Bone Breakthroughs: What Your Doctor Isn’t Telling You About Healing

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to condition specific protocols. I've seen firsthand the difference Neutrodyne makes in my patient's health and in practice. Hey everybody, Dr. Rob Silverman here. I'm with Illuminarian Functional Medicine and Chiropractic. And I am excited because he is a chiropractor and he does functional medicine. 37 years of clinical practice. You got it. Thirty-seven years. Dr Ben Whites. Ben, what's up? How are you today? Thanks, Rob. Yeah, this is going to be fun. So you're on the West Coast. I'm on East Coast, so let's see if we can get two coasts to meet.

Let's just get shooting out of the box. What drove you into functional medicine? You know what? I've always been very interested in nutrition from my beginning time in chiropractic. And before I did chriopractic, I do bodybuilding. and I learned about body composition, how to get my body fat low for body for bodybuilding contests and how to manipulate the diet and the exercise and a lifestyle. So I was interested in nutrition long before I got into chiropractic. And then when I get into Chiropractic, I thought, wow, this is great.

This whole profession is going to be focused on nutrition. Then I went to my first day of Chiropractic school and there were a number of overweight people smoking cigarettes, eating donuts. I was like, what the hell? Yeah, not everybody in chiropractic is sinewy without question. No. It's kind of funny. Everybody thinks that chiropractors know a lot about nutrition coming out of chirapractive school. That may not be the case. We don't get a lotta classes. it's just something that we adapt to that.

we add into our armamentarium. put it this way, we get a lot more training in nutrition than medical doctors ever do. Absolutely true. I learned a little bit more about nutrition outside of chiropractic than I did inside of Chiropractics, though learning about biochemistry and physiology and things like that are very, very important to understand the effects of nutrition. Right. Without question, our chriopractic background really lends us into doing Nutrition, supplements, weight loss, things like that.

And you would think the medical education also lends them. They're very heavy in biochemistry, organic chemistry, and the like. It's just that in the functional medicine world, it's populated by more non-medical type practitioners than medical practitioners, though that is changing every day. The bio chemistry in medicine is really more geared towards A, life saving, B, how can drugs affect physiology? Right. So we both know and both had on our podcast a couple of times the father of function medicine, Dr.

Jeffrey Bland. I was fortunate enough to have him write the forward for my book, Immune Reboot. He has coined a phrase, root cause resolution, and it tipped the world by storm. And I think there's one addendum to that right now and I'll let you run with this. Root causes resolution. I've always been a huge fan of Dr. Jeffrey Bland.

How Functional Medicine Began 4:54

Some of my earliest training came from going to, he used to give an annual seminar as part of metagenics and I would go to that seminar every year and my neurons in my brain would come out all frizzled and and stimulated, starting to understand this new way of functional medicine, a new understanding of the body and physiology and health and not just thinking of body in terms of disease and how do we help people to become healthier and understand their microbiome and their and the different processes are involved in promoting health.

And he came out with an audio tape series long before podcasts. I used to get this cassette tape every month. I would stick it in the car and listen to it on my way to work or wherever I was going. And so I, was a big fan of Dr. Jeffrey Bland for many, many years. We owe a lot to him as a guy who blazed a trail and took many barbs from the medical profession and quack busting people and everything else. You know, every time I see him speak till this day, actually, I think of a quote by Sir Oliver Wendell Holmes and he said, a mind stretched by a new idea never returns to its original dimensions.

And I definitely have stretch marks because of him. Yeah, absolutely. Unfortunately, the medical profession changes very slowly. On the average, it takes 17 years for a New Idea to be incorporated into medical practice. I'm going to skip over that one. I don't want to go and quack, quak, watch or whatever they do. That said, you know, interesting that many people went into functional medicine because of something that happened to them, or they really get a resolution from something, that happens to then because a functional.

Now let's take us back. Let's turn the clock back to, I think it was Halloween in 2023, something happened Yeah, so I want to preface this by saying I was really invested in functional medicine, and I never had a health crisis. I remember going to seminars on speaking saying you have to talk about your health get your, you know, your talk to your Ted talk. And, and I was like, I don't really have a health crisis. Even though I'm a big believer in functional medicine and nutrition, but I had my health crises in Halloween of 2023. I Was handing out Halloween candy, had a bowl of Halloween Candy in my right hand.

had the dog's leash on my left arm because I would open the door to greet the kids for the Halloween, and the dog would want to jump on them and lick them, so I had to hold the dogs back. I was walking backwards, a dog pulled, I have socks on, on a wood floor, my legs slid, right down on my greater trochanter on the right hip. and I fractured my proximal femur and that was the beginning of my health crisis. Now that's a bad injury, you know, that is a life-changing type of fracture. It's one of the ones that people and you don't look your age, your ages, don t come back from.

Yeah, I think 25% of people who fracture their hip die, never recover. What was a conventional methodology that you offered? Well, so I went to the emergency room and I ended up getting surgery the next day and they put two steel rods in one going up, one, going down that were connected inside the femur and that was supposed to get it to heal. Unfortunately, After that surgery, ideally, the two bones would be flush up against each other, making it easy for new bone formation. Unfortunately, in my case, there was a gap separating the 2 bones.

that made it a lot more difficult for the body to put collagen cross fibers and lay down calcium to create new bone because there was this gap. So I would go in each month and get another x-ray and every month it was still a gap so. After four months, doctor said, look, this is a non-union. It's not gonna heal. I sought opinions from several different orthopedic surgeons about what to do. And I was seeing my primary care doctor and considered the options. And so the options would be to possibly go in and try to modify the surgical procedure in some way to maybe get it to heal or get a new surgery, get hip replacement.

People recover from hip replacements very quick. But I didn't want to get a hip replacement because even though I had this fracture that was close to the hip joint, my hip is fine. I have good cartilage in there. And if you get hip replacements, you take that cartledge out and you put a piece of plastic in, which is going to wear down compared to a metal. So I didn't want to do that, even though that might've been an easier course of action. It was advised to me that I needed to get revision surgery that they need to go in and pull out these two rods that were inside my femur and then This particular doctor in LA who's the expert at hip revision surgery has developed this procedure where they have this steel rod that goes down the outside of your femur with a bunch of screws that go all the way down.

And I looked at this procedure. I mean, I look at the design of what would happen, and I told this orthopedic surgeon, who's a respected orthopaedic at one of the respected clinics in the area, that there's no way I'm going to do that. And he said, well, if you don't do, then eventually the hardware will fail and your leg will collapse. And I said respectfully that you don't know that that's gonna happen. And, I'm not ready to do that procedure. To begin with, to try to pull those steel rods out from inside my femur, you're gonna have to chisel those out and then I am gonna to have a hole in my

Hip Fracture and Non-Union Recovery 11:54

Femur and you can't lay down new cement or something. And then I'm going to have this steel rod down the outside of my femur. I have to start all over not being able to sleep because of the pain, not be able walk and everything else. And I was slowly improving functionally. So I knew that some form of healing was occurring. Of course, there was a question which was if some fibrous tissue was starting to be laid down across the bone, was this a good thing or a bad thing? And interestingly, different experts had different opinions about that.

And so one opinion was if you get a bunch of fibrous tissue that can interfere with bone healing. And I talked to my primary care doctor who told me about some non-union he had in his wrist where they had to clear out the fibrous tissue to get the bone to heal. And then I talked to other prominent experts, including the head of physical therapy at USC, and he said, no, the body's trying to lay down bones. So first it puts fibrous tissue and that provides the collagen framework to then laydown bone because it's got this challenge.

So I knew I had a challenge and that it wasn't healing according to the normal course because of the fact that there was a gap and I didn't want to get another surgical procedure. So, I came up with a plan. Because I have my own podcast, Rational Wellness, i'd had number of discussions about bone healing and osteoporosis and i knew about some of them medications and treatment strategies for helping bones to heal. So I knew about this drug called Fortale, which is considered to be an anabolic bone drug.

There's basically two categories of medications that can be used to help heal bones and to overcome osteoporosis. We have When it comes to bone physiology, we have these two types of cells. We have osteoblast cells which create new bone and we've osteoclasts cells, which break down bone. And this occurs throughout our life and there needs to be a balance. So we most of the drugs that people take for bone, for osteoporosis to help bones to heal are these drugs, that block the osteo class. So we have a big category of drugs called the bisphosphonates that a lot of people utilize and these are often the frontline treatment.

Grolia is also a anti-resorptive drug. One of the reasons why I'm not a fan of those drugs, especially for bone healing, is that we need to have healthy bone. And so what those drugs do is they block what essentially is the cleanup crew. So what happens in normal bone physiology for just somebody walking around is that you actually break down a certain amount of bone when you work out, you break. Down muscle, just normal activity. You break, down to a. Certain amount. Of bone and then the clean up crew, the osteoclast come in and clean.

Up that junky bone, making it easier for the osteoblasts to come in and rebuild the bone and that process is how we get good healthy bone. If you block the osteoclast, you will end up with more bone, but you're not going to clear out the junky bone And I knew I needed good, strong, healthy bone, not junky bone. So I elected to get a prescription for Fortale, which is an anabolic bone drug that stimulates osteoblasts to lay down new fresh bone I found a meta-analysis that showed that this medication has been shown to be helpful in patients with femur non-union.

And The surgeon who originally did the surgery to write me a prescription for that. I wanted to get my body in a bone healing environment as much as possible. So I looked at medications, what else could possibly help. And I talked to a number of my friends in a functional medicine world and a Number of them said, look, you got to get on some growth hormone because that's going to put your body in this growth healing environment. Growth hormone stimulates bone formation as well as muscle formation.

Um, so I got a prescription for, um, human growth hormone, uh, the surgeon. He wasn't so thrilled about it, but one of my functional medicine friends gave me a. And so, I started taking, a, an injection of, for a tail every day. I did it for five months. Um. Five days a week, two I use of human, growth, hormone. and I got a bone stimulator machine that works with the pulsed ultrasound that I put over the area twice a day for 20 minutes. And then I, you know, from the beginning, I made sure that it got all my supplement program in place to maximize bone healing.

Right. You know what, let me interject because it's a really good point here in that everybody thinks that functional medicine is just taking vitamin D and omega-3 fatty acids. and it's not. The premise is whatever works once you figure out the root cause resolution and the idea of integration is the next chapter in the functional medicine story. So people want to know, why didn't your bone heal? I mean, obviously healed when you did all these things, but why wasn't it healing appropriately to start?

Because there was a gap and that created a challenge for the body. If those bones were touching each other, It would have been very easy. Imagine that you have a cut and the cuts open. How do you heal it? Well, you get stitches to hold the two parts of the skin next to each other. That facilitates the healing. In my case, the bone was separate and you know, there was nothing I could do naturally to make that happen. Now, of course, I did as much of the rehab as I can possibly do from the beginning.

I mean, as soon as i got out of hospital, i was in gold's gym on my walker doing upper body. i wasn't going to lose strength and muscle mass just because i had this fracture. Wow, now you were referring to the idea of supplements, which supplements were you taking? I'm sure there's a litany of them. Yes. So when it comes to bone, vitamin D is crucial. Now I've always taken vitamin DNA. I always take vitamin d with K. take 5,000 units of vitamin D. And that usually keeps my vitamin d level, my 25 hydroxy d-level, somewhere between 45 and 60. I get it up to 60, it drops down to the 40s.

So I decided, let's just go a little heavier on this. Let's try to get up 70 or 80. And then I started taking a high dose MK4. So vitamin K has two forms. We have vitamin k1, which the vitamin D incorporates K1 and vitamin 2. And for vitamin two, there's two form. There's MK 4 and there is MK 7. MK7 has gotten most of the attention in recent times. It's been heavily marketed, it's actually a lot more expensive. it may have some cardiovascular benefits that haven't been shown in MK4, but when you really look at all the data on vitamin K, The most robust data on bone health on, bone density on fracture prevention is with MK4.

And a lot of this, these studies were done in Japan where MK 4 is sold as a prescription drug and the dosage that's used is 45 milligrams. Most people are taking an MK four or an M K seven In some ways in a hundred to two hundred microgram level, which is one tenth of a milligram. So this is a much higher dosage, but that's what's been shown to be most effective. By the way, vitamin K to not only. does it help with bone healing? It reduces the potential risk for calcium buildup in the arteries and the other soft tissues.

So super important nutrient, and I don't think it's gotten enough attention. And I think the data shows that MK4 is really the form that vitamin K is stored in in most of the tissues and probably should be the preferred form for most uses. Now you're going against conventionality there because MK7 is the hot one, but it's okay. It's great. By the way, the promoters of MK 7, one of the things they say is this lasts longer in the bloodstream. And you know what? That sounds great, do you want the vitamin K in your bloodstream or do want it in the tissues?

And having a lot in you blood stream could mean it's not getting absorbed into your tissues. And if you look at the body, the form that vitamin k is stored in, in most of the tissue and organs is MK4. So we'll start with D3. I agree with you. The average person or the market that the medical field looks at is plus 30 and we know 60 to 80 and maybe 80 to 100 is the sweet spot. So I know I just had a patient of mine who's our primary medical doctor. Their lab range has 30 to 60 and she had 62. They told her she has to stop taking all our vitamin D.

Yeah, no, not happening. Mine happened. And she has bone density problems. No surprise. So vitamin D3 with vitamin K, K2, they're the dynamic duo. They're a perfect match. There's a debate between MK4 and MK7, but I do agree with you. MK 4 has got a lot of data for bone, MK 7 definitely data of cardiovascular. I believe that vitamin K is where we were with vitamin D say 10 or 15 years ago. It's going to be the new girl with the curl and people should take it in conjunction. And just to expand upon the theme about the idea of vitamin k and plaquing, you have to take K with D, so D transports calcium to the bone and not to soft tissue and that's the secret recipe for its success for that.

I agree 100%. Any program to reduce cardiovascular risk should be incorporating vitamin K2. Now what other supplements did you incorporate for bone health? This is going to get interesting. added boron. I added two milligrams twice a day. Excellent. Um, I had calcium magnesium, like a lot of people for years, they took calcium, magnesium. And then the studies started coming out saying that if you take calcium it's going to increase your risk for calcified plaque in your arteries. It's bad for heart.

The reason why they were doing studies on calcium and, um, cardiovascular conditions is because prior studies had shown that calcium reduces hypertension, that Calcium is good for the heart, and all of a sudden calcium's bad. Because the problem why you get plaque in your arteries is, because of calcium. And I think this was just completely wrong from the beginning. Without question. Now when you say calcium magnesium, what's the ratio between calcium and magnesium? Okay, so I usually take one-to-one, but that's partially because I tend towards constipation and magnesium is a stool loosener.

But for a lot of the patients with osteoporosis, I recommend two to one. Let's get a little more granular. Which form of calcium, which form magnesium do you prefer? Yeah, so I don't like calcium carbonate, because that's the least absorbable form, limestone. Yeah. That's no good. I grew up in the idea of hydroxyapatite, but I I really think there's enough data to show that that is really the most beneficial form.

Bone-Healing Supplements and Quality Brands 24:30

So I think that there are a number of absorbent forms. Citrate, malate. several other forms like that, that I think are easy for the body to absorb. Possibly using several different forms is good. So I use a citrate malate combination. And then I also use something that's kind of controversial, which is strontium. strontium citrate boost. Yes, exactly. You got to take it separate from your calcium. Some people say that stronium is not beneficial, that it just replaces calcium in my case. I wanted to get some bone in there.

And if that bone happened to be strontium or calcium, I needed some boning there and I was happy with filling in that gap, whatever it took. So I took some strotium as well. I also added collagen, which I've always sort of taken, but not as regular. collagen every day, because collagen is the matrix that bone is formed on. And then I also added glucosamine and chondroitin, which I've taken off and on most of my life anyway, and it turns out that those are also beneficial for arteries and heart health.

You know, it's funny about glucasamine in chendroitins. It's been around since the hills were first created, but it is effective and I think it has the second most amount of studies behind it after like a vitamin C. So, you know, it's kind of like Novocaine. It works every time. Right. By the way, I made sure I took some extra vitamin c. Vitamin C gets forgotten. If there's ever a forgotten nutrient, its vitamin. C and people like, oh yeah, that's just vitamin, C, but vitamin is synergistic in bone formation and in almost every health, health aspect of the body, vitamin C plays a role, collagen formation, etc.

Love the idea of incorporating collagen. I put it in my coffee every day because it does not decompose due to hot aqueous solutions. Collagen is a great choice, skin, hair and nails, bone, gut, et cetera. Now for For me, I was curious. Did you use any BPC 157? Cause I'm a peptide guy. You know, II took some orally. I didn't take an injection. Looked into injections into the bone and I talked to, um, two, uh, to different doctors who specialize in injections about, possibly injecting, peptides or inject.

Um, stem cells into the gap and they both said oh yeah it makes a good idea and and neither one had any experience with the patient who had a non-union where it was beneficial. So I was a little hesitant about sticking a huge needle into the center of my bone unless somebody had some confidence that it would help. Yeah, I used the BPC in an oral form, Bpc 157. I find it's stacked with KPV and other peptide and TB4 frag does great or has a great effect on healing. And you take all of those orally?

I take them all oraly. You know what's funny? We've all got into the idea that the injection is two to three times better, but the injections are better because of its placebo effect. When you break down that placebo factor, take it out, it's only a few percent improvement over the infection. And with the injecting now being unregulated, You know, you and I get a little nervous about injecting things that are not regulated. You and may not send a Christmas or a Hanukkah card to the FDA, but there still needs to be some oversight and some regulation in healthcare.

Otherwise, the bad guys may run the show. Absolutely. I would be a little nervous about just ordering some injectable drug on the internet and just injecting it myself not really knowing the quality or the, you know, the testing that went into the safety of that Now, interestingly enough, you use supplements. How did you determine, I'm not asking you to know what companies you used, how did determine which companies to use, the quality of the company? Because everybody calls me and they'll go to an online store and say, everything is the same.

And you and I know no way. We've discerned that there's only about 10 or 12 companies that we prefer. Well, first of all, I scrupulously look at all the ingredients, including the non-essential ingredients and see what kind of excipients and binders and things like that. So I make sure that I have a company that doesn't use those. I made sure the company tests all of our ingredients that come into that before they put it into the products. A number of the companies I've gone and inspected their manufacturing facilities.

I'd gone to Metagenics, I have gone into Designs for Health, and I had gone through a number these companies and put the suit on, the hat and everything and looked at their manufacturer facilities, so I am confident that these company have the highest integrity and we only use companies that are professional brands that sell to practitioners. So, and then I make sure I get the exact ingredient and the exactly dosage and make it sure it's coming from the highest possible source. Right. I concur because so many patients, you know, they don't know where to go.

They think they can buy what we have analyzed and what we carry and think it's all the same and it is just not. And I think that that's one of the battle cries that many practitioners need to share is that they've done their due diligence and you know what's on the bottle matches what is in the bottles, I should say. matches the label. So let's turn the page now. Obviously, the number one conversation piece is longevity. You were concerned about your musculoskeletal longevity, so let' talk about this thing called mTOR.

It's one of those ideas. I think it's the girl with the curl. Some people want to turn it on, some people wanna turn off, I believe it is the Goldilocks effects. Just hitting it just right. Why don't you take the baton and go with it? Yeah, no, I definitely agree with that. And during this period of time when I was trying to get the bone to heal, needed to ramp up mTOR. I need to put my body in a growth mode. But there's a number of practitioners in the longevity and lifestyle space who promote inhibiting mTor with the worry that when your body is in that growth stage, that it may increase cancer risk.

the fact that cancer cells that are there in your body may start growing faster and you're overwhelming your immune system. I don't think there's been any research to show that it would cause cancer to form, but our body typically forms cells that are dysfunctional and normally the immune system wipes them out before they create a problem. And when that happens, that's when you end up with cancer. So there's a number of practitioners or doctors, researchers who promote eating, for example, a lower protein diet because protein has been shown to increase growth factors.

And one way to measure this is to look at IGF-1 levels in the blood, which is a proxy for growth hormone. And you mentioned mTOR, that's a signaling molecule that increases overall growth in a body. So if you can ramp that down, you may decrease cancer risk. Some researchers point to a of dwarfs in Ecuador, the Laran dwarves. And the laran dwarf have no growth hormone as a result of a genetic defect. They also have virtually no cancer. So this is an argument that ramping down growth, ramped down mTORA, and ramp down IGF-1 is a good thing for longevity purposes.

some people on an experimental level are using a drug called rapamycin, which has been on the market as a drugs that suppresses the immune system. It's been used for organ transplants.

mTOR, Longevity, and Controlled Stress 33:30

And so they take it intermittently to ramp down mTOR to promote longevity. There's animal studies showing that it's promoted longevity in animals and There haven't been too many drugs or substances that have consistently been shown by themselves to promote longevity. Now, let's look at the longevity space and what else do we have about whether it's good to have growth or no growth? Well, We also know that one of the biggest reasons why people die when they get older is they fall and break a hip or something like that.

And so the loss of muscle, sarcopenia, the lost of bone, osteopenia the shrinkage of thymus gland, thimus involution, which means your immune system gets weaker. Which means if you get an infection, you're more likely to die. You're more likely to die from COVID or the flu, etc. So these things are a huge threat for longevity. If you decrease mTOR, you're increasing your risk for those things. Therefore, the argument is, no, we need to make sure that we continue to have new bone formation, new muscle formation that our thymus gland continues to be healthy, that are immune system continues be helping, and that way we have growth happening even as we get older.

And so the first study that was actually done that showed a reversal of epigenetic aging, which was the phase study, the interventions that were used were growth hormone, metformin, DHEA, zinc, and vitamin D. And so for a long time, the longevity space, there was a lot of focus on using growth hormones, testosterone, things that promote growth. Now the field seems to be more dominated by the opposite, by ramping down mTOR, taking rapamycin, using intermittent fasting, promoting what we call things that promote the breakdown of old broken down cells called autophagy.

In mitochondria, it's mitophage. So we want to promote getting rid of broken-down and so rather than just formation. So that's been a lot of the emphasis. But as you alluded to, there needs to be a balance. We can't just ramp down growth and mTOR. And if you get weaker, your bones get weak, that is going to a bigger threat to longevity than anything else. growth and rebuilding as well as not excessive growth or rebuilding and also intermittently doing things like fasting and sauna and putting your body under stress with exercise that helps break things down and so we can rebuild.

You got my whole list of longevity hacks here, so great. Really to tie in the idea of sarcopenia, Tufts University, 1998, did a study and found the first sign of aging, as you said. Loss of muscle mass, sarcomenial. Gabriella Lyons does a great job, muscle, mass longevity organ. Mark Hyman says muscle-mass is the currency of longevity. We need to be able to turn on a little bit of mTOR. to have muscle mass and muscle protein synthesis because we want to stimulate that by consuming protein and doing weight resistance.

Really good point about osteoporosis. Who wants to live a long time and you can't get out of your chair? Right. Did you know there was a study that just came out that the number one marker for longevity was our movement or movement dysfunction? So, who better than a chiropractor who's trained in the idea of functional medicine, functional nutrition, and chriopractic movement as a longevity doctor? I'm still waiting for a better answer. Yeah. And it's interesting. Some of the smartest people in the functional medicine world actually are chiropractors.

Without question. What's beautiful about the Functional Medicine world is that it is truly integrated. We're sitting with medical doctors from Harvard, osteopaths, physical therapists, nutritionists and the like, and we're all getting it from different vantage points. helicopter in and really get to that root cause. And I think everybody should, when they go to the doctor, obviously if you have shortness of breath and pain going down your arm, you might not ask why you need to tend to it. But at a certain point you want to ask, why do you this set of symptoms?

Because if didn't ask the question why, or do it on your own, You may have not healed your bone. That's not saying the medical doctors don't have it, no one has the answer, that's why we call it integration. Right. So I got a couple of the longevity questions for you. You spoke about sauna. Is it just hot or is that hot and cold that you want? I think hot & cold things that put stress on your body, whether from temperature, or whether it's from the exercise are good. It produces a response in a body where the body reacts and gets stronger and improves.

They call that Hot & Cold Shot proteins. I'm more of a sauna guy than a cold guy. I see Mark Wahlberg, Marky Mark, he hates that. And he's jumping in ice. If he wants to freeze his fortitude, go for it, dude. Go for, but the hot, and you want it between about 146 to 175 degrees to stimulate heat shock protein and really to highlight the point you just made. We're good when we're slightly stressed, we cave when were extremely stressed. Right. Absolutely. We need controlled amounts of stress. That's what exercise is.

Exercise is a controlled amount of the stress you're putting on the body. Now, exercise, let's talk a little bit about it. What kind of exercise do you recommend? Weights, cardio, combination, and if so, which one first? we need to do both. Actually, there's more data on benefits for longevity of resistance exercise weight training. And when it comes to bone, if you want to increase your bone density, you have to do heavy weights. And unfortunately, You can't use two pound weights that you just swing around.

Right. I agree. That is for men and women. There should be absolutely for a man and woman. So you got to do heavy weight training. You got push heavy things, you gotta pull heavy, things you've got put your muscles in your bones under stress, and then the body reacts by making those

Exercise, Nutrition, and Sleep for Longevity 40:30

muscles and bones stronger. And then we've gotta exercise our heart and our respiratory systems. See, gotta do some cardiovascular exercise, whether it be running, walking, getting on a, um, elliptical machine or a treadmill or etc etc. You can even do lighter weights quickly going from set to set and do a high intensity routine. But that doesn't take the place of also doing some heavier weights where you need some rest in between sets. Right, I agree. I need to do both, both men and women. I think men rely on weights a little too much.

Women sometimes traditionally rely in cardiovascular. New data just came out that spoke to the idea you should do the weights before the cardiovascular if you're going to do both on the same day. Because if we do cardiovascular, you lose all your glycogen and you won't be able to push optimally. And it's more important to put optimically. Absolutely. I've been telling people that for years. A lot of people will come in and do their cardio first to warm up. And as you just mentioned, you want your maximum glycogen, which is the storage form for carbohydrates in your muscles that will allow you to lift the most weight.

So you do your weight training when you're fresh. Now, if it's really cold out and you wanna get on a bike for a few minutes to worm up, that's fine. But you don't wanna do an extended cardio session and deplete your glycation. On the other hand, when you're doing your um cardio you want to try to maximize your fat burning and you don't burn fat until you burn off the glycogen and then you start burning fat that's why they always say your cardio has to be at least 15 or 20 minutes before you burned fat well if you do your weight training first and your complete most of your glyco gin then your gonna be burning fast quicker when your do you cardio outstanding that was the exact example and the reasoning behind how they said you could put some muscle on and then store fat, burn fat.

So Hippocrates once said, let food be your medicine, and let medicine be a food. What foods do you recommend generically to people before you can individualize and personalize it for the person sitting in front of you? Well, I mean, it depends on the purpose, but just in general for overall health, everybody should be eating a variety of different colored vegetables and fruits. And I say vegetables in fruits because between fruits and vegetables, you want to emphasize the vegetables. Not that fruits aren't beneficial as well.

Then number two, make sure you're getting quality protein. I think the best way to get quality is to include some high quality animal protein But I know some people are wedded to the vegetarian idea and you can also get your protein that way. You probably for maximal protein, you probably need to add some supplemental protein powder. Add some extra soy. But you got to get quality protein. That's how you rebuild your muscle. It's also important for rebuilding bone. You got get healthy fats, and that means omega-3 fats.

There's benefits to omega 6s, even though omega sixes have been under assault recently because they call them seed oils. And there actually are benefits omega6s. And then there's some other types of fats as well. So make sure you're getting some healthy fats. Have some extra virgin organic olive oil. Um, have some avocado, some nuts and seeds and make you getting plenty of fiber. We need fiber for the microbiome. Absolutely. I love the plant or the vegan. They'll call it the plan versus the meat, the carnivore versus vegans.

It's unbelievable, it's hysterical. I just look it down and I say, do you think maybe if we took a little here and put it together, that would work? It was funny, I was talking with my mother-in-law. She's visiting for seven weeks. And I'm having a great time, everybody. Adore my Mother-In-Law. This is a serious note, she's fabulous. You scored some points with your wife right there. Right. Actually, my wife's not here today, but you may watch it. So she said, how do you choose your foods? And my mother-in-law is very, very religious, carries the Bible around, and she's a big believer.

And I said you know what? If we walked in this earth and God gave it, it's healthy. She snapped her hands and said. You got it! Go with it and say it on your podcast. Say it when you speak. So there it is, hallelujah, I said it. But the point is- I agree, anything Jeffrey Bland says is good. I concur. So the basic premise I noticed you didn't speak about was you don't include any ultra-processed foods? Outstanding. What about sleep? Let's close with a great longevity hack, one that you should be able to control.

Sleep is super important. It's harder to control. So many things go into getting a good night's sleep, but you need to get a Good amount of sleep. You need To make sure it's quality sleep like everything qualities is important as quantities So you to make you have plenty of deep sleep and REM sleep It is probably a great idea to track your sleep by using an aura ring or something like that and There's a number of things that go into getting a good night's sleep, including having your room dark and cool, having a sleep routine, avoiding blue light in the evenings, et cetera.

But sleep is super important for rebuilding, for clearing out toxins from our brain for many, many reasons. Sleep is crucial for recovery. Now, I always had love to end with the one tangible takeaway that people can utilize if they go through the whole podcast and say, okay, give me the 1 thing, you know, we live in America. So what's the thing that you want everybody to do on Monday morning that's different to imbue them with enthusiasm to start a healthier lifestyle? Lift heavy weights. All right.

I love it. Lift, heavy weight. Is that biceps and triceps or is that full body weights? Yeah, do a five rep maximum deadlift. I love it. If it's Romanian or Jefferson dead lift, we're good. There you have it, everybody. It's been my pleasure, Dr. White's Ben. Always love talking to you. Let's continue this friendship. the sauce, if you will. And you do a great job. Everybody, just so you know, this guy really cares. He just loves what he does. Retirement is not something he would even consider. Thanks, Rob.

I just want to tell people about my contact, I have a weekly podcast, so check out Rational Wellness Podcasts on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube. You can go to my website, which is drwetz.com, drweitz. com, and you can get in touch with me there. And you could reach me on social media at Dr. Ben Weitz on Instagram and Facebook and everything else. Love it. I've been on his podcast. He does a great job. We actually have similar guests. And again, my pleasure, Dr. Ben Weitz, Rob Silverman, Proven Health Alternatives, always yours in health.