. And I'm putting the "I don't want to get bulky" fear to bed for good, because given everything working against you hormonally right now, it is genuinely hard to build noticeable bulk — you're fighting just to hold onto what you have.

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Thank you for listening.