Why Movement Is the Key to Longevity – The 5 Non-Negotiables Series (Part 2)

Introduction to the Movement Episode 0:00

All right, we're back. Another episode. So I am Dr. Roddy. And I'm Dr Yass. We are excited to be with you here again. So we are on topic number two of the five non-negotiables or the Five Essential Things that we feel everybody should consider. We talked about sleep. If you haven't listened to that, go to the episode. It was pretty good. we talked a lot about what we individually do for sleep and sleep aids and all the other wonderful things with sleep, and then now, or today, we're going to talk about movement.

And we got three more after that. So we're going to get those out hopefully soon for people to listen to. I know that you live a completely sedentary lifestyle. You don't move at all. Your couch potato, you hate exercise, You eat processed food and you drink soda all day. Why don' you move more? Why do you not move and exercise? I just hate moving. You know, maybe six, seven times a day. See what I did there? We just talked about six seven today. Oh my God. Let's talk about movement. I still don't understand.

That's a whole other episode. Maybe we'll have six parts to this. All right. So movement, we could talk this for nine years. As chiropractors, obviously we know the benefit of joint movement and mobility and all those things.

Why Movement Matters for Joints and Health 1:29

So movement is such a broad term. Right. Why don't you in 30 seconds or less try to define the importance of movement from a systemic perspective? Okay. Movement is essential mostly for Well, it's essential for your overall health, but the thing it impacts directly, immediately are your joints, because what it does is it pushes the fluid into that joint space, which supplies the joint's space with nutrients. So the less you move, the more arthritis kicks in. Arthritis is not a normal part of aging.

Everyone that's old doesn't have arthritis. It is a part of not moving. People that are old don't move. As we age, we move less. And that why arthritis kicks in. So the more we moved, the nutrients are getting pushed into those joints. The more it lubricates, and it heals, it promotes healthy tissue in those joint. Arthritis is joint inflammation in the broader terms. Many, many forms of arthritis, you know, osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, there's a lot of it. Um, We all get it, we all develop some level of joint inflammation, right?

Even your avid runners or avide triathletes or gym goers or whoever, they will develop Some joint Inflammation as we age. But I agree, the sedentary people, it's kind of, you know, You don't use it. You lose it kind Of thing, Right? And that's the hard thing with age is that when you do get age related arthritis, The reason why that sets in is because as we age naturally, we move less. We're able to move. Less we're and we are able. To move, less, but if we continue to. Move the same amount that we.

Or at least just move consistently as. The the arthritis will not set in as deep right or as as much. So so movement is just really important for. uh just keeping those joints mobile and lubricated and young right so you think about like people that have been doing yoga all their life and they're still they'r 80 90 years old they are still able to yeah do all these crazy bends and poses. Well, they never stopped. They've been doing it forever. And they've never stop, right? So that's really important.

But movement is super important in the morning, getting your body moving in after you eat, that helps decrease your blood sugar rates by like 50% if you just did like a little bit of walking around. Something, yeah. So movement is just really important to help your joints, help you blood, sugar, and just your overall mental well-being as well, right? Of course, we dealt with this a lot when we were in practice when people would say it takes me 45 minutes to get out of bed. Now, when they're injured and hurt, that's a different story.

But if they have let their bodies decline or degenerate and they didn't realize that they were just on this downhill slope of just unfortunate poor health,

How Movement Evolves With Age 4:46

it's going to become more difficult to get up and going. I've heard people say, I get and then I sit at the end of my bed for like 20 minutes before I can take my first step because my knees kill or my hip or And if we turn the page and go backwards, we probably could find out when that stuff started to really degenerate on them. And to your point earlier, the more we move, and everybody can move in different ways, they're less likely we're going to have those kinds of ailments and conditions, minus injury.

pick up something and throw your back out, or twist your knee playing pickleball, whatever. So those are different. But we're chronic stuff. Let me ask you a question. Somebody cut you off. What about how do people evolve movement? Let's say you're 25 years old, and you love to go to the gym, you lift weights, And you like to run on the treadmill and do all this stuff, then as we age, our movement should evolve. Like you said, the people that and when they're older are doing some type of yoga because they've done it their whole life.

So talk about how movement can evolve as people evolve. Well, I mean, i just think about my own life and how, you know, after being an avid tennis player,I was a marathoner and then I was triathlete and now I don't do any of that. I play tennis maybe once a week, but I don't run. And you like to hit people with tennis balls, too. Yeah. She likes to get old people. Everybody listening, she targets old at the country club, and she pelts them with the tennis ball in their back. Listen, their reaction times are not good.

They're not moving very quick. I'm just joking. So as we age, obviously, we don't want to. I mean, if you're able to continue running, that's great. But as women, too, go through hormonal changes. Going through menopause, perimenopausal, you can't really do those things anymore, because that affects your hormones and your cortisol levels and all the rest of it. And we can talk about that in another episode. Even still, even as you age. you should still get up and move. I remember we had a patient many years ago and she was saying, she's like, you know Dr.

Yoss, I get, up I sit at the edge of my bed and I I know it takes me sometimes 20 minutes to get out of bed, but I have to do it. And I get up and I go for my walk and it does help that I had a dog that relies on me. But if I don't do that walk, the rest of my day is miserable. And it's because of that walk and just moving that made her not only physically feel better, but mentally she felt better. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, think about the days. We are both morning workout people. And some people work out in the afternoon.

That's fine. It doesn't make a difference. But boy, those days when you don't get your exercise in or workout in It's like taking your coffee away. It really derails you. If you have an early meeting. And even with that, there's still an opportunity to do something. Maybe it's not your normal routine. maybe you're not getting in your car, driving to the gym for an hour, work out. You don't have time to that. But doing something to kind of get your day right. and then hopefully fulfill that need later in the afternoon if you have to do an afternoon workout.

It's such a game changer because for me it's not even as much for my physically, but my mind, my focus is not the same when I don't go to the gym. Like it just, it is just not same at all. And now it has become just a part of life and that's what you want, right?

Strength Training, Muscle, and Longevity 8:43

You want it to be part your life. I find a lot of mornings when i can't, I just don' have the energy to get up I at least do my yoga class. Do something, right? I do something. And every morning before I even have my coffee, sometimes while I'm having my Coffee, I will do a whole stretching routine. Yeah. It's just a quick, you know, 10 minute stretch that I Do. You know whether I am talking to Chris or whatever, we just, it's time for us to connect. But also I m stretching while we're just connecting.

So it s nice. One thing that I just thought of too is, I think that as parents of teenagers or just parents in general, when parents set the foundation of exercise and in this case movement with their kids, it's part of the lifestyle. When your kids see you do something active regularly, you hope it becomes part We grew up that way. Our folks were very, very active and we were, you know, they weren't bodybuilders or powerlifters or triathletes, but they always went to the club, right? They went the gym.

It wasn't a club. it wasn' a a fitness club and mostly dad would go to sauna. Yeah. You go the sauna, It took a movement to get to the sauna. No, but I think that as parents, the more, and this is in many facets of your life, as parent, when your kids see you having these types of habits and routines, healthy and unhealthy, unfortunately, they will adopt those same things. And that's what you want. You want them to make movement part of their routine and going, yeah, I used to go to gym with my parents or I saw my parent's do it, so I'm going to do a type of thing.

So I that that is really, really important. Going from movement to a more specific type of movement that is very crucial, let's talk about strength, right? So why is strength so important? Right now, obviously, the biggest craze of everything health-related is peptides and weight loss and things like that. And I'm just bringing that in because, and I know we're going to talk more about that, but when people are on these peptide and they're not strength building, they are not getting the benefits of what should be happening.

But strength-building in general as we age is so important for, if we bring it back to kind of our world of bone health and bone density and just building that muscle mass you need to function and live healthy is so, so important. I always say Americans are overfed and under muscled. So as Americans, even though we have so many gyms in our society, in out communities, a lot of people, especially in are age group, In women, only 20% of women 45 and older strength train. What are they doing instead?

Cardio. Why? So they think because we come from that era of like the cardio bunny and we think, oh, we got to do cardio to lose weight. Actually, you'll lose fat faster if you strength training. But more importantly, muscle actually acts as like a glycogen sink. So the more muscle you have, The more the sugar you eat in your diet, whether it's good or bad carbs, any kind of carbohydrate gets absorbed by your muscle and doesn't go into your bloodstream. So it really helps maintain proper blood glucose levels, blood sugar levels and prevent diabetes.

It's very uncommon for someone that has a high muscle composition to have diabetes, type 2 diabetes. I think strength building or movement and strength-building also kind of spills over into the 40 to 40 plus demographic of people that have deficient hormones who don't have the energy to lift or don t have ability to just lift in general. So many different, it's like we talk about a topic and there's so many subtopics within a topics. But if your hormones are in disarray, and for men, my age, 51, if you're testosterone level is the low range of normal, you know, 300, And you are not getting the results you want at the gym or you can't even lift heavy, You have to fix that problem to be able to lift, to have that longevity you hope people are striving for.

You know what I mean? And women too, they need testosterone. As we age and especially through the menopause transition, we lose our testosterone, and we have to have it. Not as much as men, but we do. So you have supplement with testosterone with estrogen, progesterone, all the things. And bone health, super important. Women are more prevalent to having osteoporosis and decreased bone density, which can lead to fractures and all these other conditions and things like that. So again, nutrition plays into that too.

But basic strength building, muscle building is super vital for longevity. And like we said, just evolve what you do with what feel comfortable in doing. You know? But doing nothing is not an option. Or you know what I mean? You don't have to be a power lifter. You could do resistance, you could be bands, anything, body weight, things like that. If you don' t have the right amount of body composition of muscle, as long as you're building muscle then you've got to do enough weight where you can only do six to eight reps.

That's how you build the muscle. Sometimes you'll You'll grow out of the resistance band phase quickly, right? Because it's not going to be heavy enough. So you do have to progressively overload.

Getting Started With Exercise and Staying Consistent 14:39

Otherwise, you won't build the muscle you need. Hopefully, people are listening. But let's say we have somebody listening who is 56 years old, female, and who hasn't been to a gym in a long time. Hasn't lifted weights. She walks. She does know what her hormones are like. There's so many things we can do to evaluate. What would be your advice to somebody that's like, I want to start strength building. I don't know where to stop. And I'm intimidated to walk into these gyms or even I walk in to these box gymms and there's a million people that I know who's what's going on.

Or if I go sign up for a more of a boutique gym, i'm intimidating because I can't keep up. So there's a couple ways you can approach this. You can have them do some body weight exercises and just follow along a YouTube video that they could do. Or there are great apps like the Peloton app. I think it's like $12 a month just for the app or other apps that have good programming that you could with just five pound weights, you always start off light, whatever you can do to build that foundation. And then after a couple weeks, if you're finding you are doing six to eight reps, no problem.

increase the weight by five pounds. You always want to increase your weight. Wherever you can start, start. As long as you're moving, just do it. Based on your age and what your goals are, finding a personal trainer that can understand. There's no excuse not to move is what I'm trying to say. I think the suggestions that you made are great. And I am always so inspired when I see people that are you know, 30 years, 25,30 years older than me at the gym. And they're there every day. Kind of like the lady you mentioned who gets up every and does it.

We have blessed to have some great members of the Jim that we work out at. You just see these people and you're like, man, most people your age are not, they are NOT here. And you can tell it's just been part of their lifestyle forever. And it is inspiring. It's the proof that it works. They're running and they're jumping and skipping rope and lifting. That was one thing I was listening to. He was one of my favorite podcasts. And he was he had a guy listening to this. Yeah, he's totally listening.

He's actually, you know, I mean, drinking his herbal mate. So please send us more of this stuff. It's really good. But he has a guide on an episode and he is talking about how important it is as you age to not just walk or just run, but it's more effective if you jumped and skipped and added a couple different agility things. So I actually started in my workout once a week, I'll start doing like, all do the jump rope, but I do jump up with on a basketball court with the lines. Oh, so I, So, in different patterns, because he said to do multi multi planner patterns.

It helps your brain just keep that agility. And it's just interesting. Yeah. Um, and this one guy, he was like skipping for like five miles. Wow. He set like a world record for skipping. It was crazy. That's crazy, but just movement. Movement's good for you. So if you're not moving. Start moving. If you have any questions on what you should do, what can do. Let us know if there's any advice we can give you or if they're things that you do to move on a daily that. You like to share with other people.

We'd love to hear that as well, but just send us a message and we'd be happy to answer any question or. So please don't forget to like, subscribe and share this information and we will go on to our third of our non-negotiables in our next episode. Yep. All right. Thank you. The information provided in this podcast is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. While we may be licensed healthcare professionals, this content should not be used to diagnose or treat any medical condition or to replace the advice of your personal healthcare provider.

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Closing Thoughts and Listener Call to Action 18:58

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