Last weekend, I listened to a podcast that featured Dr. Vonda Wright, MD who is an orthopedic surgeon and longevity expert who spoke about our choice to do nothing and become frail as we age, or to implement mobility activity so we can retain and build muscle and bone mass. It was woth sharing.
After listening, I immediately began implementing the first of the four types of movement that Dr. Wright said are essential to maintaining a vibrant lifestyle as we age. By this weekend, I had implemented the first steps of all of them. Dr. Wright uses the acronym “F.A.C.E” to represent each of four types of essential movement, so I have dubbed my daily appointment with myself to do these as “FACEtime”.
The podcast began with Dr. Wright talking about her experiences interacting her older hospitalized patients who had fallen and broken their hip, and the reality that of those who break a hip, 30% will die. Dr. Wright’s passion is that this outcome is not inevitable. It can be prevented but it takes a conscious effort and a belief that we are worth the effort that it takes to avoid becoming frail as we age.
Dr. Wright highlighted the difference between lifespan and health span, and that while we are all going to get older, we do not need to become frail. She said that women, on average in the U.S. live to age 80, and men to 76.4 but life expectancy does not equal health span. She pointed out that many times, the last 20 years of a person’s life is spent going to a doctor’s office three times a week in a steady decline, but that it does not have to be this way!
We don’t need to be the victims of the passage of time that we will all succumb to if we are not intentional. We don’t need to become breakable and frail — we can apply the “medicine of mobility” to pursue a different way to age.
Dr. Wright talked about “Sedentary Death Syndrome” which are the 33 chronic diseases that kill people in the U.S., including obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart attack and stroke, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and osteoporosis — and that are directly treated by moving. Yes, we can take a pill for high blood pressure, or to lower our blood sugars if we have diabetes, but moving is the medicine that positively affects all of these. Layering Dr. Wright ‘s simple method for mobility on top of a diet that targets sufficient amounts of highly bioavailable protein and the amino acid leucine (both required to initiate muscle synthesis) rounds out the picture for aging well.
Dr. Wright points out that while there are health issues we cannot control, our lifestyle (both diet and exercise) can positively impact many things, including the health of our mitochondria (the energy of cells), the number of senescent cells that circulate, (so-called “zombie cells”), as well as the level of inflammation in our body. We do not have to be the victims of the passage of time.
Dr. Wright emphasized that if we want to feel better now, then that is an action step. Reading more about what could happen to us and putting the book aside won’t accomplish our goal. What is required to to take action to change the trajectory of the future, or else become a victim of the passage of time.
Dr. Wright who is also a researcher said that our understanding of aging is skewed because the studies that indicate a steady decline as we age were done with a study population of people that didn’t move much. Statistics show that 70% of Americans (and she said this is quite similar around the world) don’t do any form of mobility, or exercise in a day. What we know from these large-scale population studies is what happens if we don’t move. This really hit home with me. There are many days that I am working at my desk from early morning and even if I use a standing desk, I have been sedentary far too much during the week.
But what happens if we do move? What if we take sedentary living out of the occasion?
Dr. Wright’s research has found that if 35-40-year-olds — up to seniors in their 90s continue to be active their entire lives, they can maintain their bone mass, muscle mass, and cognitive function. She feels that age 35-45 is the best time to “course-correct” and choose an active lifestyle, because careers have usually been chosen, and family life is more established, and this is before things begin to change at age 45 for women (and to a lesser extent for men) due to the hormonal changes of perimenopause.
The most encouraging thing Dr. Wright said was that it is not too late for those of us over the age of 45 who have been sedentary for too many years.
“There is no age or skill level where the strategic stress we put on our body in the form of mobility, strength training, and smart nutrition will not dramatically change the trajectory of your health.”
Dr. Wright said we can take steps to change the fact that we have been sedentary, to feel better and be healthier. Since our primary skill as humans is walking, even if we can’t do anything else yet, she encourages people to start by walking around the block. We don’t need to start by walking 5 miles. We just need to get up from our seated position, and move.
This is life-changing. We expect to get frail because we expect to slow down and stop moving, but that is backward. We need to expect to keep moving because our bodies are designed that way.
So what does movement “look like” — regardless of our age?
Dr. Wright uses the acronym “F.A.C.E.” to describe the four types of movement we should all be doing to maintain a vibrant lifestyle, and on which we can layer other types of activity or sports.
F.A.C.E. stands for:
F– Flexibility
A– Aerobic exercise
C– Carry a load
E– Equilibrium
Dr. Wright’s philosophy is that we need to incorporate these four types of exercise into our daily lives to “FACE our future” as we age.
Flexibility is required to keep from becoming stiff and this involves regularly moving our joints through their full range of motion. If we don’t, our tendons and ligaments continue to become tighter and tighter. We need to invest in making it not so. Two examples Dr. Wright gives for flexiblity activities are Pilates and yoga, but she mentioned that there are other types of flexiblity programs available online.
Aerobic exercise – we must invest in a healthy cardiovascular system and this does not mean high intensity excercise all the time, and it also does not mean working out in a mid-range all the time (which Dr. Wright feels is an easy way to get injured).
Dr. Wright recommends walking for 3 hours per week, broken into four 45-minute sessions. Then twice a week, after doing a walk, she recommends finishing by sprinting as fast as we can for 30 seconds, then letting our heart rate back down, then doing it again for a total of 4 times. As we age, we need these intense bursts of activity to stimulate muscle and bone building. Yes, it is grueling to move that fast, but it is only 30 seconds! Alternatively, the 45 minutes of activity and 30 seconds of high-intensity exercise done four times, twice a week can be on a bike, an alpine, a rower, or a treadmill.
Of course, we don’t have to start by doing it all the first week! If we are just getting into this, we can start with walking 4 times for 45 minutes and sprinting the last 30 seconds once. Then the next week, add a next layer.
Carry a load – it can be done at home with ordinary heavy objects, such as doing a farmer’s carry with two jugs of water across the front yard. Women especially need to lift heavy objects in midlife and by age 50 because when we enter peri-menopause, we no longer have estrogen stimulating our muscles to grow, and we don’t want to become the 1 in 3 women that ends up frail.
We must build muscle mass by lifting heavy. When Dr. Wright says “heavy” she means we must be able to lift our own body weight for a minimum of 2x / week. We all need to be able to do at least 11 regular push-ups (NOT on our knees) and then progressively load the weights to do bench presses, and deadlifts, as well as pull-ups.
Why is lifting weights important?
Aside from being able to get out of a chair, or off the toilet as we age, lifting heavy enables us to produce a longevity protein called Klotho. Dr. Wright has conducted studies and found that 70-year-olds who put loads on their muscles regularly produced more Klotho than 35 year-olds who were sedentary. That’s encouraging!
E– Equilibrium and foot speed – Can we balance? Can we move our feet quickly to avoid an obstacle in our pather and avoid falling?
According to Dr. Wright, starting at age 20, we begin to lose the some of the muscle required to balance well, so being able to stand on one foot while we brush our teeth, for example, or quickly step on and off a step will enable us to stay upright and not fall, as we age.
Final Thoughts…
“FACE time” is easy to implement into our lives which is what makes it perfect. All that is required is to make the commitment, and set aside a time to do it. We make appointments with others; this is an appointment we make with ourselves to invest in our present- and future selves.
With the recent time change, it is daylight in the morning which makes it much easier to get up an hour earlier to go for a walk, come home and shower and head to work.
If a 45 minute walk is too challenging to do at first, start with twenty minutes. Since the goal is to do 3 hours per week in four 45 minute increments, doing 3 hours over shorter sessions will get any of us over the excuse that we can’t do it. Starting is more important than getting the program perfect right away.
The first few weeks don’t have to have the four 30-second sprints at the end of a walk, but we need to plan to add them. The first time can be as one 30-second sprint after one of the walks, and then we can build up from there, adding a second, then a third, and a fourth.
Walking 4 days per week makes it easy to set two other days per week to carry a load, and we can be either be systematic about stretching daily, working a different area of our body each day, or we can follow a program. Equilibrium activities can be as easy as standing on one foot while brushing our teeth (one Dr. Wright suggests) then standing on the other leg the following day, or getting in and out of our pants or pajama bottoms standing on one foot. It’s easy to come up with foot speed activities using a step or a hula hoop ring on the floor.
Like changing how we eat, we don’t have to do get it all perfect the first week. All we need to do is commit to changing, and have a roadmap for successfully implementing it. I think Dr. Wright’s method dovetails well with my approach to designing Meal Plans for peri-menopausal women, as well as older men and women which focuses on eating to retain and build muscle and bone mass.
If you would like to know more about how I can support you, please feel free to have a look at the landing page.
To your good health,
Joy
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Reference
- The Mel Robbins Podcast – “Look, Feel and Stay Younger” with orthopedic surgeon, Dr. Vonda Wright, MD