Dhru Purohit Show - The Hidden Common Link Between Heart Disease, Diabetes, Cancer and Alzheimer’s with Michael Joseph Gross

Episode Date: December 17, 2025

This episode is brought to you by LMNT, Cozy Earth, Fatty15, and Maui Nui. We all know muscle is important, but today’s guest takes it a step further, showing why it can truly be a life-changing, even life-saving, part of our health. He shares what his deep-dive research uncovered about the history of muscle and strength training, how our relationship with it has evolved, and what those shifts can teach us about building a stronger, more resilient population today. Today on The Dhru Purohit Show, Dhru sits down with Michael Gross to explore the profound impact of muscle and strength training on health, longevity, and identity. They discuss the importance of muscle mass in preventing chronic diseases, the role of strength in shaping personal identity, and share inspiring stories of transformation. Michael emphasizes that it's never too late to start strength training and highlights the need for a shift in the medical community to recognize exercise as a vital component of health care. Michael Joseph Gross began his career as a political speechwriter before moving into journalism, writing for major newspapers and magazines. As a longtime contributing editor at Vanity Fair, he covered culture, politics, religion, crime, business, technology, and national security, and appeared on programs such as CBS Mornings, Morning Joe, and NPR. He is the author of Starstruck: When A Fan Gets Close to Fame and Stronger: The Untold Story of Muscle in Our Lives, which explores the central role of muscle in human health and history. In this episode, Dhru and Michael dive into:  How muscle impacts cancer and diabetes risk (5:46) Muscle mass as the body’s glucose-disposal engine (9:49) The link between muscle strength and cognitive health (14:36) Why the medical system overlooks muscle  and why it matters (19:42) Jan Todd’s story and what it teaches us about self-efficacy (30:04) Why it’s never too late to start strength training (47:34) Ancient Greek wisdom on strength and vitality (52:41) How strength and community shape each other (57:26) The future: prescribing strength training as medicine (1:01:54) Strength training as a deeper life practice (1:11:10) Breakthrough research on strength training for seniors (1:15:06) Michael’s personal stories on strength and quality of life (1:23:45) Final thoughts and key takeaways (1:28:15) Also mentioned in this episode: STRONGER: The Untold Story of Muscle in Our Lives Oldest Female Ninja Warrior: A Longevity Protocol To Stop Decline, Stay Young & Build Muscle! 7 Ways I'm Helping My Parents Stay Healthy As They Get Older For more on Michael, follow him on Instagram or visit his Website. This episode is brought to you by LMNT, Cozy Earth, Fatty15, and Maui Nui. Right now, LMNT is offering my listeners a free sample pack with any purchase. Head over to drinkLMNT.com/dhru today. Right now, get 20% off your Cozy Earth sheets and sleepwear. Just head over to cozyearth.com/dhru and use code DHRUP. Fatty15 is offering an additional 15% off its 90-day subscription Starter Kit. Go to fatty15.com/dhru and use code DHRU to replenish your C15 levels for long-term health. Right now, Maui Nui is giving my listeners early access to their Holiday Gift Sets—and when you buy four, you get a fifth free. Just go to mauinuivenison.com/DHRU to claim yours. Quantities are limited, so don’t wait! Sign up for Dhru’s Try This Newsletter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Michael, excited to have you here on the podcast. You've spent almost a decade working on this fantastic book, Stronger, the untold story of muscle in our lives. And I'm excited to have you here. If you have context for the history and the science around muscle, you'll be more excited to dedicate time to this craft. So thank you again for being here on the podcast. Thank you for having me.

We got a lot to get into, so I'm excited to get into. to it. You know, as I mentioned, you spent almost a decade working on this incredible book that's out there. And your book is built around these key stories around three amazing individuals and how their quest for strength shaped their life and work and inspired a lot of people, whether people know about it or not. One of them is a professor from the University of Sydney. And I hope I'm pronouncing her name right, but it's Maria Fiaturoni Singh, Fiaturoni, a little Italian, a little bit of Indian inside of there as well. And as I mentioned, she was at the University of Sydney Medical School.

And she's one of the world's leading researchers on strength training and chronic disease. You spent a month in Australia reporting on her work and a full year studying her research. So based on everything you learned about her, I want to ask you a big question to start off on the podcast. If we look at the leading causes of death and disability in America today, heart disease, cancer, type 2 diabetes, and Alzheimer's disease, which one of these is most directly and urgently tied into the lack of muscle mass in the body? Muscle really is a matter of life and death.

And heart disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer's, Alzheimer's disease, these are all urgently tied to muscle mass and strength. So let's just take them down one after the other. A heart disease, we have data from the Baltimore longitudinal study on aging, showing that the decline in muscle mass is responsible for about 50% of the decline in aerobic fitness as we get old. So this idea that strength and aerobic fitness are somehow in competition or in tension with each other is misguided. Strength and fitness are intertwined, intricately related. The research on cancer mortality shows that a regular regimen of strength training alone with no aerobic training,

reduces cancer mortality by 16%. A regular regimen of aerobic training alone with no strength training has no effect on cancer mortality. Now, this is probably because a lot of people with cancer who die of it actually die of muscle caeccia, cancer caeccia, the loss of muscle mass that accompanies cancer as it goes on and increases risk of infection, fatigue, weakness,

which increased risk of falls. But again, showing the intertwined nature of muscular strength and aerobic fitness, if a person with cancer increases or adopts both a resistance training and an aerobic training regimen, then they reduce their risk of cancer mortality by something like 28%. That's crazy. They boost it so much more than resistance training. alone. It's wild because for years we've had presidents and it's a beautiful thing, but for years we've had presidents and different groups saying we need to get that cancer moon shot. The same way

that we made it to the moon many years ago, we need this cancer moon shot. If that, you know, just hearing those statistics, if that was actually a pill, everybody would have hailed that. if exercise was a pill and its results on reducing mortality from cancer was a pill, people have said, wow, we found at least one of our moonshots for cancer. That is right. And I think we need to push the logic there one step further even. Maria Fiataroni Singh actually argues that it is a hippocratic imperative for doctors to give patients access to resistance training as a treatment for their disease. In other words, she's saying that if an oncologist does not give a cancer patient access to an exercise oncologist, somebody who can

prescribe weight training and, if necessary, aerobic training to help with the treatment of their disease, they're actually not following the Hippocratic Oath, the first promise a doctor makes to do no harm. Because doctors are doing harm to patients if they know this information and they don't tell patients how powerful an effect it can have in addition to traditional medicine on the treatment of their disease. I love that. You know, you mentioned cancer. Did you want to talk about any of the other ones inside of that that we were highlighting? Let's go. Type 2 diabetes.

Muscle mass is the biggest sink for the disposal of glucose in the human body. That's why people talk about muscle as a metabolic organ. Maria Fiaturoni-Sing has been investigating resistance training as part of treatment for type 2 diabetes for more than 25 years. One of her biggest findings was that in a comparison, of a high-intensity, high-velocity weight training program with a low-intensity, low-velocity weight training program. The people, and this was about 100 subjects, all, I believe, in their 60s and older,

all overweight or obese with long-standing diabetes. The people who improved their glycemic control, improved their insulin sensitivity, did it only if they did the heavy weight training. People who did the lower weight training also lost weight. It matters not just that you lose weight if you're a person with diabetes. That's what doctors are always telling people they have to do. You know, the first line of lifestyle treatment is a weight loss diet. It actually matters just as much how they lose the weight if these markers of diabetes and the progression of diabetes are going to come under control. It's powerful because for so many years, that's been the conversation and it's still largely

the conversation is how do we get people to lose weight? How do we get people to lose weight without this focus on muscle? I have some questions around that that we'll get to in a second, but just wanted to make sure I didn't prematurely cut you off as you've been going through these. So you talk about cancer, you talked about type 2 diabetes. What about Alzheimer's disease and cognitive decline? What do we know about muscle mass related to those? December is basically a series of celebrations. Dinners, parties, outings, travel, and somewhere in between all that fun, you forget to hydrant. At least most people do. And that's exactly why dehydration hits the hardest. You know what I'm talking about? Groggy mornings or those annoying headaches are just

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be sure to mention you heard about Cozy Earth right here on the Drew Prod Show. Give the gift of comfort that lasts beyond the holidays and carries into a cozy new year. High intensity weight training, progressive resistance training, actually causes an increase in the size of the brain's posterior singular cortex, which is the part of the brain that's the seat of empathy and emotional memory. It's the first part of the brain to atrophy in Alzheimer's patients,

even before they show any other symptoms of the disease. That was shown in the smart trial that Maria F. F. Adironi Singh helped run in 2000. They also found in that trial, it was a comparison of high-intensity progressive resistance training with cognitive training and with sham exercise. There were four groups using these in various combinations. But what they found was that progressive resistance training was the most powerful medicine for various outcomes of cognitive function. And specifically, it was lower body strength

that seemed to mediate the cognitive improvements. It's so wild. Again, when you look at those statistics from her work and her review of the research that's out there and her own research, you think, like, why isn't this front page news, especially for a disease, Alzheimer's, which we've spent billions and billions of dollars trying to develop drugs that largely have not worked. And sometimes in most cases, even sort of made patients more worse off. And not to throw drugs under the bus. Obviously, it's fantastic that we're looking at all these different things.

At the same time, the thing that we're looking for is right in front of our face. Certainly a big part of the thing that we're looking for is right in front of our face. I mean, I think we have to be cautious when we have these conversations, not to get carried away and imagine that exercise can solve all of our problems. Absolutely. I think the ideal scenario is just changing the medical establishment so that exercise can be recognized as the powerful medicine that it is and used as a personalized prescription wherever appropriate. So sometimes that's going to be an alternative treatment as in the case of depression or a complementary treatment as in the case of diabetes. And in some cases, as in dementia, it really is probably the only effective treatment we have right now.

Maybe there will be others in the future, but in a brand new publication earlier this year in nature medicine, again, Maria Fiataroni Singh, in collaboration with some colleagues, showed that among several thousand people with mild cognitive impairment, which is the precursor to dementia and in many cases Alzheimer's, a, internet-based, multi-component lifestyle intervention program that involved both adopting the Mediterranean diet and following a daily exercise program, including strength training, but not limited to strength training. That program reduced the progression of mild cognitive impairment by three times more than the control. this was the first actual evidence that an internet-based intervention could improve cognition in the people who are most at risk for Alzheimer's disease. So that means it's the first proof that some sort of nationwide population-level dementia prevention program might be possible. And in Australia, there are plans to try to move forward with that. Why has our current medical system treated these four big killers of humanity? Why have they treated

them separately from strength? In your work, in your investigation, how do we end up in this situation where, you know, we've been so siloed off for disease, care management, especially when somebody just heard all these incredible statistics from you about how improving your muscle mass and strength training can radically make a difference in heart disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer, Alzheimer's disease. Yeah, how do we end up in a system where we see it as separate? Like a lot of society's problems, this just comes down to an ancient prejudice. every single one of us is caught in the middle of a tug of war that's been going on for thousands of years between doctors and trainers to decide who can be in charge of health care.

It starts in ancient Rome. And you've got doctors on one side saying that we should be the ones and putting down trainers and building themselves up by pointing. to big muscular athletes as the worst possible outcome of athletic training. They say actually that people who train to build mass will become unable to think. They will smother their souls. And I think this just creates attention that gets built into Western culture and gets carried over to the point where every single one of us, when we went to elementary school, you know, gets the idea that there are some kids who are bigger and stronger and dumber and some kids

who are skinnier and faster and smarter. And so the idea that there's a zero-sum game between mind and muscle, we've just got to call that game. I've just got to say that game is up. Yeah. And you know what? If you look at a lot of young kids today, you see that it's cool to be fit. It's cool to be smart. And, you know, obviously I'm biased living out here in L.A.

The friends that I have are largely trying to be role models for their kids, even if they didn't grow up with role models that were around them, that were strength. training on a regular basis, but their kids are like excited to be fit, which means a lot of them are in the gym, and they're excited also to be smart, and it's cool to be both. And there's not this separation of the nerds and the jocks. It's kind of all come together. Yeah, things are definitely changing. And it's just a thrill to see that. It's going to be really interesting to see what kind of demographic research shows about that change because I do think that when we live a lot of our lives in social media, especially in the conversation about health on social media, we can

begin to get the idea that a proverbial everybody is doing it. Totally. The most recent government data on the social inequalities around strength training is pretty shocking in some ways. The biggest inequality is in self-perceived health status. So people who think of themselves as being very healthy are about 14 times more likely than people who don't think of themselves that way. to have some kind of regular strength training habit. And people who are highly educated are also far more likely to have a strength training habit than people who haven't finished high school.

You know, what's so important about that is that people often ask me, just for my thoughts, like, are we getting healthier? Are we getting sicker? And the truth is, it's both. The people that have access to health and education and podcasts and other things like that, that group of society, those individuals are getting healthier

than ever before, especially with the access to different tools and abilities that we have and even in some case, obviously, fantastic medications that could support them on their journey, like some of these GLP ones that have made a big difference

in some people's lives when used right. And then the other side of society is getting sicker than ever before. And, you know, not just lack of, of access to gyms and other things like that, but dialysis is a huge part of our federal spending here in America and so on and so forth. So we're having this split. And that's why it's exciting for books like this to come out there that are highlighting it because the truth is throughout history

from what I've seen, and you can chime in on this, is that most things start with the people that have resources. Electricity started with the people that had money and that had resources. But we don't want it to end there. We want to figure out how can this be scaled through either enterprise, capitalism, or

philanthropy, and bring this out to more individuals. Cars. Originally cars are only for a certain group of people. And now we need to and then we've expanded it largely that most people have access in some degree. So in that same way, through modern medicine and hopefully

through the birth of some of these emerging technologies, it's like if we can make this more accessible to people, now everybody has an opportunity to incorporate this into their health journey. And let's break down a little bit how that access could be improved because the ancient prejudice I was talking about doesn't just sit there like a blob and smother us like the muscles supposedly was smothering our souls. The ancient prejudice expresses itself in very pointed ways in education, in policy, and economics. You know, there's no real entity to make money off exercise as a treatment for chronic disease the same way we have the pharmaceutical industry to make money from exercise.

making pills. And if somebody could begin to think about health and longevity focused exercise clinics for middle class and people who have less money, if people could begin to think about that system and think about it as a lifelong system, that could be an investment that would pay off spectacularly. As you just pointed out, dialysis is a huge expenditure for the federal government. Now, one of the reasons that people need dialysis or one of the associated problems for chronic kidney patients who go in for dialysis is chronic muscle wasting because of the low protein diet that they have to be on. Maria Fiataroni Singh and her students found out that if they gave weights to people while they were plugged into their

dialysis sessions and had them sit there on the bed lifting with all of their limbs, they could actually counteract the wasting caused by those low protein diets. So people were actually getting healthier as they were. they were making themselves healthier, even as they were being treated. Second, education. Medical education just has to change so that more future doctors learn more about exercise. Right now, most people in most medical schools aren't required to take a single course on exercise.

And if they are, most of what they learn is still about aerobics. because the medical establishment did such a great job of attacking the cardiovascular disease crisis in the 20th century, but they haven't yet widened their scope to see that they've got other battles that also need attention now. And very specifically, we need exercise-focused questions on medical board exams so that there will be an actual incentive for people to learn. Public policy, finally, also, there have to be Medicare reimbursements for hiring an exercise physiologist

to come and treat people in their homes. The people who need this treatment, the treatment of weight training the most, are the people who are least likely to receive it because they can't get out. They can't get access. We'll pay for any number of drugs for them, hundreds, thousands of dollars worth of drugs, but we won't pay for a physiologist to come into the house and just, you know, go over a basic program and show you how to use an app to help yourself continue with it. And we need to start paying for that.

It's worth it. It's worth it. And the whole thing is wild. And it will take all of us to put attention on it, to raise our voices and to show people that we're willing to vote with our dollars for people who want to make this a priority because that gap is so huge. And you know, you were chatting about this earlier. But, you know, for people who have that sense of identity, they are so much more healthier if they think of themselves as as healthier and how they prioritize. So this sort of tease me up for, you know, coming back into the three personalities, the people that you were highlighting and profiling inside of the book. Another one of those central figures was Jan Todd.

She is a pioneer of women's strength training who became one of the world's leading historians of strength. And she's on the faculty of University of Texas at Austin. And she also has an archive, which I learned from your book, of the history. history of sport and physical culture. So a huge part of what she talks about is how strength shapes identity and how as we get stronger, how does that change how we sort of view ourselves. So a lot of people might not think of muscle as being central to their identity. I shared a couple of anecdotes in the beginning related to me. But expand on that a little bit more, expand on Jan Todd's work a little bit more and talk to us about how the idea of muscle is so central for everyone's identity.

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Holiday quantities are limited. Once these gifts sell out, they're gone, so go try them out. When Jan Todd was growing up in the 1960s and early 70s, she went to a high school where girls just had one choice if they wanted to play sport, and that was swimming. Boys had all kinds of choices, but girls just had the one. Jan was a very active kid. She loved to run and jump and push and pull and lift things, but she never had anybody who would work with her to sort of bring out her athletic potential.

So she really had no idea until she was in her early 20s and one day decided to go to the gym with her husband that a woman could lift really heavy weights. This was 1973 and it was in Texas and gyms were even more masculine spaces than most of them are now. I mean, even today, about 70% of all the people in all the gyms in this country who work out are going to be male. But Jan Todd in 1973 saw another woman deadlifting, lifting really heavy weights. And she told me it was kind of like a religious revelation for her to see this because she'd just grown up in a culture where girls weren't supposed to try hard. She and her husband, who happened to have been the first U.S. men's powerlifting champion, Terry Todd, they went back home to Terry's family's place and they looked at the Guinness Book of World Records and they found there was a record for the women's deadlift that had stood for about 50 years. And within just 18 months of training, Jan broke it. She started a 10-year stretch where she just broke one world record after another.

The Guinness Book of World Records listed her as the strongest woman in the world. And we could go on with her accolades, but there's one story from when she first started training. that always kind of takes my breath away. She said that she first knew that strength training had changed her when she went to the grocery store. And as she put it, I picked up a watermelon and the watermelon wasn't heavy. There is a way that strength lightens the burdens of everyday life.

that strength makes it easier for us to act on the world in the ways that we want to, that really is at the very heart of all the conversations we ever have about weight training and strength. This definition of strength, strength being our ability to act upon the world, It's probably the oldest definition of strength that I found in all my years of research on this book. That really is how ancient Greeks understood human identity. You were not drew. You were the strength that is drew. That's how they referred to people.

Modern psychologists have come up with language concepts. to help explain this phenomenon. Self-efficacy is the one that I always think about when I think about Jan Todd. Now, efficacy is the ability to do the things that you want in life, basically. And it's partly subjective. Our ability to do what we want depends on our confidence in ourselves. But it's also, efficacy is also objective. You know, the proof of our ability to do something is in the doing of it.

We didn't really start to study self-efficacy and weight training until the 1980s. And in the first study of self-efficacy and heavy weight training among adolescent girls, which was published in 1988. they found that this form of exercise has for young women a lot of the same effects that it had on Jan Todd. It increased their confidence, their sense of their ability to do difficult things. It increased their sense of contentment with their own bodies, too. and this efficacy is really what everybody of every age needs in order to navigate life, to have the life they want. And not just to have the life they want in a me first, you know, looking out for number one way,

but this is what this kind of self-assertion is what makes so, connection possible. The self-assertion of strength is also a form of social connection. That's beautiful. You know, you're talking about Jan Todd and how much of a pioneer she was in her life. It makes me think of a past podcast guest. Her name is Ginny McGonical. I don't know if you ever come across her. Kelly McGon. No, Ginny. Virginia is her full name. Virginia. Virginia. Virginia. Virginia I'll just share a little bit and for our audience it doesn't know about her at the age of I believe it was her early 60s. Ginny who was a lifelong dancer, ballerina, always kept like her weight down by being super mindful of what she ate, ate a lot of salads and other things.

She thought of herself as a very healthy person. She went to the doctor for her regular checkup and as part of that process, they came And they say, you know, we, we need to look into a few more things because I'm worried about your fragility as you're getting older. So she did some more tests and the test results came back and they showed that she had osteopena. And for those that are not familiar, that's like the first step to, you know, full-blown osteoporosis and this withering away of the bones that happen over time that are related to the fragility.

And she was feeling very dismayed by that. and as anybody would be and feeling like I've been active. I would always dance. I walk. I always watch my weight. Like how did this happen to me? And she was chatting with her daughter at the time. This was probably about like, I think, five, six years ago from today.

And her daughter was super in a strength training and would actually compete at like participate in like the CrossFit games and other stuff that were out there. And she said, mom, you know, you know, we can do something about this. If we get really serious and we put a plan together

and we just start getting you, you know, exercising more, changing your diet a little bit so you're not so much focusing on a low calorie diet but having some more protein, we can do something amazing about this. And so Ginny went on this journey

and long story short, she ended up not just, you know, reversing her osteopina and her doctor was completely like dumbfounded like how did she do this can you give advice to some of the other patients that are in this journey she actually got super into the whole um american american ninja warrior do you know these competitions yeah and she became the um the uh oldest competing uh america american ninja warrior going to different competitions and other things like that that are out there. And there's these incredible social media videos of her. We'll link to it in the show notes of her, you know, practicing wall climbs and building up her grip strength now and

other things. And, you know, for anybody that didn't hear the interview, it's a powerful one, because what Ginny says was the greatest transformation during this time was the idea that that power was always inside of her. She just needed to put herself in the right. context to unlock it and it radically changed her life. And yes, reversing osteopena super important and that was huge. But everything else it opened up for her, the community, the friends she made, the energy that she had. She went from thinking that things were going downhill in our life and she would just have to get used to it and manage it to now like, wow, things are going upwards and I'm getting another opportunity at a new chapter in life. So that's the story

that I thought of as you were talking about self-identity and Jan Todd and how her work is inspiring people that are out there. And that's exactly the question that Jan Todd's story raises to what kind of possibility, unrealized possibility lies within each of us. Now, everybody's not going to end up becoming the Guinness World Strongest Woman, and everybody's not going to end up on American Ninja Warrior. But everybody has a much greater potential than almost everybody has much greater potential than we've begun to realize. And we just have to get some help to begin to find that. Yeah, even in a micro way. I did an episode, a few episodes back with my two sisters who helped me with the podcast and that I'm in business with. And we talked

about a few things that we're doing. I think it was seven different things that we're doing to help our parents age in a healthy way at the age of 70 and 75. My mom's 70 and my dad's 75. And for my mom, my older sister has been a huge proponent of my mom, slowly and steadily stepping into strain training, getting her a trainer, having them work out together in their home gym. And I've seen the confidence difference in my mom in a huge way. My mom, this really came from around the age of 68, 67, 68. My mom was walking down some steps at the mall.

and she was going down the steps, which a lot of people don't realize that most people actually hurt themselves, especially as we get older, and you're dealing with loss of strength and muscle and, you know, potentially a fall. Most people get injured going down steps, that decentric movement

and not having the muscle strength, the joint strength to sort of maintain that stability. And one little step, and you can end up, And my mom felt that her knee kind of buckled a little bit, and she got really scared. And it was a moment in time in her life where she almost, not almost, she was at a fork in the road. And on one side of it, she wanted to retreat from the world, not walk as much, not go down steps, and just avoid these situations because I'm fragile. I need to worry about this,

because if this happens again, it could be a really bad thing. And the other fork in the road was what ended up happening, which was, hey, maybe I can do something about this. And I don't have to have it figured out overnight. And shout out to my older sister Herschel, who really supported on this journey and her husband, Neil. If I start strength training, if I start working with a trainer,

if I start lifting the weights that I can handle and slowly progressing up, maybe that actually makes a significant difference where I'm not just worried about this anymore. And that's what happened to my mom firsthand. And she's not worried about, you know, going down steps anymore in that same way. And she feels a lot more enthusiasm around just her power and her ability. And like a lot of things, you know, it can be a slow and steady process, but that momentum

is building every single month. And I think that's an important thing to share for anybody who's listening is that momentum is the most important thing. We're not going to fix this overnight, especially if we don't have a background and having done a lot of the strain training previously. Any thoughts on that, Michael? We do sometimes patronize our parents

and our grandparents with low expectations. A lot of people would have said to your mother, well, just start out by walking. and for somebody who is having trouble with her knees, trouble with balance, telling them to just start out by walking can be one of the most dangerous things you can tell them. Heavy weight training doesn't have to be what you and I think of as objectively heavy to be heavy. Strength is relative. Yes. Especially when older people decide they want to get stronger.

the very most important thing to do, first thing, is to find somebody who has a lot of experience working with older people who can scale the challenge appropriately. In Maria Fiaturoni-Sing's studies, she starts with people at about 50% of a one-repetition maximum. One repetition maximum, meaning the highest amount that you can lift, one time with perfect form, not with grunting effort, not making any sort of exertion that you feel might hurt yourself, but tough, but doable. So she starts out the first week at 50%. The next week is 60, the next week is 70, and the next week is 80. So within about a month, she's got people working at the same level of intensity, 80% of 1RM, that is widely used by athletes at all levels for strength

training. And by doing this with a group of frail, malnourished 90-year-olds starting in 1989, she was the first person to prove that even the oldest frailest people will respond with the same proportional strength response and the same proportional muscle mass growth as younger people if you give them a proportionally great challenge. So for some of those people, that meant a knee extension that was just five pounds. or less. You know, that's 80% of their one RM. But the important thing is to get them to the challenge respectfully, but directly. Because especially if they're in their 70s, that is the time when the ability to function begins to just go off a cliff. we can we can pretty well get by until that age kind of believing that just walking around

just general physical activity is going to keep us as we are but when people hit their 70s their bodies tell them a different story it's never too late and yet at the same time like we don't want to put it off if we have the education and the inspiration because the effort and energy that we put in today, like my mom, turning 70 years old and having spent on it, it will pay dividends into our life moving forward and the quality of life moving forward. That's right. That's right.

And that is every bit as true at the early end of life as it is at the end of life. You know, if we were really serious about tackling osteoporosis and associated problems, like hip fracture for older people, we would be teaching all young girls to lift weights and do plyometric strength training because it's the pre-puberal years that are the window in which bone density is most effectively built. And there's research showing that just a 10% increase in bone density for young women and girls could end up creating a 50% reduction in osteoporosis later in life. That's huge. That's huge.

All right, Michael, returning back into the book, we've shared with our audience of these three central figures that you were following along with, studying with. And even some cases traveling with, let's talk about the third. Tell us about Charles, who he is, what he's up to, and how you guys ended up in Greece together. Charles Stocking is a, he's probably the only classical scholar, the scholar of ancient Greek literature, who is also a professor of kinesiology, the study of human. bodily movement. When he was in his early 20s, he set a California junior state record in powerlifting. And then he worked his way through Classics Graduate School, moonlighting as a strength and conditioning coach for UCLA Bruins teams, football, men's football, women's soccer,

and for Olympic athletes. He also, he now teaches at the University of Texas at Austin alongside Jan Todd, And in the summers, he organizes a symposium on the ancient and modern language of athletics that takes place at a facility run by the International Olympic Committee. It's called the International Olympic Academy. And it is just down the road from the archaeological site of ancient Olympia. So I went with him there and I went with him to Athens and learned a lot about the ancient Greek culture and language and depiction of muscle and strength. And when I think about the most amazing thing I learned, the thing that seems most forgotten now and could be most helpful to us, I really think about the ancient Greek definitions of strength. Ancient Greek language, Homer's language, had eight words for different kinds of strength.

Six of these were dependent on gifts from the gods, and two of these were inherently human qualities. So to an ancient Greek, strength was both given and made, both at the same time. It was a paradox. Homer is as likely to talk about an ancient warrior receiving strength as having strength. And this is depicted in a lot of ancient Greek art. At Olympia, there is a panel that used to be on the temple to Zeus that shows Hercules doing the last of his labors, holding up the weight of the world that he's taken from Atlas. And standing right behind him is Athena, the goddess, who's lending a hand, holding up, helping to hold up the world.

So he's doing it, but he's doing it with help. And Charles Stocking points out that this is a different kind of human being than modern people are used to understanding. Charles Stocking points out that to an ancient Greek, identity, strength was an phenomenon of interactive interdependence. So what we do is never done by us alone. We are inherently are made up not only of our own efforts, but all. also of the gifts and lessons of others. How do you think about that in the context today of, let's say, one of the profiles of my listeners is a woman who has prioritized,

you know, raising a family and is finally in this period of her life where, you know, the kids are a little older, things are a little bit more stable, finally getting a little bit more agency and realizing like, wow, I've sacrificed so much, but now is a time for me to double down on my health and a huge part of health that I'm understanding from people like yourself is that I need to pay attention to strength training and building my muscle mass, especially if I want to age in the right way. What lessons can they extrapolate about their life, their identity, where they are right now, and building up the courage to continue to prioritize himself from some of those themes you just talked about.

The ancient Greek view of strength as a phenomenon of interactive interdependence was something that I recognized when I went to Australia, and I was in Maria Fiataroni Singh's lab, and I met a woman named Romani, who was a Sri Lankan, housewife, who around the age of 50, found that due to osteoarthritis of the knee, her legs were worn out. It took her half an hour in the morning just to get out of bed. And she didn't know what to do. Doctors wanted to give her painkillers. They wanted to put her under the knife and give her a knee replacement. and she held back.

She believed that there was something she could do to help herself. And by a stroke of luck, she ended up enrolling in one of the studies of weight training as treatment for knee arthritis at the University of Sydney. And over the course of five years, she learned a new way of eating and a new way of exercise. with weight training at the center of it. For the joints that could handle it, she did heavier weight training because of its effects on systemic inflammation, its antidepressant effects, its effects on bone density, and for lower body, she did lower intensity strength training because her knees couldn't handle it.

But she made progress, again, going back to this principle of progression. She made progress slowly in consultation with these people who were helping her, which I couldn't help but think of as somehow analogous to the help from the gifts of the gods, you know, in Homer, right? It's kind of like Athena standing there, standing there helping when you've got a trainer saying, push, push, push, push, push. push. I think there is a phenomenon that some people in medicine are starting to call co-care, where we as patients participate in the structure of our treatment. We give feedback, and over time, we're able to get the kind of personalized prescriptions we really need. But it takes a tremendous amount of diligence. It takes a tremendous amount of self-confidence, actually, to ask for what you actually need and to negotiate boundaries with your caregivers.

Most doctors and most physiotherapists simply don't have time for it. So we either have to insist with the people that we're working with or we've got to move on to somebody who's going to listen. a little better. But there are answers to most of our problems, maybe not complete solutions to our problems, but answers that will help us address them if we just keep searching and keep interacting with caregivers based on the best possible information. This woman that you were just mentioning, what was her name? Romney. Romney, was this at the center of strong medicine in Australia that you met around?

This was actually at Maria Fiataroni Singh's research lab in the University of Sydney, but I'm glad you mentioned the center for strong medicine. So the reason I wanted to talk about that is because there was a moment that you had while you were there, and I want you to explain what this center is, what do they do, how it can inspire us for what the future looks like. But you had this moment when you were there where you thought, this. is what the future of medicine should look like. So talk about why did you have that epiphany at this specific center in Australia? Maria Fiataroni Singh and her late husband, Nalind Singh,

who I had the honor of spending time with not too long before he died there in the clinic. They opened a clinic to implement the research findings of Maria's work. Nalin participated in that work too and in some cases guided it as in the case of their research on depression. But the Center for Strong Medicine is a mainly geriatric clinic that in its first 20 years of existence treated about 5,000 patients. The mean age of those patients was 73. The average number of chronic diseases the patients had was four, and most of them were on at least five medications. Every patient who came to this clinic got a full evaluation as part of their intake, which included a strength evaluation and evaluation of muscle mass. And then, as part of the treatment plan for whatever chronic diseases they had, in addition to medications, they were prescribed a weight training program.

That training program was implemented in a 2,000 square foot gym that was the center of the doctor's office. Around that gym, which has 33 resistance training machines, there was a nutritionist's office, exercise. physiologist's office and doctor's evaluation rooms. The place was full of older people walking in just in their street clothes. Nobody had to have any kind of fancy shoes, you know, fancy tank tops. They were doing their exercise and every month it would be adjusted with new strength tests to make sure that they kept progressing. So it was an exercise prescription, using exercise as medicine, to prevent or treat chronic diseases. Those prescriptions were personalized. They weren't static. They were following this principle of progression. And there was

a sense of accessibility, of safety, of support for the process of getting stronger that normalized it. I didn't meet a single person there who said they had ever lifted weights before. In fact, they all told me while they were lifting weights, I'm not a gym person. Everybody is a gym person. And they were proving it. You know, that's that story, if I could throw in a little anecdote, I last year I was in a just outside of St. Louis in Missouri and I got introduced to a a neurologist who helps people at this intersection of the latest evidence space combined with traditional you know neurology approaches for you know Parkinson's disease people who bad, like, really bad, like multiple sclerosis, cognitive decline, Alzheimer's, and the gentleman's

name and the clinic is called Charlene Neurology. And one of the coolest things that I saw inside of their clinic was that of the square footage of the clinic, almost, almost like a half of the clinic is a gym that they set up. And every patient that they take on, you're basically, committing that you are also signing up for a team-based approach for your neurological issue that you're, you know, you're working on. For some people, it's early cognitive decline. For some people, it's full-blown Parkinson's that they've had for years and they're trying to just, you know, get a better handle on it. And they teach every patient the foundational movements personalized for them that are there. But on top of that, when they do their follow-up appointments,

as part of that follow-up appointment, you were also regularly meeting with that strength coach to see how is this working out for you? What are you having challenges with? Are you tracking your workout so that we can see that you're making that progression so we actually can see, are you heading in the right direction?

And this is a neurologist who's letting all those patients know that a huge part of minimizing these symptoms that you might be going through or in some cases reducing your risk that's there, is making sure that your body, your nervous system, your muscles are strong. And if we don't do that, we're missing out on a huge chunk of what could be helping you for the better. So just the same way that you mentioned being at this center and seeing individuals who were for the first time lifting weights,

it was really inspiring to see people who had full-blown Parkinson's disease that were with the support of a trainer, you know, doing things like squats and back squats, and in some cases, not for everybody, and deadlifts and them talking about how great they've been doing over time when I met a couple of them inside the waiting room when I popped in for, you know, to see Dr. Charlottin and chat with him. Man, when you're painting that picture about the Center for Strong Medicine, I could just see how if we can use some of these digital tools that are out there, get policy in order, just imagine what it would look like if we can scale this to more individuals that are out there.

The feats that you describe seeing, I was moved by seeing that kind of thing too. I think I was even more moved by seeing the doctor who was meeting each patient as a complex individual, who was looking at the whole, configuration of strengths and weaknesses that they had, of diseases that they had, and maybe even the diseases that they were most susceptible to, and then prescribing exercise in a way that would get ahead of those risks, you know, performing an actual cost-benefit analysis, an actual,

like if actually evaluating the risk reward ratio. For the folks who are listening to this conversation right now, they are going to be into the subject. And they're getting into the subject, especially after hearing all the incredible stats and anecdotes that you have to share. And regularly, I hear from my audience, and they say that, you know,

somebody in my life doesn't, care about this conversation about muscles. True. Is there any data point or something that you'd want to share with them that they could then translate to the person in their life in like 60 seconds that would help them at least step in the right direction of wanting to care about this a little bit more? Strength builds more than strength. Strength training builds more than strength.

Strength training is the only form of exercise that increases all the capacities that we need as we get older. Strength, aerobic fitness, and balance. Walking doesn't do that. Strength gives you, strength training gives you what walking gives you, but walking doesn't give you what strength training gives you. Strength training has actually been shown to increase aerobic fitness. fitness to the same extent as a moderate intensity walking program for older people. So strength training has to be the foundation, the cornerstone of our exercise as we get older, especially if when we look at our own medical history and our family's medical history, we see any of those

diseases that you mentioned at the beginning, depression, cancer, type 2 diabetes, Alzheimer's, strength training builds much more than strength. You know, I'm a huge fan of walking, especially for things like lipid clearance, the sort of bilateral movements that have been associated with things that led to the discovery of things like EMDR and the improvement of mood that ends up happening, getting sunshine. other things like that. Yeah. And also too,

when people only walk and they feel like I'm doing enough and getting that 10,000 steps, they're missing the boat on exactly what you said, that there's this huge other unlock that's there.

So nothing wrong with walking, but if you're substituting it for strain training, it's not going to be that unlock that you hope that it's going to be in your life. It's a really good corrective. And I misspoke a moment ago

when I said strength training gives you everything walking gives you. That was just rhetorical sloppiness. No, but largely I think it does. I think you get a lot of those benefits that are there. And so many people have seen, I saw this firsthand. I wasn't doing serious aerobic training,

but because I started strength training three to four days a week with working with my trainer and we would throw in a couple like hit workouts and other things like that inside of that to like a little portion of my string training you know once a week like half of the workout we do some type of hit type of things um i saw a little bump in my VO2 max that ended up happening just from being regular about that um about that training that's absolutely true and i wasn't walking back from that i was simply acknowledging that you were adding that walking does give you some things that strength training doesn't. But on that basic fact of aerobic fitness, strength training gives you that just as well as walking. Let's talk

about, as we're winding down here for the interview, there's definitely one research study that you've highlighted that we have to talk about. So this was a study on 90-year-olds at Hebrew rehab. And there were some mind-blowing statistics that came along with the study of these individuals. Could you talk about some of those and what this group was and why they were studying, you know, 90-year-olds as part of this, you know, were looking into string training. And yeah, talk a little bit about it if you could. In the late 1980s, it was commonly believed. in science and medicine that people over the age of about 50 shouldn't lift any weight that felt

heavy to lift, mainly for cardiac concerns. But they also just believed that there was no way of adding muscle for people that age, people my age. And it wasn't until 1988 that the first study of high intensity strength training for older, healthy men, was published. in their 60s and 70s. Maria Fiataroni Singh was working in the same lab where they made this world-changing finding that older men could actually get stronger and build bigger muscles.

And she said, so what? She said, what, like, why don't we give this to the people who need it the most, the oldest frailest people? And she had a double-barreled appointment at both Tufts and Huffts and Hors. Harvard Medical School at the time she was getting ready to do some kind of exercise study, but she didn't know what at a Boston area nursing home.

The full name was Hebrew Rehabilitation Center for Aged. And the nickname used by the residents and staff was Hebrew rehab. Now, all these people had grown up. in the Depression. A lot of them were of the age where they immigrated crossing the Atlantic in the steerage compartment. Some of them were Holocaust survivors. These were people who didn't think of themselves as gym people. These were people who mostly had never made time for exercise. And a lot of them were unable to walk on their own steam by the time they were in their 90s. Maria Fiataroni Singh screened them and found a group of nine who were game to try this

crazy idea that older people might be able to lift weights that were heavy for them to lift. They rigged up their own knee extension machine with pulleys in the physical therapy room. They hooked everybody up with EKGs and carefully monitored their heart as they did their one pound knee extension and then the two pound knee extension working up to their one repetition max. And these people showed up for three. sessions a week doing three sets of, I can't remember, eight to ten repetitions, they gained strength an average of about 160%. Wow. Maximum about 367%. And I think the minimum was about 60%. But they also improved walking speed, chair stand.

A subsequent study showed improvements to spontaneous activity within the nursing home as tracked by objective, you know, ankle bracelet activity monitors. They started with just those 10, but then they grew and they employed, they enrolled 100 people in the next study and they added another movement. now it was not just knee extension, it was also hip extension. And now they didn't just do the exercise. They also took just a basic nutritional supplement. It wasn't even a protein supplement.

It was just like insure to make sure that they were getting their micronutrients. And the people who just exercised in that study, they gained strength by an average of about 100%. The people who drank their insure gained strength by an average of about 150%. Wow. This autonomy that they had, this ability to walk around the place where they lived and do what they wanted to do was dramatically increased. I think that was 35%. Now, some of them started to get amorous and, you know, there was, there was, one man who began to have girlfriends in the nursing home that he'd never had before.

So all kinds of acting in the world become possible when people get stronger. But these studies revealed a whole new sense of possibility for older age. It's not just static and declining, but we are also capable of growth. development and improvement all the way to the end. There's one last story from these studies that I want to tell you about a woman named Helene. Helene Freundlich was an articulate wheelchair-bound Holocaust survivor. She was eager to participate in this study even though she couldn't even stand up, right? She wanted to be part of a lower body strength training program, but she couldn't get out of her

wheelchair. So they started with Helene where she was. Her upper body was actually so weak that she could barely even raise her arms. So her arms were the weight that she lifted. And that's what this picture shows. And if you look real careful in the back of the picture, you can see another woman raising her hands way in the background, that's Maria Fiataroni Singh. And I like to think about a connection between the picture of Hercules and Athena and the picture of Dr. Singh and Helene. Because strength as a gift and strength as a collaboration is being illustrated in both of these places.

Now, Helene, she got strong. When people couldn't move, Maria's, Dr. Singh's way of easing them into strength training began with isometrics. So she couldn't, Helene couldn't stand up, but she could flex what little quad she had. And when she did that for a while, she got stronger. And eventually she got strong enough that they could move her into the machines. and she could work at a very, very low weight. She kept on lifting for, I think it was about 10 years from start to finish.

She celebrated her 100th birthday with a birthday cake at the gym. I love that. She kept going until she died. She was eventually able to get out of her wheelchair to walk with a walker around the nursing home and do things for herself again. And she thought that was lost. She thought that was passed. But it really never is too late for any of us.

All we need is a little creativity and help. Absolutely. Absolutely. A little creativity and a little help. Michael, you went through this journey again for eight years writing this book. As you came across so much of this creative, inspiration and you were on your own journey of getting out of your head and into your body and prioritizing, you know, muscle and strength. What have been a couple of things for you in writing

this book that have for your own personal life made the biggest difference or significantly move the needle forward as you think about your own health and longevity? One of the first things I learned about ancient Greek athletics that kind of blew the top of my head off was the little fact that the Olympics started with a single event. It was called the Stadion. It was the equivalent of the 200 meter race now. And they ran it between one altar and another. And the reason they were running it was to take the torch from the priest who stood at the altar to Zeus and lower that torch to the sacrifice of meat that was. was laid out and burn this sacrifice as an offering to the gods on behalf of their community.

The Olympiads were named after the winner of the stadium. So for hundreds of years in ancient Greece, history was marked out by the fastest person's footsteps. The community's understanding of time was based on the individual's athletic achievement. I think that the ultimate reward of training really is a whole new experience of time. Learning that fact about ancient Greek history and ancient Greek athletics was the first step for me toward thinking about my training as being oriented to multiple planes of time and purposes simultaneously. Charles Stocking is a great example of this. Charles Stocking squats more now at 45 than he did when he set his California's junior state

powerlifting record when he was 23. He lifts partly so that he can stay as strong as he used to be and partly so that today, he'll look good in jeans to please his wife. And he lifts partly because he wants to be strong and capable at 90 years old. And his whole program right now is based on minimizing the risk of injuries that come with age, like hip replacement or of health problems of older age, like hip replacement, knee replacement, rotator cuff injury. So he is really training, living in the past, the present, and the future simultaneously. If that sounds familiar, it's because I totally ripped it off.

I ripped it off Charles Dickens, just took those words right out of the mouth of Ebenezer Scrooge, right? in a Christmas carol. What is he promised? What does Ebenezer Scrooge say at the very end? I will live in the past, the present, and the future. He's being awakened to the possibilities of his own life and understanding that to activate and explore those possibilities, he has to be mindful of who he was, who he is, and who he's going to be. And that may say, sound heavy at first. But it's actually not.

It's actually the lightest way to think about training because it gives you a way of conceiving of and committing to what you're doing where there's always an alternative. If you don't feel, if you don't really feel like it today and a lot of the time you're not going to, think about the future. You know, if like if you feel like it's too puritanical and virtuous to be thinking about the future all the time, think about today. Or think about the past and holding on to what you've been. But I think this gift of training, of living in the past, the present, and the future, I think that's the greatest gift, the whole. whole process of writing this book has given me. And we've been so lucky on the receiving end to

benefit from that gift and hear about all these incredible stories of inspiration because I've seen in my own life that nothing is more powerful than reminding myself why I'm doing what I'm doing. And especially when it comes to strange, what is my why? What is the reason that I'm putting in this work? What is the reason that I want to prioritize? And what is the reason that I want to keep on showing up, even when sometimes I don't feel like it, or I haven't slept as well, or things are crazy, or there's a lot of work that's there? What is the reason? Why do I want to do these things? And I think that hearing about this untold story of muscle, hearing about this inspiration of people from all different ages and that it's never too late to get started.

Hearing about what's at stake if we don't prioritize these aspects and what diseases, we're much more likely to have a higher risk of getting. These all are important for me and I think many of my listeners to help us remember why this area of our life deserves the attention that it does. And people often ask me in, you know, what is my why when it comes to that? It's like, to me, health, when I have it, of which muscle and strength training has been a huge focus of mine since I've turned 40, as I've shared with my audience, when I have it, I have the energy to give attention to everything else in my life that I love. And it's not that I don't love the strength training. I love it now, whereas previously I saw it as a little bit of a chore, but I actually like look forward to it.

I love it. But having that allows me to bring the vibrance into every aspect of my life. And so, Mike, I want to say thank you so much for coming on the podcast, talking about your book, talking about these incredible people that you've profiled inside of it, telling this untold story of muscle in our lives. So it's been a fantastic opportunity to get a chance to connect with it. with you and also for our audience to feel that reinvigorated for why they want to prioritize muscle in their own life. Any final words that you want to leave our audience with, Michael? Too. Thank you. I love it. I love it. Michael, the book is out there. We'll link to it in the show notes. People can grab it. Stronger. The untold story of muscle in our lives. Fantastic quote

an endorsement from Arnold Schwarzenegger and a bunch of other people that have endorsed the books. So you can get anywhere books are sold. We have a link on to Amazon. Please pick up a copy audience. And I hope you enjoy this powerful interview with Michael Gross.

Hi, everyone, Drew here. Two quick things. Number one, thank you so much for listening to this podcast. If you haven't already, subscribe, just hit the subscribe button on your favorite podcast app. And by the way, if you love this episode, it would mean the world to me. And it's the number one thing that you can do

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