How to Prevent Muscle Loss as You Age: Why Muscle Is Medicine

Yeah. >> All right. And we're live. Let's go. Welcome everyone. All right. We're just gonna hang out here for a minute before we get going. Uh I think we had like 50 or so people register for this one. So, um yeah, we'll just wait for everyone to roll in. It is now 4:45. While we're waiting for everybody, uh for those who are live with us right now, um one of the things that makes these so much fun is when we get to interact with the audience because we're doing this live. So, if you want to comment where you're joining us from, whether you're Maine, New Hampshire, or somewhere else, we'd love to know where you guys are from. Appreciate you taking time out of your day to learn about your health. Such an important thing. Um, Colin, how was your day, man? Were you seeing patients today? >> Uh, oh, yeah. Um, it was a very busy Monday. Mondays are always really busy, which seems weird because everybody's working, but Monday's always a busy day. So, I had a full day, a lot of happy people, which was nice. >> Nice. >> Um, a lot of follow-ups. Yeah. A lot of good good cases, a lot of happy people. That's what we like. So >> yeah. Yeah. You're you're >> what is it? So this must be seven months for you at Med Matrix now. >> I joined Med Matrix in December, early December of last year. So it's like Yeah. Eight months, I guess. >> Yeah. >> The eighth month. >> Yeah. It's crazy. Time flies. Yeah. >> And this is when you're starting to see really exciting patient outcomes, right? At this time period, you have enough time for >> Yeah. Yeah. because you're starting after like the six-month mark is when people are really diving in. So, a lot of good follow-ups, a lot of good new patients. Um, but after when patients start care, you know, at 3 to 6 months, they're starting to notice a lot of change. At 6 months, you know, they've lost a good bit of weight. They're changing their whole routine. I mean, there's a lot of change that's happened at this point. So, a lot of really cool cases, a lot of good outcomes, which is really exciting. >> Yeah, it's exciting. We've been seeing so many um patient case studies, testimonials coming through. All right, that's two minutes. So, if you're if you're late, um too bad. Let's get right into it. So, today's going to be a super exciting one. Um what if one of the most powerful tools for aging well is not another medication trend or quick fix, but the muscle you build and protect every day? So many people think strength training is only about looking toned, looking good, losing weight, or staying active, but muscle plays a much bigger role in how the body ages. So, in this episode of the MedMatrix Method, we're breaking down why muscle is medicine. We'll talk about how strength impacts metabolism, blood sugar, inflammation, bone health, hormone function, energy, mobility, and long-term independence and health. So, muscle clearly affects a lot of things. We'll also get into why losing muscle can quietly affect aging, why the scale does not tell the full story, and how functional medicine, how the functional medicine approach helps patients protect strength from the inside out. We're going to be going today through real strategies that we use in the clinic every day to help patients preserve and build muscle mass. Um, so yeah, welcome to MedM podcast, uh, where we talk about everything functional medicine. Today's episode is called muscles medicine, why strength is the key to aging well. And we've been looking forward to talking about this one because it's something we see all the time. We talk about muscle every day in the clinic. Patients who are focused on weight loss, fatigue, joint pain, metabolism, or aging, but have been told how important muscle is to the full picture. We're going to be talking about today. So, I'm excited to be joined today by one of our lead functional medicine providers, Colin Renard, who is going to break down what patients should actually understand about muscle strength, metabolism, and all that. Um, so here's how today's episode is going to go. If you're joining us for the first time, first we're going to start with discussion. We're going to talk about the conventional approach, the functional approach, real strategies. Um, if you guys have questions as we go along, make sure to drop them in the comments below because after that, we're going to do real patient case studies and then we're going to do live Q&A with the amount of time we have left. And that's always my favorite part. Uh just a reminder before we get started, this episode is for educational purposes only. This is not meant to be personal medical advice and it should not replace the care from your own medical provider. If you are interested in receiving personalized medical guidance from one of our providers, we'd love to help you. You can go to our website, book a discovery call, and start the process of becoming a patient. All right, let's get started. Um Colin, why don't you introduce yourself for those who may not know you? >> Yeah, sure, Cole. Um I, like you said, I'm Colin Bernard. one of the lead clinicians at MedM Matrix. I have a unique background in um various disciplines. I um have a background in chiropractic medicine and natural medicine. Uh I am licensed in practice medicine as a PA at Med Matrix. And I uh am multiple board certified in anti-aging medicine, uh natural medicine, and um in nutrition. And I also am fellowship trained in anti-aging and functional medicine. So, I've been doing this a little over 10 years now. Um, I've been really excited about this topic. I mean, I'm a bodybuilder. Muscle is like a huge part of the conversation with all my patients. The studies are overwhelmingly positive about how, and we can talk about the specifics, but how muscle mass improves your longevity, makes you live longer. So, I think this is a really important topic for our audience, and it's something qu people ask all the time. Um, when we talk about exercise, you know, how do I exercise? What should I be doing? So I think this is a really important topic. >> Fantastic. Yeah, I'm excited. Yeah. >> So when you say muscle is like super important, muscle is medicine, what do you want patients to understand about that? >> So why we say that muscle is medicine essentially is it is not just an appearance thing. I mean it partially but um muscle affects metabolism. It affects blood sugar regulation. It affects your mobility. it affects your strength, your bone health, um, and how resilient your body really is when it ages. Um, there's been, as I said before, there's been studies that show that, um, especially for certain populations over a over a certain age, like for example, women over 60, if you increase your muscle mass, you can decrease your risk of death by so much percent over so many years. Um, and there there's multiple studies that show that having a having higher muscle mass is an independent survival factor. Basically, the higher your fitness level, um, you will live longer no matter what other coorbidities are going on. Uh, so having an increased muscle mass is almost like a longevity organ uh to what you can do to preserve and prevent I guess prevent death. Not that that's preventable, but extend it and make it not as not happen as fast. So, it's something we talk about with I do anyway and all the clinicians in the practice do. We talk about muscle mass all the time because unfortunately it's something that people aren't necessarily I don't want to say they're lacking. It's just something that people Well, they are, but it's not something that's at the forefront of a lot of people's minds, especially at a certain age. And people just don't >> they might not know how to even build muscle mass. Like what does that even mean? Especially sometimes >> for women it's like well I don't want to look like a you know I don't whatever. It's like nah it's not necessarily about that. Um it's about having a certain amount of mass you know buried in there so that you're keeping healthy. So >> totally. Yeah. I'm so excited today to get into like the actual strategies behind building muscle >> for myself personally, but also [laughter] like I think a lot of patients like um they're trying to do the right thing at the gym. They know muscle important but there's actually I mean you've clearly >> not only deeply understand it as a function medicine provider but also personally in your life. Um just looking at your jack. So [laughter] >> why does So like okay you're saying like muscle is important as you get older but like what is actually happening like physiologically, chemically, biologically that like makes muscle so important? >> Yeah. So um muscle becomes really important as people age because it can become hard to build muscle as we age and it's easier to lose it as we age. So, this can affect people's strength. It can affect people's energy, their balance, um their independence. That's a big thing. We just had a podcast the uh last week with my colleague Dr. Rose um in the who's in the practice. And we were talking about muscle issues from like an aging perspective. And one of the biggest issues we run into as a society amongst the elderly is weakness. As you age, right, you're in your 70s, your 80s, your muscle mass significantly declines and your uh independence can decline with that, right? You're you're prone to falling. You know, a lot of people as they age or elderly, if they fall and break something, that could be the end of their independence altogether. Um especially in the elderly population, you know, if you break a hip at a certain age, it's very hard to recover from that. So, what we're trying to do is educate people on understanding what this means. This isn't necessarily aesthetic. This is, you know, when you're 70, 80 years old, you have proper balance, right? You can move around and function in the world and not be worried about a potential fall that could completely ruin your independence for the rest of your life, however long that is. Um, so we try to address these things early, right, while people are midlife or earlier, so that they understand what this means as they age. So that's a big big important part of what we're what we're talking about. Yeah, >> things like osteoporosis, things like um osteopenia which is you know essentially the bone matrix is becoming less fragile uh or more fragile and then like I said independence falls all that stuff is really important. >> Yeah. So what what actually happens as you age that leads to muscle mass like what's happening on a physiological level that makes it harder to maintain muscle mass as you get older? >> Yeah, one of the biggest things is it's a nutrition problem. So uh when people are not eating the right food, eating enough protein, eating enough of the nutrients that you need to actually maintain muscle mass and then one of the other things is hormone decline. So men and women's hormones decline as we age and the hormones are really important for maintaining the m the muscle mass at sort of a microscopic level. Um and then unfortunately lack of physical activity. So if people aren't doing any type of resistance training, you know, in older years or middle middle age and beyond, it can significantly impact your muscle metabolism where you're just actually putting on fat. You just continuously are putting on fat and your body fat percentage goes up and up and up and up. >> Um, and the any muscle you do have becomes very fragile, very weak. Uh, you know, I see patients in their 50s and 60s and it's like, "Yeah, I don't have the best mobility and like my balance is off and blah blah blah." It's like gosh, you could live another 30 years and your balance is already starting to be a problem. So, this is where we need to educate people on the changes uh that happen early on. >> Yeah. >> So, yeah. >> Yeah. And I think part of the problem is like data, right? So, like what does the scale because people just step on a scale? Most scales aren't going to tell you you're >> no muscle mass. It's obvious. It's something that's not super commonly talked about. when you go to your, you know, your primary, they're not looking at your muscle mass, per se. Um, like what does the scale normally miss? Like what what are the numbers that people should be looking at? >> Well, the scale misses just what your body composition looks like. So, uh, for example, as a new patient at MedMatrix, we are always doing a full body composition analysis from the get-go, and we do it repeatedly as you go through care. And what our composition looks at is a lot of different parameters from actually what you weigh, which you know it's important, but it looks at how much body fat do you have, how much muscle mass do you have, how much water do you have. And the reason why those things are important is because when you translate weight into just a number, it is a formulation of a lot of different variables, not just just how much mass do you have, right? For example, me, I am technically overweight for my height and how much I weigh because I am of a certain amount of muscle mass. Um, so it's important to understand those parameters because it's important to understand where people's risk factors come from, right? How much visceral fat do you have? How much body fat percentage do you have compared to muscle? All of that plays into our our understanding of treatment. And it could also um change as treatment is initiated, right? From hormones to something like a weight loss medication, all of these things will have an effect on on on mass and muscle mass. So we need to understand all those parameters. >> Yeah. Let's talk about some of those things that actually affect mass. So >> first one being um the lifestyle side of things. So like what in your opinion, it's kind of a trick question. What affects muscle mass more, nutrition or exercise? >> [sighs] >> Um, I always say I've said this for years, you can't you can't exercise away a poor diet, >> right? >> But if you don't do resistance training, it's very hard to build muscle mass. But if you're so let's take for example not to give my case study away but let's take for example a male with low testosterone say he's 50 something um his muscle mass will decline quicker because his hormones are low. if he optimizes his testosterone, he could build muscle mass with proper nutrition without resistance training just because of the met metabolism of the way the hormone works on the body. So, it's really hard to say which is like which came first, the chicken or the egg kind of thing. It all kind of goes together, but it really does depend on the patient and the objectives like hormones, the bio the biioarkers, right? Um, and people don't need to do a lot of exercise either to make change. Like there was a study, I don't remember what year this came out, but there was a study published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine that said, and this is kind of one of the bases of how we understand muscle metabolism, that you need only 90 to 120 minutes a week of resistance training to reduce your um what we call all cause all cause mortality, which means dying of anything by about 15%. So if you don't do anything else different from your health from a health perspective but do resistance training for three hours a week you will live for 15% long your your cause of death will reduce by about 15% from any any cause. Um so there's huge amounts of benefit in that but again if you're not supporting it with the nutrition that's hard too. It's a It's a really delicate balance. It's a hard question to to pinpoint. It depends on the age, too. It's a huge factor. >> Yeah, totally. Well, you talked about testosterone for a second. You talked about how like a man with optimal testosterone sounds like at any age is going to have a lot easier of a time building muscle, and testosterone is just as important in females as it is males, right? >> Um, [clears throat] how does testosterone play a role in building muscle mass for men and women? Yeah, I mean we can sort of broaden the topic too and just say hormones affecting people as we age and we can talk about testosterone specifically, but testosterone, estrogen, and and specifically thyroid hormones, things like insulin too, which controls your blood sugar, um all influence muscle recovery, the metabolism of the body and strength. So, hormone changes, specifically as we age, can make muscle harder to maintain and um it can be something that needs to that should be evaluated early on. In my clinical opinion, we shouldn't wait until it's low or people are symptomatic. I think we should be checking hormone levels. People are 30 and beyond just to be proactive about it. But testosterone specifically for men and women is going to promote muscle metabolism and fat loss. So, especially if you're a man, if you're trying to lose that weight around your midsection, if you have low testosterone or just try to reduce your body fat per altogether, if you have low testosterone, it's going to be very hard for you to do because your body is not in the muscle building mode that it needs to be. It's really in the fat storage mode. Uh, so like I said before, you know, if you don't have hormones on board and you're trying to work out in the gym and you're trying to eat well, you might not be building muscle at all. And I hear that from a lot of guys in their 40s, 50s, 60s, like I've been in the gym for like five years and I still look the same. Like, why do I look the same? Why am I not jacked like these other people? Well, because your hormones are not helping you build the muscle. So, there's a lot of variables. Uh, but hormones are extremely important. >> Yeah. What about um everyone's favorite hormone to talk about which is your stress cortisol? How can >> Yeah. How does how does stress and because everyone has their like opinions about cortisol and a lot of them aren't very educated. So what's the real real about like how your cortisol affects and stress affects >> I mean stress affects everything but chronic stress works against strength and recovery because it it does a lot of things. It can disrupt sleep. It increases inflammation. It affects your blood sugar significantly. And um chronic stress raises cortisol. Cortisol is one of your major stress response hormones. And what this can basically do is it can reduce your body's ability to recover appropriately. And also it makes your hearty to it makes it harder for your body to repair itself and build muscle essentially. So the whole world it seems is chronically stressed and so many of our patients are and um if you can't dial in the stress part, it can be also really hard for a muscle metabolism perspective to to make that work. So you could be doing all the right things, diet, lifestyle, you're in the gym, hormones, but if stress is not there, you're going to miss a huge part of it. So unfortunately that's that's where people are I don't want to say failing, you know, but they're just not succeeding, right? People's diets aren't adequate, their hormones are not adequate, they're stressed out to the max. So when we talk about trying to help people get healthy, it's not a one variable uh system that we have to control. It's really multiple things. We have to talk about their sleep, we have to talk about their stress, we have to talk about diet, we have to talk about hormones because it all works together. Your body is supposed to function that way uh by working together. So with something like stress, you could have all of the variables right, but if the stress is bad, it's it's a tough tough cell. >> Yeah. Gotcha. >> Yeah. >> Um some other things that what what would you say the other really important things that are going to affect your ability to build muscle? We talked about nutrition, exercise, we talked about your hormones, testosterone. What else can really affect someone's ability to gain muscle? >> Other things that affect someone's ability to gain muscle um can be really simple in terms of like nutrition, like not eating enough protein could be an issue. Um if they're lifting in the gym is not appropriate. So, if they're not lifting to actually stimulate muscle fibers, um they're doing too much cardio, right? It's which is going to just burn calories and you're not going to build muscle that way. Um sleep. Sleep's a big one. If you're not sleeping well, we did a whole podcast on sleep. We should probably do more, but basically sleep is when your body recovers overnight and it repairs itself. So, if you're not giving yourself that repairerative ability, that's you're you're kind of out there, too. um if you're not regulating your blood sugar, you know, if you're pre-diabetic or have diabetes, that's going to impair muscle building as well. And then um we talk a lot about on this podcast inflammation. So inflammation can just be a broad term of the body's inflamed from poor diet, from blood sugar issues, from stress, and that's a really that's another big part of what uh what can impair muscle metabolism. So there's a lot of different parameters and unfortunately it all kind of has to line up and I think that's where patients are struggling is so many of these variables are not lining up and they're just struggling to understand why they can't change their body composition, lose fat andor build muscle. >> Yeah. Can you talk more about inflammation? like the kind of simple this causes this which causes that explanation of like how inflammation leads to or making it harder to put on muscle. >> Yeah. I mean inflammation can make it harder to put on muscle because it can really affect uh recovery which is a big one. It can cause a lot of pain. So if you're inflamed and you don't feel good, you know, your joints hurt, your muscles hurt, your back hurts all the time, right? if you're overweight, who's going to want to work out? Um, and also it can affect significantly the repairative property, repair the repairative ability of tissue. So, if tissues are constantly inflamed, it can be very hard for you to kind of get that restorative nature that the body needs to build to build muscle mass. >> Yeah. Okay. Um, let's talk about kind of what a lot of people are maybe experiencing right now. Where does the conventional care often miss the muscle conversation? >> Yeah, I think I think they just don't have it. The the conventional the conventional care model just does not talk about muscle mass. Um well, maybe they do in certain settings, right? If this is orthopedic medicine, if it's sports medicine, um rehab medicine, physical therapy is going to talk about muscle metabolism, is going to talk about muscle mass when it when it comes to functionality, especially in say the geriatric or older patient population. But I think from a from a baseline, most most people are not going to their primary care doctor to have a discussion about muscle mass. It probably very rarely happens. Um, patients are probably often told to lose weight or move more, right? Exercise, quote unquote, whatever that means. Um, but there's not a really good understanding of what that means for the patient, right? What does exercise mean? Right, Cole? If I said you need to exercise more, I don't I don't know. Does it mean walk? Do I need to run a marathon? Do I need to, you know, bench 350 at a, you know, on a chest press at the gy? Like, what does that mean? And the other thing that's really lacking too from a conventional medical perspective is the emphasis on nutrition. Uh the emphasis on protein intake, the emphasis on insulin resistance, uh hormones affecting muscle mass, sleep affecting muscle mass, and then also recovery. So these are things that we do really well at Med Matrix because we understand all of the parameters in order for a patient to optimize their goals from a body composition perspective. And it's just not part of the standard approach from the conventional side of things because we've said on the podcast many times it's we do not disrespect our conventional medical um colleagues. We have the utmost respect for we are not anti- anything but we just don't feel that the conventional medical system does a well enough job of proactive aging as I call it or longevity aware aware awareness and things like that. >> Yeah. Okay. >> Yeah. Totally. Um, let's [clears throat] let's talk about something that's like been a hot topic lately, which is trying to lose weight or weight loss without thinking about muscle. I'm kind of like hinting at GLP1s because I think that's to a lot of people is they're losing weight muscle and that leads to a lot of problems. So, what what's going on with that? People trying to lose weight without paying attention to muscle. What's what's happening? >> Yeah. And the GLP ones are a big part of this. So you know if you are a weight loss first approach person and you are not worried about muscle mass when that is uh as a part of the equation um you may become weaker, you may be more metabolically fragile which means that you don't have a lot of resilience. Um, and the ability for the body to regain weight is much more likely, especially if we're talking about a GLP-1. Um, we've done podcasts on the GLP1s like Tzepide or semiglutide. Um, so what can happen is is if people are just trying to lose weight and you're not focused on what type of weight, right? Because weight is just when you look at the scale, this goes back to our conversation a few minutes ago of like why is body composition really important versus just a number on a scale. If you're measuring just numbers on a scale and oh I lost 10 pounds. Well, what is that 10 pounds? Is it fat? Is it water? Is it inflammation? Is it muscle? You know, we have to understand all those parameters because we want to lose fat, right? We don't want to lose muscle. We don't want to lose the bad stuff. We want to keep the good stuff and lose the bad stuff. So, um, that's a huge part of what we talk about when we talk about weight loss. Well, I do and I know my colleagues do is really trying to make sure we're losing weight the right way. We're losing fat weight. We're losing visceral fat or the fat in your abdomen and and we're preserving muscle so that people can can be strong and maybe hopefully potentially get stronger as they lose weight. Yeah, >> totally. Okay. Um, sweet. Now, let's let's talk about functional medicine and like kind of >> Yeah. real strategy. So, how do you how does functional medicine look at muscle mass and building muscle differently? >> Yeah. So, functional medicine the functional medicine approach to muscle and strength is really different because we look at the whole system as I've sort of alluded to this a few times already. We're looking at nutrition. How much protein do you get a day? How much should you get a day based on your age, your gender? Um, we're looking at strength training, right? And we have resources in our clinic to help people understand strength training better. Um, I mean, I'm not I'm not a trainer. I know a lot about it, but only for myself. But we do have resources in the clinic that can help people get set up with understanding strength training better because that is a huge piece of why this is not successful for people. They don't know how to work out or they go to the gym and they hop on the elliptical for an hour. Nope, don't want you to do that. Um, we want you to lift things, but they just don't know how. They don't know how to get started. They don't want to hurt themselves. So, having that knowledge is really important. Um, and that's not necessarily a functional medicine perspective. That's just understanding that it's an important part of muscle building is how to how to do it from a from a weight training perspective. Um, a huge a huge part of the functional medicine approach across the board is hormone optimization. You know, whether you're at Med Matrix or some other functional medicine clinic around the country um or anywhere is probably hormones are going to be addressed. Um, that's a big one. Also, thyroid, how well your metabolism works is really important. Um, also your blood sugar, how well that's going, how well that's working. And like I said, some of the things we talk about with all patients from sleep to stress to gut health to nutrient status, your body composition, um, and then how well you recover. So those are all things that we're doing from our perspective and those are all questions that we ask at the very first visit with patients. We get all these parameters right from the beginning so we can really understand what needs to be improved and it to start educating people on how it affects their goals. Yeah. Okay. So, you said something that's interesting versus like men versus women and how it's different. I also imagine that what you're going to recommend to patients based on their age might be different, but I also might be wrong. >> So, we'll we'll play a little game. What we'll go through like decade and gender and then what your favorite size is for that general type of patient. >> Oh, okay. >> For like a patient in their like let's start all the way at the beginning. Patient in their 20s trying muscle mass. what what do you think the best types of exercise are for them? >> Um, for the younger generation, men and women, anything full body. You know, you're doing your upper body, your arms, your shoulders, you're building your back, your legs. Um, there was a study done, I don't remember when, but basically said the stronger your legs are, the longer you will live. So, strong legs. So, in young life, strong legs. Because the stronger your legs in young life, the more mobility you will have in older life. It's harder to develop strong legs in older life. And that's where we see hip fractures and falls and things, >> right? And it's also, isn't there something to be said too about once you build muscle, it's not only easier to keep, but it's also rebuild. >> Easier, right? Once it's there, it's easier to maintain and it's easier to build upon and it protects you longer. And if you lose some of it, right, it's easier to build up again because your body has the memory of it being there. >> Yeah. >> So, it takes a long time for it to get there, but once it's there, it helps you and it can help you. You know, if you were to have some sort of tragic accident, you were in a car accident, you needed rehab, you would rebuild it faster than if it wasn't there to begin with. >> Yeah. >> Lose it. >> Pretty interesting, right? All right. What about patients, men, women in their 30s? >> 30s, same thing. Full body stuff. um focusing on upper body strength, focusing on lower body strength, focusing on balance is also really important. So I often for myself too but I often see trainers in this age group 30s 40s working with people to do single arm stuff like single side whether it's you know working on shoulders, arms, back from one side of the body. Same thing with legs because what it does is it builds balance. It starts to incorporate some of the really small muscles around your joints that help keep your balance, help keep you balanced, and also your spinal muscles and your abdominal muscles. Keeps everything in balance. So, that's important. >> Okay. Um, when does it when would you change the style of workout to go from full body balance focus? When do you start changing that, if ever? So, you don't really ever start changing it, but um when people are elderly, you have to be more focused on how much weight you're moving around. And then also balance is really important in the elderly if they have good balance. So, if they've worked on it, it's important to work on it more. But you want to in the elderly, you want to be focusing on um smaller movements that don't have as much potential for risk or you know falls or things like that. Um I see in my gym women in their 80s and they're like squatting and it's like yes, I want to be that person. Um but they have a really good foundation. So, if you are of an older age, like 65, beyond, and you're trying to build muscle, you really want to be focused on the smaller muscle groups, you know, biceps, triceps, um, focusing on your lower body, but doing it with more of your own body weight until you develop some some strength in there. Um, >> so you really need to work with someone to really understand. Um, this is where you're not trying to heavy deadlift and like lift heavy. You know, in your 20s and 30s, 40s, you can lift really heavy and kind of go for it if you have the foundation for it. But as we age, it's really about function. It's about, you know, the function of the muscle, utilizing the function of the muscle, not trying to like bust a gut when you're 70 years old >> deadlifting, you know, hundreds of pounds. So, >> yeah. When is when is enough muscle enough? or is it? >> No such thing. Well, that's for me anyway. But um muscle you can I don't know. This is where I forget the the the the biology of it, but you lose you can lose like a couple percent of muscle in only a few days if you're not maintaining it. So muscle building is a constant effort and it might not necessarily be building more but maintaining what you have because like I said if you're not keeping up with the resistance training and the dietary intake over the course of your lifetime you will lose. You know you you're if you work out in the gym cons consistently you'll go on like a week vacation two week vacation you don't work out at all and you come home and it's like oh my gosh I'm so weak. Yeah, because you have lost some muscle mass in that short period of time. So, you can lose it very quickly. So, keeping up with the maintenance part is also really important. >> Yeah, totally. >> Yeah. Okay. So, let's go let's go back to like some of the more um fancy functional medicine stuff. So lab lab what are like lab markers or specialty tests that can kind of give us an indication into um how easy it is for someone to build muscle. >> Yeah. So um some of the common laboratory analysis that you do to understand muscle metabolism in general is uh blood sugar markers. Things like fasting insulin. Insulin is the hormone that controls your blood sugar. um your fasting glucose, which is actually your blood sugar. Uh there's something called a hemoglobin A1C, which basically tells us how well you control your blood sugar over a couple of months at a time. Um I mentioned this before, but understanding your thyroid. Um your thyroid gland is basically the control center of your metabolism. That's really important. And then also looking at your hormone markers, we've talked about that a few times. You know, testosterone, estrogen, progesterone in both men and women. Um, nutrient markers are really important, too. Vitamin D, vitamin B12, iron, ferotin, really, really important nutrients for building muscle. If those are not there, it's going to be really hard to do. Um, looking at markers of inflammation, looking at markers of how well your kidneys and your and your liver are functioning. And then also um just some more basic stuff, blood counts, red blood cells, um white blood cell markers and then the body composition is really important and this is something that guides us in terms of treatment. You know, it gives us a place to start and gives us understanding of how people are progressing. So all of these biomarkers are things we do with patients from their very first visit at MedMatrix. We do over 80 biomarkers from the first visit. Uh so we get a really good understanding of the muscle metabolism and muscle health right from the beginning. >> Yeah. C can we talk about metabolism because you talked about how like because it's it works on both sides, right? Like talked about thyroids metabolism and if your metabolism sluggish that makes it harder to build muscle, right? >> Yeah. And then >> Yes. >> But and then if you don't have enough the more muscle you have the faster your metabolism is and it's easier to lose, right? Because when you're working, I've heard you talk about this. When you're working with patients who want to lose weight, the first thing you're talking to them about is like, let's get you more muscle so it's going to be easier. So, can you talk more about like how metabolism plays a role in building muscle on both sides? Um so both sides is if the metabolism is too slow. Basically what can happen is is it can and your metabolism is a summation of all of your body like things all of the stuff your body is doing from breathing to your heartbeat to blood sugar control to production of cells. I mean it's just a summation of everything your body is doing together. Um, so if your metabolism is too slow, what happens is is fat deposition is greater and muscle loss is greater. Um, so and then what we're trying to do is really understand or what I'm trying to do is make patients understand metabolism from almost like a like a machine perspective, right? If you are trying to run more efficiently, you want to run a little faster and you need to give the body the adequate nutrients to do that. So what we try to do is try to understand how the metabolism is being affected by hormone imbalance, by nutritional deficiency, by uh laziness. I hate to use that word, but you know, if you're not physically active, if you have a very sedentary job, if you're not doing any sort of walking resistance, nothing, um, your metabolism will just slow as you get older and you're not challenging it. So, it does go both ways of it can be slow, making it worse, and then if you're not pushing it, it's going to make it worse, too. So, the metabolism is the is a really important part of this. >> Okay. Yeah. What um what about the other side of things that people are all interested in the peptides, the hormones, supplements, creatine like where do all these things play a role in building muscle and weight loss? Yeah, supplements, peptides, hormones, u neutrauticals all play a really important role in muscle metabolism, but they're they have to be considered when appropriate and um they really can't replace the foundation of things. You know, you can't you can't just consume protein powder six times a day and that's it. That's not really going to work. So functional med the functional medicine approach can evaluate whether the patient actually needs additional support based on symptoms um their labs their goals safety what the root causes are but there's a lot of really great things that we're trying to focus on like you you said creatine creatine is the single most studied nutrient ever in the medical literature thousands and thousands of studies done on creatine and its benefits for people of all ages. It is one of the best nutrients that we can take to help build and maintain muscle mass at any age. And there are studies on all ages um proving that. >> So something like a creatine what >> you know the numbers off the top of your head roughly like how effective creatine is whether it's like if you take creatine or you build muscle this much faster or >> Oh. Oh no. I'd have to look up I'd have to look up some of the some of the um some of the studies, but some of the studies uh have been shown the the important part is creatine has been studied in all the different age ranges. >> So I have and I make recommendations for 30 year olds, 70 year olds, you know, 25 year olds of of both age of both um sexes to be on creatine. And um it's like I said, it is the most rigorously tested supplement in history ever. >> Um so it it it its effects on athletic performance and it's also its safety profile are making it a really important piece of of a like muscle building um program. And I have a lot of people should I be on creatine? Yes, 100%. um no matter how old you are and um it's very easily accessible. It's very safe. So, uh certain things could preclude you from you know if there's like a chronic kidney disease or something like that, but for the most part uh there's a lot most people are taking it. Um we talked about hormones. You know, hormones play a huge role in muscle building. Peptides are another big thing we do a lot of at the clinic in terms of accelerating growth hormone and building muscle. So, there's a lot of potential for peptides to be used with muscle building. It really, like I said, depends on your goals and what's most appropriate for you. But having a skilled provider sort of guide you through all this is really important because you could get lost in the noise of all of this if you try to understand it for your for yourself just through like social media or just, you know, watching videos online. It's a lot. >> Yeah, 100%. Yeah, >> real quick. Can you explain what peptides are >> and then how you properly use peptides to help someone like build muscle mass, not like just some thing, you know, not just some like quick actually a root cause solution. >> So a peptide is a uh combination of what we call amino acids. So chemicals in the body or come from food as well in certain chains together, certain configurations together. And basically a peptide affects a receptor or hormone of another part of the body. So peptides can be used for inflammation. Uh the GLP-1 medications that we talk about all the time, the ompics, the semaglutides, the tursepides, those are peptides. Um we can use peptides for skin hair, skin hair and um um nail health. We can use peptides for gut health and we can also use peptides for muscle muscle uh growth specifically peptides that stimulate growth hormone. So growth hormone is really important for when you grow, right? When you're an adolescent and a child to make you taller and and bigger. Um, so your growth hormone will you you'll stop growing at a certain age because your bones can't grow any bigger, but growth hormone um support when you're of adulthood age, when you're not growing like taller anymore, can support muscle metabolism significantly. So, I do use some of the peptides that support growth hormone with patients that are looking to build muscle mass, specifically more more often with men that are looking to build muscle mass, lose fat. So they're really really really important part of things sometimes. >> Okay. Yeah. Totally. >> Um what about recovery? Why is recovery just as important as training when it comes to building muscle? And how do you how do you properly recover? >> Oh, uh good question. Recovery is just as important as training when it comes to building muscle because if you're not giving your body the time to regenerate it, you're just going to keep hitting it. So muscle is built during recovery, right? Muscle is built when we're sleeping. You do not build muscle when you're at the gym. When you're at the gym lifting something, you are causing what we call micro tears to your muscles. So you're kind of you're you're kind of tearing them up a little bit. And then what happens is is when you recover, when you sleep, when you give your muscles a chance to heal, that's when hypertrophy happens or they get bigger. So, poor sleep, high stress, deficiencies, if you're undereating, right? If you're not eating the protein you need, um, can all limit your progress. And then one of the biggest things is overtraining. I'm guilty of this. I overtrained for a long time. If you're just consistently damaging your muscles, they're not able to regenerate. So, a really nice way to look at this is if you have a cut on your on your skin, right? If you keep picking at it, it won't heal, right? So the muscle works the same way. You have to if there's an injury, which is what working out does, micro tears, you have to let it heal. So if you're not letting it heal, it's not going to regenerate. That's kind of the basic way to look at it. So recovery is really important. And then how do people recover? Sleep's a big one, right? Maintaining stress, eating a good diet, um, and not working out, hitting the gym two hours a day, seven days a week like I used to do. I made that big mistake. I never saw saw any progress. You have to kind of um sometimes do less um you have to listen to your body, right? If your body's telling you it's really stressed, if your body's telling you it's in pain, you got to listen to those signals. >> Okay? So, let's say I'm sore, right? If you're sore >> in that muscle group, >> should you not work out that muscle group until you're not sore in that area? >> It depends. So, this is going to depend on athleticism level, too. So, this is going to depend on your age, how how much of a baseline you have, and what your goals are. So, like for me, for example, I work out my muscle groups twice a week. But do I recommend that for all people? No. But I have a certain level of experience and I've been I've been weight training for 15 years. If you are new or a novice at muscle building or working out, if you're sore, that might not be a good thing. It might be that you're dehydrated. It might be that you're doing too much. It might be that you're not properly recovering. So soreness is not always a good thing. It depends on the context. So that's a very hard question to answer because it depends on the context. But soreness, like if you worked out really hard and you're really sore, that's not necessarily a good thing. It could mean that you're overdoing it essentially. So, you're you want to be training until you feel fatigued, but not like, "Oh my gosh, I can't function." Um, but it depends on the muscle group, too. You know, if you're working out like your lower body, you know, if you have muscle soreness, leg day, right? Everybody hates leg day. um and you can't the joke is like you can't you know you can't get up off the toilet because you're kind of stuck there because you're so sore. I mean that can be but again it depends on your level of athletic ability at that point. So it's very very variable. Should should elderly people be sore after they work out? No. They should feel more energized. you know, should should women that are trying to lose fat and not necessarily be bulky but have lean muscle mass, should they be sore after doing a workout? Maybe not. You know, maybe they're overdoing it or something like that. So, there's a lot of different things to consider there. >> Okay. Gotcha. >> And I'm not a trainer. I'm not a trainer either. I understand how I work out and I understand how how certain people can work out, but I am not a fitness trainer. I am not certified in some of the in in those things. So I don't want to speak inappropriately either where I might not be sure. I just kind of know what I do for myself and what is good for certain people but not everybody either. So this is where you need the help of someone >> to understand things. Yeah. >> Okay. Um All right. So when someone comes to bed matrix wanting to build strength or like protect muscle, where does that process begin? So coming to Med Matrix, I mean you first you'll start with a discovery call, you know, with one of our patient coordinators to see what your goals are and then from there we start gathering a full health history. We start reviewing your symptoms, you know, nutrition assessment, exercise history, sleep, stress evaluation, and we do a lot of this at the very first visit with one of the clinicians like myself or one of my colleagues. Um, we do a full review of your medications and all your supplements you're taking. And then, as I mentioned a couple times, we do a full body composition analysis when you come in for your initial blood draw before you meet with your clinician for the first time. And that gives us a really good understanding of how much muscle mass do you have, how much fat do you have, what's your weight, what's your BMI, and then um, we discuss all of those parameters during your initial visit. We go over all your labs that I mentioned earlier and then we come up with a plan of action of how do we achieve your body composition goals based on where you are now. What do we have to change? Do we need to change your diet? Do we need to change your hormones? Do we need to change your physical activity? What are all those parameters? And the thing I want patients to understand and remember is that no one is expecting you to make all these changes overnight because they're not going to happen overnight. And no one's expecting you to be perfect. And no one is expecting you to know how to do all of this from the get-go, right? It's our job to provide you resources to educate you on how to do this because it's not simple. If you if it was, you would have done it already, right? Like I said before, a lot of people struggle from a muscle perspective because they don't know how to work out. They have absolutely no idea. Clueless. And it's very intimidating. I hear that from a lot of people. Um going into a gym is very intimidating for people, especially if they've never done it before. They don't want to look stupid. They don't want to hurt themselves. They don't want to be judged. So, that's another big part of of uh my education on patients is to understand what your knowledge is so I can get you the resources you need to start to make these changes and and make these lifestyle adjustments. So, it's a lot of stuff from the [snorts] beginning, a lot of discussion. >> Okay. Yeah. And then what might a personalized muscle and health anti-aging plan include for a patient like a patient at Med Matrix? >> Yeah, so a personalized muscle and like healthy aging plan at Med Matrix for a patient could include um nutrition goals, protein goals, it could include strength training guidance. Like I mentioned before, if you're new to the game, if you want to work out but you just don't know where to get started, we have resources to help you with that. Um and it might be coming from the clinicians directly. Depends on the depends on the goals, depends on the knowledge. Um we're educating and and creating a plan around blood sugar support, making sure that diet is is sufficient for that. We're talking about sleep optimization and ways we can improve uh that parameter. Uh talking about stress regulation. Doing a big hormone evaluation, right? Are you a candidate for hormone replacement therapy? Would it help you? Would it help with muscle mass? Is that one of your goals? Um, another big thing is beyond just diet, but repleting nutrients. There are certain nutrients that are really important for muscle metabolism, aging well, things like vitamin D, vitamin B12, iron levels. So, you might not necessarily be eating poorly, but if some of those things are deficient, we want to address those. U, we might have to look at your gut, you know, we might have to look at gut health. Are you absorbing things the right way? Are you having chronic GI issues? which could be affecting your metabolism, which could be affecting your hormone levels, your ability to recover, your ability to work out. Um, and then we're tracking your body composition. Like I said, depending on your goals, uh, for most patients, we are doing body composition every 3 to 6 months when patients come in to do blood work so that we can see the trends um, and and monitor things ongoing. It's cool. It's cool when we see things, especially um uh like at six months after people start a program or something and it's like, "Wow, you've gained seven pounds of muscle mass and you've lost like 8% body fat." It's like, "Holy crap, that's a huge huge change." >> So, it's really cool. Yeah. >> Awesome. Love it. What uh what what would you want the biggest takeaway for someone who wants to age and be stronger be from this episode? So the biggest takeaway that I would say for patients or anyone listening that's conscious about strength and aging well is that muscle I mean it helps but muscle is not just about looking fit. I mean that's nice but um it is one of the foundations of healthy aging. Like I said before there are studies upon studies that show the more muscle mass you have the longer you will live. you want to live to be a hundred, be stronger, have good leg strength, upper body strength, and have good balance. Um, if you want to have better metabolism, if your energy wants to be better, you know, stronger bones, better blood sugar control, and I I mentioned this at the beginning of the podcast, but longer independence, right? If you want to be an elderly person and be more independent, living on your own, living more more independently physically and doing what you want to do, um protecting muscle has to be part of that plan. If if it's not, you are unfortunately going to be one of the people that we see ending up in nursing homes, wheelchair bound. You know, we unfortunately, well, we fortunately live longer in this country because of modern medical technology, but a lot of people are living longer, very poor health quality, right? They live in a nursing home for 5, 10, maybe even longer years, and it's like what for what, right? What's the benefit of that? So, we really want to educate people on living longer, but living well, living strong. Um, so functional medicine and and uh us as clinicians at MedMatrix, we really help uncover what it really takes to build muscle and coming up with a personalized strategy to support strength for people. And like I said, not necessarily just the way you look, but the way you look, it helps. >> Perfect. [laughter] Yeah. >> All right, let's uh let's go into a case study and then for any uh people who are live with us right now, feel free to drop some questions and maybe we'll answer a few of them. Sure. So, I had to think about this one because it um this is so I'm I'll talk about a specific case, but this kind of applies to and I'm I'm not this is not sexist, but I see this just a lot more with men because the power of testosterone on men is the power of testosterone on women is very high. But because men's bodies rely heavily on testosterone, I see much more body composition change with men on testosterone. So, I had a patient last week or the week before, I can't remember. He's I think about my age. I can't remember. I'm 37. I think he was 34 maybe something like that. But um he was really struggling to change his body composition. He didn't come so he didn't come to me with the goal of building muscle. But when we started talking it was like yeah I kind of want to do that. But I didn't really think about it that way until I started kind of to like started to talk to him about it. Um, some of his chief concerns were just kind of feeling tired, feeling run down, not being as strong as he used to be. Um, just from like doing manual stuff around the house, you know, cleaning the garage, whatever. Um, and then sexual libido issues. And I know that's kind of like a separate issue, but he um he had very suboptimal testosterone. it was almost like barely above the normal range. So, we talked about all the different risks and benefits and potential outcomes and options and um we decided to try testosterone replacement therapy and I saw him in followup like I said maybe a week or two ago and this would have been a threemon follow-up after he initiated the hormones. So at 3 months you're going to start seeing some significant improvement in your energy levels, your physical stamina, all those things um from a testosterone perspective. So when I reviewed his body composition analysis, he had gained I want to say seven no six pounds of muscle mass in three months. That's huge. and he was determined to be part of the the singledigit body fat club, which I am very proud to say I'm in that club. Um it is very hard to achieve. Um but being less than 10% body fat is a is something he was really happy to try to achieve and he um he had gotten there. He was at like 9.7 or 9.6% body fat on follow-up >> and he made this very funny comment. He said, "I went to," he had gone to like a party or something on a beach with some friends for the Fourth of July. Um, Fourth of July was recent if you're listening to this in the future, but um he one of his college friends made a comment about his abs. And I was like, he was like, I couldn't have felt so good about myself when my college buddy was like, damn, dude, you are like shredded. like your abs look so and he was like it was just funny this conversation we were having because he was like yeah I didn't come to you to get abs but the fact that my I have sort of totally changed my body composition not only is my confidence better my sexual confidence the way I feel about myself mental clarity my energy but he's like I have just kind of essentially changed the way I view how I look for the rest of my life because I want to maintain ain this this level of elite almost performance from a physical level for as long as I can. And I it was so cool to kind of hear that. It was such a cool thing. Like I said, he didn't necessarily come to me saying, "I want abs." But when when it kind of happened, it was a really cool conversation because it just changed his entire mindset about the way he performed, right, around exercise and this sort of elite kind of performance level he was looking for. So, really cool. Really, really fun. >> That's awesome. And then with the muscle, did other things start to fall in place, too, that he originally came for? >> Yeah. Like I said, the he was struggling with some libido issues and um he was having trouble building muscle mass. So, we we had to go into a whole education on dietary intake and he was eating like less than half of the amount of protein he needed every day. Um, and for a man, that's going to be really hard to build muscle if you're eating really little protein. Um, and especially a man on testosterone replacement therapy, if you're not optimizing the protein, it's going to be really hard. So, the different parameters that you really have to understand to do this successfully is really important. So, we did all this work, three months, it was a huge change. Um, so we we do see that a lot when people are committed and all the and we can get some of these variables set in motion really really early. People's outcomes are quite remarkable. >> Fantastic. Yeah. So I love seeing all the patient testimonials and people who >> Yeah. >> their lives. Um well yeah that's it. I mean that was such a fantastic episode. I've learned so much. Hope you guys who watch this live or you're watching the recording. I hope you learned a lot. Um Colin, anything you want to take us home with? I mean, I said it a lot. You know, my my take-home message from a a podcast devoted to muscle is medicine is essentially the more you have, the longer you'll live. You know, being strong makes you live longer. Um, I I said this to a patient the other day. I used to think about I've thought about often my grandparents when they lived in nursing homes as part of like their end of part of, you know, their end of life. It was really sad because a lot of people, like I said, when you're elderly, you're in a wheelchair, right? You can't move, you're lacking your independence. If you want to be independent, if you want to live a long time and feel good, you really have to try to be strong. And um strength is a really, really important part of that. So, try to understand what that means for yourself. Um whether it's with us or another skilled functional medicine clinic where you live. um try to understand how to get stronger and all the parameters around that because it will really really extend your longevity and it will help you live longer and happier. Yeah, that's my biggest takehome. Well said. Perfect. And um yeah, whether you're watching this live recording, uh make sure you share this with a loved one or a friend uh to kind of spread the knowledge. Health is wealth, right? Um, and if you're interested in working with providers like Colin or working with our medical team at MedMatrix, uh, you can go to medmatrixusa.com, apply to become a patient, have that conversation with a patient coordinator, see if we can help you, and go from there. Uh, with that said, Colin, thank you so much for your time. Appreciate it. >> Thanks, Cole. It's been fun. See you. >> Bye, everyone. Bye.