The Exercise Prescription: How Muscle Resets Your Biological Clock - Cell to Systems, Episode 9

Is your exercise routine actually aging you?

The science is sobering: muscle mass decreases 3-8% per decade after age 30, and strength declines even faster: 1.5% per year between ages 50–60, accelerating to 3% annually after that (PMC/NIH). Most people will lose around 30% of their muscle mass over their lifetimes, and less muscle means greater weakness, less mobility, and higher risk of falls and fractures (Harvard Health).

In this episode of ‪@CellToSystems‬ , we break down why exercise is more than just aesthetics or weight loss and reveal why the traditional 7-day gym cycle is a myth that may be overtaxing your central nervous system. We move past "gym culture" and into the "prescription for movement," revealing why muscle mass is the primary predictor of lifespan and how to optimize your physical system for longevity.

Here's what makes this urgent: An estimated 5-13% of adults aged 60-70 are affected by sarcopenia, rising to 11-50% for those 80 and above (Harvard Health/PMC). And reduced muscle mass doesn't just affect mobility; it directly decreases metabolic rate, compromises blood sugar regulation, negatively affects cardiovascular health, and is even linked to cognitive decline (JACC).

In this episode, you will learn:
• The 10-Day Training Cycle: Why it is better to abandon the 7-day week for better recovery 
• Exercise in a Pill: How compounds like Creatine and 5-Amino-1MQ can activate the SIRT-1 longevity gene.
• Muscle as Wealth: Why muscle is your "largest glucose sink" and the #1 predictor of how long you’ll live.
• The GLP-1 Muscle Crisis: The hidden danger of modern weight-loss drugs and the "Muscle Tax" you can't afford to pay.
• Exercise Snacks: How 1-minute bursts of movement can outperform 40 minutes on a treadmill.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The Celtic Systems Podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Listening does not create a doctor-patient relationship. Always consult a qualified health care provider regarding your medical conditions or before changing your health regimen. Do not disregard professional advice or delay seeking it because of something you heard on the podcast. Reliance on the information provided is at your own risk. Guest opinions are their own. Celda Systems may utilize affiliate links, feature sponsored content, or discuss companies in which hosts or guests have financial or advisory interests. Relevant disclosures will be noted during the episode or below.

SPEAKER_04 0:38

Okay, this week in Zelda Systems we'll be covering exercise and why it's more than just looking good or losing weight, how you can really look at exercise and break it down or build it up to realize that it may be one of the most important components of living a long and healthy life. We have a great team to talk about it from many different angles. And it's an exciting episode. So uh first person that I'd like to throw it over to is uh our power lifter doctor, Dr. Suzanne Ferry.

SPEAKER_02 1:14

Oh yeah. So it's funny, you know, I've been through a couple of iterations of activity in my life. When when I was uh in my 20s and 30s, I was a runner and competitive runner, not long distance. I didn't do like marathons or triathlons or anything like that, but uh certainly competitive and and it was great for for producing in me endurance, uh, sustainability, for me to be able to um run long distances, tolerate pain, ongoing pain, especially when you're thinking about things like, you know, some of the races you weren't allowed to wear headphones. So you had to sort of get into your brain for that period of time and get your brain going where you could persist at the activity for a prolonged period of time. Eventually, of course, uh the my ability to do that uh waned and uh with an injury. So I needed to move on to something else and started doing a Tabata style uh exercise weight training class, which then progressed because of my personal competitive, competitive with myself. You know, I love to hit my PRs uh nature. And so then powerlifting came into be and was motivated by several things. Like it's so great every single week to go into the gym and go, I think I can do 10 more pounds, I think I can do five more pounds and sort of have these goals that you need to hit. And my goal was always to get to a 600-pound total lift in powerlifting. And um, when I passed that, it was like, okay, I'm done with that. So now my training is way different. So, in doing a lot of research on my own about what's best at my 53 years of age for my body, trying to think about what else is out there. I did a yoga class and was like, wow, this is so life-giving for me. Uh, but yoga is not something that's going to continue to maintain as much muscle mass as I would like. So I am trying to mix it up a little bit. So my course right now, my training course right now, and I think we talked about this a couple weeks ago, Jock, is to do instead of this typical seven-day cycle of training, um, most of the research I'm that's coming out or that I'm reading about right now, and I'll throw back a thank you to Anthony Castori for this information that got me started doing more research on it, is that while the muscle may take 24 to 48 hours to recover, the nervous system really takes longer than that to recover. So, what we need to be thinking about doing, especially those of us who are higher achievers that are working hard, we're taking care of families, we're taking care of businesses, all the things that we're doing, we really need to consider a 10-day cycle. So for me, that looks like this. Um, my day one is usually some sort of training, like a tabato style or a bodybuilding kind of workout. And then day two is a zone two day where I'm doing some kind of, so it might be battle ropes, it might be a run, it might be like a real light jog, it might be a uh jumping jack or some other kind of uh some sort of calisthenic workout where I'm getting a good cardio going that day. So then it's a zone two. Then the next day is another training day, heavier weightlifting, shorter courses, not as much sweating, not as much of that. Then the next day might be a rest day or another zone two day. So we're going back and forth, but this instead of it being a seven-day cycle and then going back to my training cycle again on day number one, I'm doing a 10-day cycle. So this is a little bit different than what you're doing. And it doesn't really follow our lifestyle since most of us as Americans are seven-day cycle kind of people. What you end up doing is working out on weekends or doing differ a different thing on the weekend than what you would normally be doing and something different on this weekend than on the next weekend. So for a lot of people, that's great because your mind needs that sort of variety to confront it. But I think that we're really looking at that nervous system needs a little bit longer reset than just a two or three day cycle, than what we've been talking about in the past. So for me, this feels like a really great rhythm for me to get into. And um, then adding in some of that core strengthening with um Pilates classes has also been really helpful.

SPEAKER_04 5:28

Well, that's a comprehensive look at how you go about it. And since we talked about it, I guess a few weeks ago, I've really thought a lot about that because the traditional seven-day a week sort of like, hey, I'm gonna hit it hard for five and I'm gonna have active recovery on two, or just take one pure rest day, uh, figuring out that, hey, the muscles might be ready to go, but the central nervous system might be overtaxed, and the more you push it, the worse it gets. And Frank, you had mentioned something the other day where we were talking about AKG plus and a certain peptide, um, and how that was helping dramatically in the gym uh to or in the training that you were doing. I think you were working out in Leonard's garage, right? Was that Leonard's home gym that you guys were working out in?

SPEAKER_05 6:18

Oh, that was that was after a while back, but yeah, we uh that was back in the days when we were when we had the uh the time to do so.

SPEAKER_04 6:28

Yeah, when yeah, now now it's uh it's a three-day week for you guys, right? Um, where you've got the time to actually make anything happen. So um I'm I'm curious, Frank, as you think about this, and we kind of look back on like the Mike Mentor sort of thought process around training um and you know, the stretching these things out and taking a lot of rest days, high intensity training um for bodybuilders, and then big rest days. Um I'm curious from a supplementation standpoint, as we think about how Suzanne just talked about her approach. What are the things that uh play into helping people really um optimize their their exercise as they go and make sure that they've got what they need?

SPEAKER_05 7:12

I'm so glad that you uh you asked that question right there, because I was thinking about this conversation today, and I was thinking about, you know, this big talk around um what we call uh exercise memetics. Have you heard of that, Jock?

unknown 7:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 7:30

It's basically what we used to call exercising the pill, which is interesting because it's it's it's it follows the same pathways that um, let's say exercise will do. And um, you know, it's it's good because there's you know, there's some good evidence there. Um but basically what it is is you activate some of the same same molecular pathway that physical exercise triggers without the actual mechanical load, right? And the goal is really not to you know replace exercise, it's it's to amplify it. Um you know, and and it's it's it's meant to you know to help people that aren't unable to exercise actually um get some benefits from it, or limiting benefits from it, I guess. But creatine for me is is number one on the list. I think you start there. It's probably the most evidence-backed compound in every type of um conversation around exercise memetics, right? It's got a lot of studies on it. And the mechanism itself is you know, it's basically etyp resynthesis for muscle contractions, for example, but is the ospolite function that I think is the most important part. We talked about it in ICEL. Um, so it directly counters you know things like sarcopenia um and you know um myosteosis, I guess, right? When you have fat coming into the muscle. And uh it's it's it's also pretty efficient when it comes down to what's going on with GLP1, for example, right? So creatinine is not an optional in a longevity protocol. I think it's more of those things where it's foundational. So that's one thing that I'll definitely recommend to anybody, right, out there that's um trying to improve muscle, right? So that's one. Another one that we back two or three years ago, that we used to talk about, and I don't know if I can talk about it here, but I start with a five. Uh um, it's it's it's a compound that inhibits something we call NMMT. And uh what's cool about it is NMMT is that's it's actually an enzyme that when you overexpress it, um, acts as almost like a um like like a break, a metabolic break. Um and what's cool about it is when you um inhibit it, which is pretty cool, it creates a bunch of things, uh, things like NED precursors, like so you have more NED in the pool, which is very important because it's it um it gives rise to what we call holy grail, which is cert one activation and AMPK activation. And why this matters, I remember talking to Leonard back in the days about this. So AMPK is like the the master metabolic switch. But cert one is your longevity gene. So once you once you're able to actually give, get, you know, activate cert one, a lot of awesome things happen uh downstream. And that's one way also to do so. So if you have a compound or if you have a product out there uh that inhibit NMMT, um that's that's a route to take. Or a compound that um activates cert one and activate AMPK, I I know one of them, loose energy does. Um so that that's a way to actually do that, right? So those are the ways to to to to go for and actually help a lot of the people out there to make sure that the muscle, muscle mass is being, it's it's it's it's being protected, I guess, or improved. Um I can go on and on, uh, but those are my two top, right? Create, you know, creatine and and and and uh any type of you know any type of product and inhibit NMMT as well, right? Um we'll do that trick as well.

SPEAKER_04 11:22

So yeah, pretty cool, especially for those that you know have a tendency to over-train, right? Yeah. Um that's gonna be a big piece of it. Um and someone who in their collegiate days probably learned a lot about overtraining is Christy. I can imagine uh there were many days out there on that track or on on the trail where uh you probably felt like you were getting pushed beyond, right?

SPEAKER_01 11:51

Exactly. I mean, I'm so thankful that there's been a shift um in you know, definitely at the college level, and then you're seeing it in the high school and seeing in the club, um, as far as the the the right way to exercise, and it's not always about going a hundred percent all the time. I mean, back to Dr. Free, her statement. I mean, the way I look at it and you know talk to patients about it is exercise need needs to be really looked like as a prescription, right? I mean, frequency, the intensity, the recovery matters. And it needs the um, you know, exercise doesn't need to be random either. It it definitely needs to be personalized. And something we're kind of looking at kind of opening up another very smaller clinic here, um, but we're currently kind of testing the pilot here is I'm actually working with a chiropractor, a physical therapist, a nutritionist, and they come in and do labs and then they go through. I mean, it takes you know, right now it's about six hours for them to truly go through everything, and then we sit down as a team and truly become I mean come up with a prescription for them, you know, not only you know, as far as from peptide supplementation, um, but also from a food perspective and then the exercise. Because you know when you you know look at us, okay, our exercise prescription is gonna be totally different than you know, someone that truly has a you know some neurovascular disease, cardiovascular. Um, I don't know if you guys saw it, Dr. Abid Hussein did a really good YouTube video. I don't know, I think it came out like a week or two ago, and um he really had some phenomenal pictures as far as just showing the correlation with muscle, bone health, and and heart health, how they're absolutely intertwined together. Um, but you know, I'm happy that you know, and not to say that the Jim Bro is not effective at certain times, um, but I it's you know, for me having a a young athlete myself, a 17-year-old, I'm glad that there's a shift and um they're starting to understand the you know the recovery and what we do with recovery is just as important as the actual movement. Um and you know, just as always, I like you know, longevity is not built off of extremes, it's built off of consistency. And the same thing that goes with muscle. I mean, you know, that device that Leonard was talking about, that um that MRI machine that looks at the infiltrated fat. When you said that device, like I have two men that I would love to go get that because I can I mean they they think they're all this strong, their muscle, but I can promise you their muscle is totally infiltrated with fat. And you know, my concern for those patients is their cardiovascular risk. And you know, here I'm talking to them, but they think, well, they're in the gym seven days a week putting on all this muscle mass, but it's not a healthy muscle mass. And as we know, I mean it's it's a it's the the the strength that matters. And um, you know, really looking at as we all know, the muscle is such a great predictor of of lifespan. Um more so than you know, I think some of the labs we look at, just simply looking at their muscle mass predicts their lifespan.

SPEAKER_04 15:17

Yeah, it's huge, and it's so funny to think about this. Uh there are some things in this that you said that I just love prescriptive form of exercise. I think we can all just agree. Like you you see things, people like starting out in the gym. I when I see them in the gym, and I'm like, I want to go over and say to them, uh can I actually just show you how to do this the right way? But you know, I just you know it it seems too intrusive. Um, but the reality is like the notion of working with a team, this is the new way of doing things. Dr. Fare, I know you're doing it. Craig, I know you're doing it. Uh Leonard, we're moving to you next on New HX. Uh, but this idea of holistically looking at where you are and what you need and then monitoring it thereafter. Oh my gosh, this is the next level. So, Leonard, let's talk about what's going on from that strength. I mean, the pre-conference for Calm, we were all there, was awesome. Um, and I think what's happening at New HX is a similar thing and and super cool. So maybe we could talk about that.

SPEAKER_06 16:29

Sure. Um, you know, I think it's all uh interrelated uh from a lot of our conversations in previous podcasts when it comes to we've talked about peptides, we've talked about hormones, we talked about tracking, tracking things. You know, when I first came into this world, um what fascinated me was a little bit about what Franck was talking about is, you know, once I understood what was happening on a cellular level when it came to when people were exercising, um, I was kind of changed my entire way of thinking about medicine when we started studying peptides because I realized that a lot of these a lot of the cell signaling and mechanism of action of these peptides and other compounds that are not peptides were very close or mimicked at least some things that happened when when you exercised. And that was like the unlock for me, thinking, well, you know, what happens when we put these things together? What happens when we use the right peptides at the right time and we converge on pathways by either supplementation, like Frank was talking about, or by exercise. And this is when I saw the best outcomes that I'd ever seen before. And I remember one of the first lectures I saw on weight loss was Dr. Fariz in uh in a peptide certification course. And in that peptide certification course, they were talking about actually what happens when you do high-intensity driver training or you do zone two training. And that one was for me, was like kind of when I pivoted my career to say, okay, this is really exciting. And um I want to go focus on this. And then later I realized that you can actually measure, you know, how well people are exercising. You can measure their cardiorespiratory uh fitness, you can measure, you know, how efficient their cells are, you know, how they're oxidizing fat or carbohydrates or how that energy system is working. And then this all started in the in the garage with with Franck at five o'clock in the morning when we were willing to wake up at five o'clock in the morning. Um we we gave that up. But um, it was measuring that in ourselves and thinking about formulations of supplements and thinking about peptides and thinking about how this all comes together. And it finally came together in in uh what we have, which is new HX, where um we have uh uh DEXA scans or in bodies where we measure uh body composition. We have Pinoes where we measure metabolic breath analysis and we measure strength, like Christy said, and we put all of that together and and we come up with a prescription and we can actually prescribe exercise and we can prescribe you know great lifestyle modifications and peptides are supplements that can you know further enhance everything that you're doing. But like you said, Chuck, we were surprised because it was more of just like a lab for us where we tested different protocols and we wanted to see the change in people. And all of a sudden, people started walking in the in the door without us doing any marketing or just putting up a website. And I didn't realize how educated the consumer was about metabolism, about body composition. You know, I it was I was I was shocked. And um, and I'm I still am shocked every day uh about how much the consumer is aware of this and how um unaware a lot of physicians are about these foundational biomarkers around longevity. And so it's a it's really exciting and it um I never I never get bored of it. I mean, just every day something comes out, like if you think about the compounds that are coming out every day, they're very similar to exercise, right? You know, you could even relate what GLP1s do with how they dispose of glucose, very similar to what happens when we do resistance training or we exercise. You know, the the exciting compounds like O304 that's still in phase three clinical trials, that's this AMPK activator, what it's doing is it's mimicking exercise in every tissue. And so the future of compounds, of peptides are very closely related to how we exercise. And the better that patients and doctors can understand how to use this as a prescriptive tool, how to how to how to dose it correctly, um, is we're just gonna get so much better at at medicine. And I think that uh the dosing part is is really important because Dr. Faree's um you know example of what she's doing is amazing. But one of the first things that I ask patients is like, how much time are you willing to like invest into exercise? Because I don't want to, you know, do this entire report and tell you the most optimized version of what you can do if that's just never gonna happen. And some people say, hey, I've got an hour or I've got five hours. And then then we can take it and say, okay, well, this is like the biggest bang for your buck. If you're only gonna exercise two hours this week, I want you to do this because this is gonna move the needle the most for you. And um, it's not a self-science, and it's one that I love hanging out with all of you guys and just trading notes as to kind of how we can do this uh better for our patients.

SPEAKER_04 21:05

Yeah, it's just super cool. I just uh there's so many things that you just said that we'll come back to. I could just go on and on. It's like every time we talk, guys, it's like we could just keep going. Craig, you know, the one things I love about you is that you approach exercise in a way that's pretty, pretty unique. And I don't want to spoil the fun. Um, so maybe just if you could share how you go about it, because I think you have this really um interesting approach.

SPEAKER_03 21:31

Yeah, it's interesting you said that because I I I kind of feel that way about myself. And, you know, I don't know whether it's that it's a unique approach or just what seems to work for me. Um when I evaluate my own exercise capacity and performance and my interests in mobility and fitness and so forth, uh, you know, it does seem somewhat um atypical or maybe set aside from your traditional sort of like Jim Bro. Approach. I hate the gym. I hate going to the gym. I like to work out at home. I like to do functional fitness stuff. So, you know, whether that's engaging in water sports uh year round um and just, you know, getting my paddle on, getting my heart rate up. Um, I used to be a big runner back in the day. You know, there were times where I would was running, you know, um, you know, regularly running like 10Ks uh, you know, throughout the week. Um, and you know, so that that is um I I guess what I can say is that my approach is just I know that I need to move, right? And it feels good when I move, it feels good when I stress my body, uh, but I don't have like this structured routine. Of course, yeah, I'm trying to hit four to five days a week where I'm getting my heart rate up and I'm uh stressing my muscles and doing what I can to perform better. Um, but it's not like uh, you know, I'm getting up at the gym at 5 a.m., uh getting up and going to the gym at 5 a.m., 6 a.m., that sort of thing, um, multiple days a week because I just don't like it. I don't feel as though that's the type of person I am. So I really do focus on the functional fitness stuff. I do a lot of um, you know, body weight approaches, I do a lot of uh pull-ups, I do a lot of um, you know, squats, squats with weight, uh rotational exercises to work my core, um, you know, lunges, things of that nature. And, you know, I love kettlebells, I love to work with dumbbells at home. And my goal is to just never be slower and never be weaker than I was the week or the day before, you know. So um I incorporate all those things throughout throughout my um, you know, journey and throughout the week to really just continue to try to improve my performance uh and never fall behind, so to speak. I think it's interesting uh what Leonard was saying about the um, you know, the people that don't really have a ton of time because they're high performers, they've got kids, they've you know got busy work schedules. There was some interesting research that came out recently that looked at exercise snacks, right? And it found that if an individual was to engage in a minute or less of high-intensity, uh strenuous exercise, that could be running across the yard, that could be running up a few flights of steps, uh, you know, doing something like wall sits or some burpees, something like that, anywhere from three to six times a day for uh up to four, at least four days a week, uh, you know, this corresponded to relatively equivalent changes in visceral adipose tissue levels, in VO2 max um, you know, markers compared to people who are getting on an elliptical train or or a treadmill and engaging in a 30 to 40 minute exercise multiple days a week. So, you know, people that are limited in their time and their ability to engage in in certain activities really can make use of those exercise snacks and see notable changes. You had posted on your social media earlier today about uh, you know, how we uh you mentioned like concentric and eccentric exercise, right? And and Christy was referring earlier to um the necessity of protecting our bodies, you know, we can't overdo it, right? So a lot of exercise and a lot of our approach always needs to be how are we gonna maintain resilience and how are we gonna present uh prevent ourselves uh from injury. So looking at something like eccentric um, you know, movement and kneecentric contraction, really protective of like uh tendons, right? And and allowing for our tendons to be more uh injury resilient or uh uh resilient against injury. Um, and and it's so important. And then if we look at the opposite side of things, you know, the actual motion of uh concentric contraction, right? We know that contraction is what pushes out those myokines. And uh we've touched on myokines before in this podcast, but it really is an area that people need to start to focus because there are some very important myokines that are released when we contract our muscles and we contract our muscles uh with intensity, right? We know that um irisin is uh going to enhance mitochondrial biogenesis through the PGC1 alpha pathway. We know that uh something like um, you know, myostatin, which is actually going to be inhibitory towards muscle growth, is inhibited by exercise. And it's a myokine, but it's you know one that we need to inhibit if we have want to have some hypertrophy or growth within muscle. So there are cool peptides that you know target those pathways. Um interleukin 6, you know, we think of interleukin 6 as this type of this cytokine that, you know, chronic elevation is gonna contribute to problems, but really uh in an acute phase, in an acute setting, it's gonna help with glucose disposal. Um and BDNF, BDNF is gonna help with uh synaptogenesis and uh neural connections, and that's gonna enhance our mood and help our cognitive performance, right? So all of these things um that we know are just the the natural benefits of exercise uh really, you know, do coalesce into this beautiful picture that if people start to understand and focus on um, you know, those elements a little bit more, it may help to motivate them with their uh, you know, performance at home or in the gym. Yeah, it's interesting.

SPEAKER_04 27:31

You know, um Dr. Free, you mentioned Anthony Castori, and who doesn't love that guy? I mean I was listening to a podcast with him the other day, and I was just like, oh, dude, you're this so great. Um he just was crushing it. Um at a very, you know, it's super high level. So, you know, all the things that you just talked about, Craig, for the, you know, average Joe, uh, who may not like, oh, what what is that? How is that Iris and Interleukin 6, uh, BDNF, all this kind of stuff, how does that all, what does it all mean? So bringing it all back to where we can talk to the average person about beginning. I love you guys have all said this in a different way, but sort of like this notion of starting with something that is the baseline, getting that.

SPEAKER_02 28:22

Yeah, so it's it's it's interesting, like thinking about the the super practical things that we do for our patients. One of the best exercise prescriptions I give to my guys who travel, they're like, Oh, I don't have a hotel room, I don't have the crappy gym, I don't know what to do. Um, I will tell them to do, I call them um five 100s. So they do 100 sit-ups, 100 push-ups, 100 dips on a chair, 100 squats, 100 lunges. And the goal over time, this is sort of what Craig was just saying, is to get them to do that. You know, they can do it multiple times throughout the day, and then they just shrink it down over time to where all of that occurs in about 15 minutes. That's your that the ultimate goal is to do that in 15 minutes. Um, it's certainly possible. But with travel, that's so great because it doesn't require any equipment. It can be modified based on your exercise abilities. And it's the it's um available in every hotel room. So for all of your patients you travel, it's a really good, and it can be modified as far as how slow you do it, depending on how well you slept last night, last night. And we just have to remember that all of our exercise prescriptions have to take into account, um, particularly with our female patients, where they are in their cycle, um, keeping in mind that women's cycles are typically 30 days or 28 days, and men's cycles are typically 24 hours. So the cycle for a man is going to be different than the cycle for a woman. We also have to take into account what their baseline nutritional status is and what their history of injury is, what their history of muscle is. There's a great place here in Atlanta called Safe Haven that really encourages, it's really designed for patients over 50 who are just coming back into training after maybe having been an athlete as a high school student and then not really doing anything many, many, many years, and they're just coming back in. And I love referring patients there because they say, This is what I've been looking for. Now I have someone who listens to me when I say, ah, that hurts my knee. They modify the exercise. They're small groups, usually four or five uh adults per class. So you get lots of attention, lots of form, and they're doing both some cardio and some training, weight, some weight training. So they're getting lots of benefit there. We just have to remember that all of these people are coming from this sympathetic potential, sympathetic overdrive state, and that's going to affect everything that they do. And if your body is not feeling safe enough to adapt, all you're doing with exercise is creating more wear. And so these patients need to feel safe in order to do that. And this is why a gym called Safe Haven happens to be really successful here in town. And we can't get them in for appointments anymore because I need them to open another location because I'm ready for more, more folks. But I think that um uh we have to real really realize also that the a lot of the peptides that we use, while they have some specific things like uh what the fellows have been mentioning today, we have to remember that the the primary goal of growth hormone in IGF one is actually recovery, that it gets us back to sport faster. And that's its actual goal. And so while we're getting stronger, we're getting faster, the getting stronger and getting faster is actually helping you with recovery to get you there faster. So I can go to sport five days a week as opposed to two days a week because I'm actually able to recover faster. So keep those in mind as you're talking about a lot of the peptides. I'm sure Leonard can be more specific as I um talked about that.

SPEAKER_04 31:50

You know, it's interesting. Uh every one of you have said something something that's so cool. Actually, Leonard, the other day on social media, you uh somebody was asking you a question. Um, and it kind of goes back to a couple of things you said. Uh Apple Watch for VO2 Max. And you're like, no. Um and then also before that, you had said, um, hey, if I'm not tracking my workout, why am I even going to go for like you were making fun of it? Why wouldn't I even go for a for a walk? Right. Yeah. I think that we said that here on one of the podcasts, maybe. Right. And then Christy is like, uh Christy, would you use any any wearables? And you're like, only to go track my run, you know, just to make sure I'm not going too far, but you're not looking at anything else in it. Isn't that interesting? Like it's sort of as we start to think about this and the tracking kind of looping back to that. And then Craig, the exercise snacks, how cool is that? Um, you know, I have a friend, Jody Barrett, uh, KB stronger. She's a kettlebell uh instructor, online coach, trains people all over the world. And she talks about that all the time. It's like, hey, do these things a piece at a time throughout your day. Uh, you could have a kettlebell here, you could do a little bit of what uh Dr. Faree said, you know, Suzanne, like just, you know, putting putting, hey, can you do 25 push-ups now and then 25 and then 25 and then 25? It's pretty cool. There's a lot of really interesting ways to approach this. But I think getting the prescription first may be the revolution that we're all talking about.

SPEAKER_06 33:18

I think the hardest thing for for me or or what I focus the most on is getting people to be consistent. I mean, I think I think sometimes we put put so much emphasis on the actual exercise or how long they're exercising. I'll take a crappy workout that's consistent than someone that goes and kills themselves like once a week or once every three months. And that's the hardest part. And, you know, I've been, we've been doing some case studies at New HX recently. And one of the ways that we're kind of trying to motivate them is hey, here are some peptides that I know are going to work great for you, but you're not allowed to get them until you show me four weeks of consistency. If you can dial it in for four weeks and you're doing everything correctly, then that's your prize. And because it's it's it's like a waste of money, you know? And and also, like what Suzanne said, it's like if you can't recover, you know, um, the the exercise is kind of no good. And I I completely uh agree with with uh Suzanne. You know, most people think the peptides are about the muscle gaining or the improvement and growth hormone. For me, the biggest benefit I see is that it helps people recover from exercise so much better so they can get back to it and do more of it. But um, yeah, no, just to the the actual point is something I'm constantly thinking about is how do you stay consistent with it, especially for those people that don't like typically exercise. If you have former athletes that have done it before and they're used to being tired and they're they're used to straining, it's one thing. They can they can get into that mode. But for these patients that exercise has never been really a part of their life, it's I just I just want you to go consistently. That's it. And then we'll work on taking it up to the next level. But yeah, there's a lot of people waiting for Tesla Moralin if if they if they can pass the test.

SPEAKER_02 34:59

That's what was fascinating about training for uh powerlifting was I expected that the training would be sort of a constant incline, right? I would just get better and better every time I go. And I'd have weeks where I was just doing worse and my workout was terrible. But you know, you keep showing up and you keep showing up. And it's amazing because my coach would say at the very beginning, he's like, nothing matters. All that matters is that you show up. Every time I promise you, all that matters is you show up. And so he would start our training for our competition 10 weeks out. And we would do, you know, whatever our our course was for that 10 weeks. And no matter where I was, I always hit my goals at the very end, even if I didn't hit what in my mind was my goal for this week or next week. Yeah. It's just consistency is always the key.

SPEAKER_06 35:50

It really messes with their confidence because what we're trying to do is give them a little bit of confidence so they can continue to come back. But those plateaus, even those mini plateaus that you're talking about, is where I get nervous. I'm like, hey, you've gone silent. You know, what's going on in your life? Because it's like weight loss. Have you ever seen like a weight loss scale? Like you don't have like consistently losing weight. All of a sudden you plateau. There's like three days where you ate a small amount of calories, you did everything right, and you gained a pound. And those are like the dangerous parts because that's when they quit. That's when they give up. That's when they say, Oh, well, you know, it's, you know, I'm doing all this for anything for no reason. Let me just go like have that snack I wouldn't necessarily have. And so I'm trying to train them mentally to say, hey, when you're plateauing, when you're going through those stages where like nothing's making sense, like I, I mean, I don't even know how true this is, but I give them this speech about like biochemistry. I'm like, it's not changing on this and on the scale, but your biochemistry is changing. It's stalled out, but the way that your cells are signaling are slowly changing and you're gonna see it on the back end. And I try to tell them that when they're plateauing is actually the most important part of their program because anybody can wake up on the day where you wake up and you're a couple pounds lighter or you're getting stronger, you have the motivation. That's not like really where you win. Where you win is when you plateau and nothing makes sense, and you keep doing it anyway, and you keep on going. And so those are, I think, the most important conversations that that um I have with pay with uh with patients if they actually, you know, buy into it.

SPEAKER_04 37:11

Hey, Frank, I think everyone's gonna be wanting to know what do you do for exercise at this point since you're not getting up at 5 a.m. and in Leonard's garage anymore.

SPEAKER_05 37:23

Well, I'll play t I'll play a lot of sport, but I play tennis. I mean, that's really kind of what I do, um, which is constantly moving all the time, you know what I mean? Um but you know, I just want to say something real quick about what you guys are, you know, we're talking about like when you came down to exercise. What what I see, because I sometimes I feel like I just came back from a trip and I feel like we live in a bubble where everybody thinks like us um and expect to do the things that we want to do uh what we think it's good in our space. And I'm like, you know, I think we we we we sometimes fail to explain to people why things like muscle mass matter. Um and and because for us it does matter, but for them, it doesn't make any sense. What are you talking about? Why is my strength has anything to do with my longevity? Why is my muscle mass has anything to do with my my longevity? And they they're having a hard time putting the two get you know together. They don't get it. They're just like, what are you talking about? I think most patients out there, and actually physicians sometimes don't understand what we're talking about. And I think we need to do a really good job at or a better job at taking the time to really kind of go back to the to the level, the the low level of explaining um what's the correlation between a muscle, you know, muscle mass dropping um and and your longevity, your lifespan, your health span. Um what is strength, a decline in strength, how does he affect you drastically after age 60, for example, and and and and what does he mean in terms of how well you're going to live your life? And and if we go down to this level as a group and explain that to people, I think we're gonna get better traction when we talk about exercising, resistance training. Uh, we're gonna get better traction. Because when we're gonna turn around and be like, hey, you know, there's places like that where you can actually go to, you know, now that you understand where you're at on your assessment, there's places you can go to where they can actually precisely prescribe a better way for you to exercise based on how and what you like to do. You like to play tennis? Great. Be at that zone there for 30 minutes or 15 minutes. You like to move, you like to swim, this is what you should be doing, right? Um you don't like to exercise, fine. Let's find something else that the data shows will increase your life. You know, and I think we we need to go back to that level. You know, um, you know, I haven't seen my mom in a long time. I was just sitting with her, you know, and you know, she's 70 years old, and you know, she's she you know, she's she likes to exercise when when she can. She's she's super busy. She's a pharmacist, so she understands the importance of exercising. And I took the time to kind of explain to her um something very basic at a cell level. And it's just like boom. It just it just made sense for her. That's kind of the storyline that we have to come up with. And it has to be very consistent uh when we talk about muscle strength and how it affects longevity, you know what I mean? Um without going into you know the the the next level and high-level stuff, because to to make it accessible for people out there and make them understand that correlation, especially in this world that's just ever changing with you know with AI and the ability to do nothing, really, um, it's gonna be very, very important. So yeah, that's kind of that's a piece I think that's missing. And and and I hope that you know we would just people understand it on the show and and and and they get to uh to actually apply it to their, you know, to to uh to their day-to-days.

SPEAKER_03 41:18

So one of the things that I always try to emphasize in in relation to that is you know, getting back to the level of like, well, how is muscle mass going to enhance your anti-inflammatory potential in the body, you know? So if we want to maintain insulin sensitivity, we have to have adequate skeletal muscle mass. I mean, it's something like 70-80% of um postprandial glucose is metabolized rapidly by muscle tissue. So if you want to drive insulin resistance, if you want to drive um, you know, increased risk for frailty, all these things, uh, then the then allow your skeletal muscle mass to decline, both in in mass and in the quality of it. Um, you know, and as those things happen, then we're gonna have increasing inflammatory cascade. And uh, you know, I I'm a firm believer in inflammaging. And that being sort of like the number one background process that contributes to chronic disease uh and the increased risk of that. So um that that's at least how I, you know, present it to my patients.

SPEAKER_04 42:26

Christy said one thing, I treat people by decade, right? I think about them in decades. And if you think about as people get older, um the number one thing that's gonna probably determine whether or not they're gonna, you know, I guess live or die in many cases is a fall. How important is muscle in making sure that people aren't falling?

SPEAKER_01 42:49

I mean, it's huge as far as just function, um, and then you know, going back to the strength, you know, having the strength so that you can walk without having to fall. Um, and then you know, we we don't lose muscle because we age, we age because we lose muscle. And, you know, describing that to patients for you know for myself really helps them that you know we're we're we're you know, we're past the point of yes, we all want to exercise to look better, but really breaking it down as far as what it's doing and you know, going back to correct state as far as you know the insulin resistance and you know how I describe it is muscle is your largest glucose sink um that you can have in your body. Um, you know, if we can add some muscle, you will, without a doubt, I says there's very absolute, very few absolutes in medicine, but without a doubt, I can tell you your insulin sensitivity, your blood sugar, your your how you feel, your mitochondria will improve. I mean, I saw like a lady this morning. I mean, she was I just finally told her, I says, you know what, let's let's take a pause. You need to get serious about you know what you want and what What is your idea of health? Um, because before we move forward, I'm just making you sicker because right now you're just losing muscle, right? Um, she wasn't doing those vital parts that I know we all talk about as far as the you know, the fiber, the protein, the water, um, and then the resistance training. But I mean, it's just simply and I try to find a patient like, what do you enjoy doing? I mean, most people, and especially here in Albuquerque, it's like we've been blessed with some beautiful weather lately. And so walking is very pleasure, you know, can is very pleasant for most people. Um, it doesn't have to be this extraneous, exhausting, you need to go take a nap after working out, or you wake up the next day and you just don't feel like you're recovered. I mean, if if you don't feel like you're if you're sleeping well um and you wake up and you still don't feel like you're recovered, you you, you know, you're missing something with your exercise. You're you're either overtraining or training at the wrong time, or don't have your supplementation right, or you're not, you know, hydration, protein, the things we all talk about.

unknown 45:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 45:05

Well, you know what, you guys are all onto something that's super amazing. Leonard, I love the gamification approach. Hey, you can you can get this when you achieve this. And I think uh, Suzanne, you mentioned something with the clinic there and or the the facility there. What was the name of it again? Uh Safe Haven.

SPEAKER_05 45:25

Uh Safe Haven, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 45:26

Yeah. I mean, this is like the future, right? This is where it's all headed. I wonder how it's all going to combine together. It's um anybody have any last thoughts on that as we get ready to wrap up?

SPEAKER_03 45:36

I actually just have one thing that I wanted to say. I'll keep it, you know, brief. Is uh we have to also focus on like the timing in between movement, right? I mean, somebody that is sedentary for nine hours a day and then maybe they go to the gym uh and crush it for an hour, you know, that's not necessarily a picture of health either. Uh we have to avoid these prolonged sedentary periods because that's when you know we become glucose-locked or mitochondria start to falter and we're gonna lose metabolic uh flexibility there. So we want, you know, our utilization of substrates, whether it's fats uh versus carbohydrates, to be adequate. We want it to be optimized. So you just gotta move throughout the day. Okay. So if you're sitting for longer than an hour, get up, do something, jumping jacks, push-ups, what have you. You know, it's not gonna, you can't just like people say you can't eat uh or you can't medicate your way out of a bad diet. Well, you can't just like, you know, go to the gym for an hour and put in a moderate to high intensity uh exercise um if you've really just been sitting all day. Um so move, move consistently.

SPEAKER_04 46:43

So, in other words, hey, go train in the gym. So, you know, typical workout for me is like an hour, hour and a half, sometimes more. I know you guys have all told me don't do it. And then after that, um it's like try to get the steps in and move around, but not just sit around, um, which is really that's a great point, Craig. Thanks for bringing that up because I think a lot of times people feel like, hey, you know, I put my time in the gym, I've closed all my rings, I'm good. Uh, but maybe they didn't set those rings the right way, and there's more to it.

SPEAKER_06 47:14

All right, guys. All right, any last thoughts? You're you're talking to me here. I probably sit here for nine hours a day. I get a good workout in the morning, but then I sit down for nine hours. So uh but isn't that the average American?

SPEAKER_04 47:26

I mean, isn't everyone doing that now? Isn't like sitting is the new smoking, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_06 47:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 47:31

What what scares me is the drugs. Okay, that's what I know anyway, but what scares me is the drugs is like, you know, it's crazy. You know, we we haven't talked about it, but GLP1s, I mean, the whole country is on it, the whole world is on it. And uh they're probably the biggest contributor to muscle, muscle mass decrease that I've ever seen. You know, and and and we gotta address that at one point because this is going to be in the next five years, just like the vaccine, you know. Oh, we forgot about that. Oh yeah, you forgot about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it does cause muscle mass decrease. I mean, that that's something that we I think the whole world needs to know about. It's like you're in a GLP1. Well, you gotta, you gotta, you gotta be very careful here. You gotta make sure that you, you know, you you take some creatine, you have to make sure that you take some, you know, some some vitamin B. You gotta make sure that you, you know, you're doing certain things to, you know, to allow osmolite, you know, to increase in your body, because that's going to turn into muscle mass decrease. Um, and that's something that I think we we need to we need to address as well. And you know, and and that's why longevity space is amazing anyway. You know, the number the number two is steroids. Uh, you know, I mean, that's you know, back in the days when Larry and I were used to work at at CVS, and how many how many prednisonesones have you have you dispensed out there? I mean, gosh, I mean, you know, steroids, I mean, I think probably I think prednisone is probably the most muscle destructive commonly prescribed in existence. I mean, if you think about it, you know. Um, but yeah, you have to be careful with the drugs.

SPEAKER_04 49:11

Yeah, and prednisone's out there in a in a big way, right?

SPEAKER_06 49:15

There's uh highly prescribed um steroid that there's a there's a thing, I'd have mentioned it before, there's a fast mover track for pharmacists in a retail where there's there's the drugs that you dispense all day long and is like benzos, SSRIs, and prednisone, and then all like the primosect which you know is up uh omeprzol. Statin, don't forget a statins. You know, or they they have to be right in front of you, you know, a uh a hand away because you're you're filling them so much. Uh Frank's getting a little PTSD from having to work in the retail setting just by saying that.

SPEAKER_04 49:48

You guys are so great. You know what? Every week I look forward to this. I'm so excited uh to uh to see this episode come out. And I know there's gonna be a lot more to talk about as things progress. Um, Suzanne, as you as you get that uh safe haven to open another location, Christy, as you build out your new concept, uh Leonard and Frank as new HX takes off. Craig, as you continue to do the things that you're doing with your patients, it is an amazing time and exercises top of mind for everyone. I want to thank you guys all so much for your time today. Uh, as always. Nice to have the home team back together, and we'll see you next week. Although, Dr. Faree, you're gonna be gone next week, correct?

SPEAKER_02 50:33

I am, I am. I'm gonna bring in my dear friend, the dietitian Robin Stegal. You guys are gonna love her.

SPEAKER_04 50:39

Yeah, we're gonna talk all about the the food that we need to eat to support this exercise and probably to address what happens if you're on a GLP one, right?

SPEAKER_02 50:49

Yeah, she just got her um her extra education in sports nutrition. So she's she's a fireball. I'm excited.

SPEAKER_04 50:58

That's great. All right. Please remember to like, share, and subscribe. Leave a comment, let us know what you're interested in. We really appreciate it, and we'll see you next week on Selva Systems.