Tag Archive for: posture

Aging Stressor: The Muscular System

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Sarcopenia is the number one issue that impacts muscles—that’s the loss of skeletal muscle mass and strength that comes with age. It can begin as early as the 20s in some and accelerates once we pass 60; it’s thought to be primarily due to the genetics of aging. There’s also little question that a sedentary lifestyle contributes to muscle loss. Losing muscle mass impacts not just strength, but also stamina, posture, balance, and the ability to move your body.

There are several types of muscle fibers, but they all appear to become slow-twitch fibers as we age. And they get smaller. However, and this is important, they don’t ever seem to go away completely. Strength training has been shown to be effective even for people who are 100 years old; they get stronger, which helps deal with all those issues I mentioned before. The research hasn’t demonstrated that muscles will get larger, but most studies end at three to six months, which is too soon to really judge results; it’s probably going to take more than six months to gain back what we lost over many decades.

The key to dealing with sarcopenia is strength training—the earlier in life the better, but it’s never too late. Strength training can encompass many approaches from doing squats by standing up from sitting in a chair (using a walker if balance is an issue), push-ups and other calisthenics, and weight training using bands, tubes, machines, and free weights.

There are hundreds of programs and thousands of exercises to help build strength using every modality. I think it should all begin with an evaluation by a healthcare professional to test posture and balance, as well as strength. The next step is to see a physical therapist who can evaluate your limitations and put together a plan to get you started safely; it’s hard to keep your positive attitude if you get hurt right away and need to pause. Once you get approval and a plan to train, then getting muscles prepared is important. Calisthenics, which include chair exercises for those with arthritis, are a good place to begin.

Final memo before Christmas on Tuesday with one more place to attack when we’re aging with a vengeance.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Planning Your Infrastructure Upgrade

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In order to give you some ideas to help you focus on your body’s infrastructure, I’m going to share my list. I’ll give you my issues and why I feel they’re problems for me; I hope that will stimulate your thinking so you can determine your infrastructure upgrades for 2021. I don’t know that I can accomplish all of them in a single year, but I do know I can make a good start, and that’s what I’m hoping you will do as well.

Increase Muscle Mass

If there’s one getting-older issue that I completely underestimated, it’s the loss of muscle mass. It just sort of crept up on me and while I can’t quantify it in terms of pounds or percentage, I know I’ve lost strength in my upper body, and my legs seem to be a shadow of their former selves. Part of the reason that my legs lost so much mass, I believe, is directly tied to my inability to run consistently. I have no idea when I’ll be able to run freely again, if ever, so strength training is going to be critical to increase strength if not mass.

Improve Skin Quality

I have to confess that I never examine my skin. I don’t spend a lot of time looking at my face in the mirror, and I ignore my arms completely. But lately I’ve noticed that my skin is thinner and a slight scrape against the door frame that doesn’t even hurt can leave a huge purple spot. I’m not trying to recreate the quality of skin I had in my 20s, but I know it can be better than it is. (Has anyone in my household been nagging me about this for years? Um, maybe.)

Decrease Body Fat

The one that drives me crazy is the increase in body fat around my waist. I weigh 45 pounds less than my highest body weight ever, yet my waist circumference is greater now than it was then. The reasons are complicated, from the loss of muscle mass reducing metabolic rate to the gradual reduction in hormones as I get older. I know that there’s no such thing as spot reduction, and I don’t know if the general rule “you lose it first from where you put it on last” applies as you get older. But aside from increasing muscle mass, this one is just not acceptable and is a priority for me.

Increase Bone Mass

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I have osteopenia. In fact, I’m one-tenth of a Z-score from having osteoporosis. I have improved my vitamin D and calcium intake since my last bone-density test. I’ll find out in April whether that has resulted in any change. I’m not interested in continuing to be the amazing shrinking man, so this is an internal infrastructure change that must happen in 2021.

Improve Posture and Balance

This one seems a lot less obvious, but it’s still critical to overall health. Why? Because working on improving posture now, which means resetting the resting “tone” of the postural muscles will help with balance as we get older, and balance is critical if we hope to make it to an advanced age. The inner ear is part of it, but our ability to be able to move and do the things that we want to do can be dramatically impacted by poor balance. The modifications in muscle mass and fat mass, as well as bone mass, will have an impact, but it’s also critical to specifically work on posture and balance movements as well.

The Bottom Line

There you have it: my infrastructure plan for 2021. I’ve begun working on some, but there’s still research to read to find better solutions. That will include different approaches to exercise, whether weight training, stretching, or aerobic exercise. There could be specific dietary approaches that apply rather than just cutting calories. Supplementing with nutrient isolates and specific dietary supplements may also be part of the solution.

How about you? You may have cholesterol and HbA1c that needs to get lowered, cardiac output that needs to increase, and a microbiome overhaul; maybe you need to build strength in specific areas to compensate for arthritis and loss of cartilage.

Identify your three to five areas and write them down. As the year progresses, I’ll share the solutions I’ve found with you because my goal hasn’t changed: to help you become the best version of yourself. Specify where you want to go and let’s get started.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet

Improve Your Posture

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Today is the final post about the physical factors of living and not just being alive, and it’s about your posture, the way you carry yourself. Posture reflects the interplay of your skeletal, muscular, and nervous system: the way you stand, the way you move, and the way you sit. Those all rely on the interaction of the three systems. The key is that we have to train those systems to consciously respond to the way we want to stand or sit until they become automatic.

I was overweight as a kid. One of the things I did was hold my stomach in so I didn’t appear to be so fat. It stuck. I don’t know what it’s like to relax my abs because it seems unnatural to do so. Here’s a secret: you can look five to ten pounds lighter just by holding your abs in and your shoulders back. You also can be taller by training your core to keep your stomach in and training your shoulders to hold your head erect.

There’s a lot going against us. Sofas are soft to sink into, and we do. Even our car seats can make it harder to hold our shoulders back. We are always looking at our cell phones, so we see teens developing the cell-phone hump, which looks a lot like the dowager hump. And even if we stand or sit straight, it may all fall apart when we work or exercise. Do you bend at the waist to pick up a package? Do you run hunched over? Especially when you lift weights, it’s important to get the posture correct so you’re training the correct muscles in the correct movement; that’s why it’s good to have a trainer or physical therapist to help you get started. And by the way, that’s the real reason for the walls of mirrors at the gym.

How do you stand tall? Sit tall? Practice. Once you get the correct posture, you have to keep practicing it until it becomes automatic. We have to fight our nature to slouch standing or sitting. You just have to keep practicing until it becomes automatic. It can impact just about every organ in your body, including your bones. That’s where we’ll pick this up next week.

What are you prepared to do today?

        Dr. Chet