Feel Better, Live More with Dr Rangan Chatterjee - BITESIZE | The Critical Importance of Strength Training | Dr Gabrielle Lyon #397

Episode Date: October 26, 2023

My guest today believes that if we start to focus and prioritise our largest organ – our muscle – we can burn more fat, improve our body composition, decrease our risk of disease, and increase our energy levels. Feel Better Live More Bitesize is my weekly podcast for your mind, body, and heart. Each week I’ll be featuring inspirational stories and practical tips from some of my former guests.   Today's clip is from episode 296 of the podcast with Dr Gabrielle Lyon – an osteopathic doctor who is board certified in family medicine. Gabrielle believes that the single biggest problem with our health these days is not that we carry too much fat but that we don’t carry enough muscle. In this clip, she explains why strength training is critical for our health and how it can help us live longer, stronger, and better lives.  Support the podcast and enjoy Ad-Free episodes. Try FREE for 7 days on Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/feelbetterlivemore. For other podcast platforms go to https://fblm.supercast.com. Show notes and the full podcast are available at drchatterjee.com/296 Follow me on instagram.com/drchatterjee Follow me on facebook.com/DrChatterjee Follow me on twitter.com/drchatterjeeuk   DISCLAIMER: The content in the podcast and on this webpage is not intended to constitute or be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your doctor or other qualified health care provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have heard on the podcast or on my website. 

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10. And these packs are perfect for keeping in your backpack, office, or car. If you want to take advantage of this limited time offer, all you have to do is go to drinkag1.com forward slash live more. Welcome to Feel Better Live More Bite Size, your weekly dose of positivity and optimism to get you ready for the weekend. Today's clip is from episode 296 of the podcast with Dr. Gabrielle Lyon. Gabrielle believes that the single biggest problem with our health is not that we carry too much fat, but that we don't carry enough muscle. In this clip, she explains why strength training is crucial for our health and how it can help us live longer, stronger and better lives.

how it can help us live longer, stronger, and better lives. Muscle is the organ of longevity and really has the opportunity, when leveraged correctly, to change the trajectory of our life. There's very few things in medicine that we can say 100% of the time improve outcome and survivability. The healthier your muscle mass is, the greater your survivability across nearly all disease states, cancer, cardiovascular disease, dementia. These are really big challenges for people. Every single one of those challenges can be improved upon by being fit. Have we as a society overly focused on losing weight and under-focused on gaining muscle? Absolutely. In fact, I believe that that's one of our biggest flaws and one of

the reasons why we have such a health epidemic across the world. You know, everybody is focused on obesity. And that makes sense because you can see it. It can really affect people's lives. Yet we haven't been successful at dealing with it. And I believe that we've been asking the wrong question and trying to solve for the wrong problem. The reality is, is we are not over fat and people could argue and say, okay,

yeah, we are. But actually, we are under-muscled. And when we think about insulin resistance, obesity, all these metabolic diseases, even Alzheimer's, right, or dementia, type 3 diabetes of the brain, these diseases, they start in skeletal muscle first. Insulin resistance, start in skeletal muscle first. Insulin resistance, glucose disposal, issues with metabolism, the primary site is skeletal muscle. Yet we've been obsessed as a culture, as a society, just obsessed with obesity. It has been the biggest oversight in medicine to date. Physical movement is optional now. The human machine was designed for physical activity. Not just physical activity. I'm not just talking about walking. I'm talking about bouts of high-intensity movement, lifting heavy things, really being physically active.

And what's happened is because our society is so domesticated, it is no longer a prerequisite to living healthy. And if you think about muscle as the pinnacle, right, the pinnacle of health and wellness, it makes up, depending on the person, 40% or more of the individual. But what's so fascinating is it's now become optional to use it or not. Yeah. Better skeletal muscle will help you with longevity, Alzheimer's, type 2 diabetes, immune system function. It's amazing how one thing can impact so many different systems of the body.

And I think this again really speaks to this point, Gabrielle, that I think we've thought muscle is just dumb muscle. It's just like a physical thing that we can see. We don't realize actually, you know, this is an active organ. It's an endocrine organ. Yes, it's an endocrine organ. It is not just about being jacked and tanned. Yeah, and we also, I think,

in society, we think about it, the teenagers and people in their 20s, they want to look buff, they want to look good, right? So they're the ones lifting weights. But I've come to the understanding over my career that actually it's more important the older you get.

You know, as individuals age and they don't take care of skeletal muscle, you get, we've all seen a marbled steak. Well, what do you think happens to our tissue? We could be walking around with skeletal muscle that look like a marbled steak. And that decreases its ability metabolically for glucose disposal. It decreases its contractile potential. It decreases its ability or efficiency to turn over and repair. There are all kinds of problems. And again, that can start in your 30s. That can start in your 40s. It depends on your physical activity. And when it begins, it is much more difficult to recover from periods of inactivity than ever before.

We have to really take a big step back and look at the big picture of what the fundamentals are. And that is increased muscle mass, improved balance, have good bone density, and survive and thrive and be functionally independent as one ages. Yeah, I really want this to be an empowering episode. My goal is at the end of this conversation, people understand, man, I need to be looking after my skeletal muscle.

Let's say there's someone at the moment, I don't know, in their 30s or 40s who are listening to this and are thinking, well, I don't know, I've not really thought about muscle before, but I'm in pretty good shape. I walk regularly. I look after my diet. I sleep well. And they think, I don't really have any problems with energy or anything like that. Why should they be concerned about what you just said? Yeah. Well, unfortunately, if a stimulus,

an intensive stimulus is not provided, there is a natural trajectory of aging, which we see. As individuals age, we've all seen it in our parents. They get skinnier, they get tinier. We believe that that is the end point, right? I think oftentimes we believe, well, I'm just getting older. I don't need to do things that really stress out my muscle, or I don't necessarily need to change my nutrition targeted to skeletal muscle aging. And I would say that is the prime time to execute and implement the strategies that I'm about to tell you.

Number one, just because you can't see the changes doesn't mean they're not happening. Individuals should definitely be involved in some kind of high-intensity interval training one day a week. You must create flux in that tissue. You must utilize substrates. You want to create a stimulus that changes the metabolism of the muscle in the moment, right? And that could be easily three bouts of 20 seconds all-out effort. Not much, right? It could take you 10 minutes. all-out effort, not much, right? It could take you 10 minutes.

Three bouts of 20 seconds, high-intensity training, rest, right? You do a bout, you rest for three minutes, you do another bout, you can rest for three minutes. Incredibly valuable. Walking is wonderful. Walking is just movement. I don't consider it training. The other thing that we have to understand is strength decreases as we age.

An individual should definitely be doing strength training three to four days a week just to begin to build a foundation. Hopefully, we started earlier. But if you didn't, the body is incredibly resilient and it wants to have muscle. It's not like it doesn't want to. It is part of our makeup. It is mandatory for us. Can we just dive into those a little bit, just to get some clarification? So, the first thing you mentioned is once a week, do some form of high-intensity interval training. Now, I want to clarify this because a lot of people, when they think of skeletal muscle, they're thinking about lifting weights, whether it be in the gym or at home, to work on their strength.

Yet when you're doing HIIT training, let's say people do these 20-second sprints all out, they rest for two, three minutes, and they repeat three times, which can be done in under 10 minutes, which is very, very practical for people. What is that doing to their skeletal muscle? Yeah, well, one of the things that it does

is it's very well documented in the literature that it is really the primary driver as it relates to exercise that improves insulin resistance. So it's one modality to improve insulin resistance. And mechanistically, how it works, I'll just mention that it improves, it's called GLUT4, GLUT4 transport of glucose into skeletal muscle. And that is incredibly valuable in terms of really putting in the effort. We know that you can lower insulin resistance through, irrespective of actually diet, through just leveraging skeletal muscle. That's incredible. Yeah, that is incredible. And so obviously different people

of different fitness levels will listen to this show, right? So someone is going to go, like for me, I'm like, okay, Brill, I'm doing that once a week. I'm going to do that sprinting. I love things like that. But for someone, let's say,

a bit more immobile or a bit older who thinks I can't go all out. Is it a relative perception? So can they do speed walking or run as fast as they can? Are you looking basically for a contrast between high speed movement and then low speed? I mean, what is it we're looking at here? Absolutely. That's exactly right. And for some people, it might be sitting from a chair to standing. Yeah. It is about the personal induced adaptation. Yeah, love that. It is very personal. And as a person gets more fit,

they can do more. It doesn't have to be rowing as fast as you can or sprinting. But it really is exactly what you said. It's putting in effort, pulling back, putting in really intensive effort. Obviously, they need to talk with their physician. We're not telling anyone to go out and do this without the guidance of someone else or a professional that they use. But yes, it is really about exercise. The goal of exercise is inducing adaptation.

In terms of the practical tips, there was the HIIT training once a week, which I think we can all do depending on our own mobility and our level. You've explained how that works, why that's important as a stimulus to our skeletal muscle. Yes. Then your second recommendation was strength training or resistance training three to four times a week. Right. So

resistance training, maybe you could explain what you mean by that. And then what does that actually do for our skeletal muscle? I guess I maybe compare it to what HIIT training does to our skeletal muscle. You know, why is this also so beneficial? Yeah. Well, we need to think about skeletal muscle as, again, this organ. And this organ is very unusual in that we directly have the ability to impact it. It's very plastic. And doing resistance training creates a few things. So it creates metabolic stress. It creates mechanical stress.

It creates a turnover, a ribosomal biogenesis, a creation of new proteins. That is very adaptive in the body. And what it does is it allows the rest of the body to function in a way where we can burn more calories through exercise. So there's the physiological changes that happen with resistance exercise. And really, the goal with resistance exercise, in my mind, is hypertrophy. What does that mean? Muscle growth. Doesn't get longer, it can get bigger, right? Hypertrophy. If you are untrained, bigger, right? Hypertrophy. If you are untrained, it can be very easy.

When I think about muscle, I think about those as it relates to resistance training, the metabolic stress, the mechanical stress, and the ribosomal biogenesis, the growth of new proteins. And that becomes important because, again, we're building up body armor. Body armor muscle is an amino acid reservoir. The healthier that is, the capacity to dispose of glucose, the capacity to increase total caloric expenditure becomes essential. And you leverage skeletal muscle to do that. I recommend typically multi-joint movements, compound movements, whether it's a squat, a deadlift, a bench press, kettlebell carries, those kinds of things. Full body movements, I think are very, very valuable rather than isolated activities like a bicep curl or tricep. I do think that that is valuable and I do that myself. And yes, we also have to talk about mobility and functionality and activities of daily life. And yes, we also have to talk about mobility and functionality and activities

of daily life. And the wider the waistline, the lower the brain volume can be. So I would hate for someone to say, oh, well, it's resistance exercise. It's just for hypertrophy. Yes, but not for the hypertrophy as it relates to bikini. Yeah, that's important, but really the medicine that muscle provides us. Yeah, that's beautiful. The medicine that muscle provides us. That's what we need to start thinking about when we think about muscle.

It's medicine for the body. And as you say, and as a lot of the research points to, after the age of 30, unless we do something, it starts to decline. Yeah, and it can be rapid. It depends on the person. Presumably, anything is better than nothing. Absolutely. Yeah. So I think that's a key message because we're so far from optimal that for some people

may go, what, four times a week, 40 minutes in a gym, no chance. And I don't want anyone to finish this conversation and not then go, I'm going to start moving my muscles more. And listen, we've seen, you know, the high intensity interval training, you will get a ton of benefit from no time. And there are multiple ways to stimulate tissue. And I hesitate to say that because, listen, the more intensive the exercise, the less you can do. Yeah.

And typically, the greater the impact. So, for example, if you're going on a light leisurely jog and that takes an hour, you will get arguably an equal effect in a fraction of the time by doing any kind of high-intensity interval training. in a fraction of the time by doing any kind of high-intensity interval training. Just on that subject of efficiency and a lifestyle, a few weeks ago, my family and I went on holiday to Greece. So I packed a skipping rope because I knew we'd be chilling a lot. And what I would end up doing before breakfast

sometimes out in the sun, looking at the ocean. Every now and again, I'd just do some skips. And then over the course of a day, doing like 500 skips. And it sounds a lot, but these were in little one minute segments of high intensity. And then I just said in my head, okay, every day you can do 500 skips. And so for seven days, yes, I was chilling. Yes, we were walking sometimes, but I was also getting 500 skips in a day. Now, the reason I share that is because I hope that maybe gives people some ideas that it's not always about a gym, having a personal trainer. Like, let's make this easy. I'm not saying skipping is for everyone, but what's your take on that? Seven days, 500 skips a day whilst on holiday. Incredible. So you're saying skipping's for everyone, but what's your take on that? Seven days,

five minutes skips a day whilst on holiday. Incredible. So you're creating a stimulus. Again, it is what is our endpoint. So you're creating a stimulus. It sounds like you did pretty anaerobic activity. It sounds like you put in quite a bit of effort. Yeah, it was tough. It was tough. That's amazing. So again, it doesn't have to be this thing. It doesn't have to be. I think that is a brilliant idea. I am going to actually take that idea. I love it. Put it in your book. Do it. Yep. And I think that, again, creating a stimulus is really important. And you did that. And that is in and of itself is amazing. And again, can you do bodyweight exercises? You can. Those might take longer.

And that could be a great starting place for people. Yes, I think that that is very valuable. And again, we go through seasons. As long as you are training and doing something outside of regular, kind of leisurely walking and really putting in meaningful effort, you are going to make improvements. We always have to think about challenge. Without those kinds of things, the body has a natural propensity to atrophy. And, you know, I think about this daily as in my own training, I'm

thinking, okay, well, what am I doing that is actually challenging me? And what is going, you know, what do I want to do for the next decade? It takes a certain mindset and discipline to push the body to a level that is a bit uncomfortable. And I believe that pushing the body to a level that is somewhat uncomfortable really creates a capacity to age well. And I will tell you, those individuals that do the best over time really understand and leverage what the potential is for discomfort

and embrace it and lean into it rather than turn away from it. And ultimately, it augments the way in which the physiology responds. And that is profound. Hope you enjoyed that bite-sized clip. Hope you have a wonderful weekend. And I'll be back next week with my long-form conversational Wednesday and the latest episode of Bite Science next Friday.