The risk of NOT weight training || WBWL Ep. 81

There’s a lot of things that are risky in life.

But there’s not a lot of things more risky than NOT weight training.

It’s imperative that everyone with arms and legs should indoctrinate weight training into their life at least 3-5 days per week.

As someone who’s helped thousands of people do things such as return to running, lose 10-30 lbs, reverse diabetes, overcome cancer-related weakness or neuropathy, get back to playing with their kids…

All these people who we’ve helped achieved these goals through weight training.

Weight training is not the only form of exercise out there, and there are other factors involved to enhance your health…

But there are not many as potent and beneficial.

I get a little raw and dark in this episode, and we may go down some paths that you don’t wanna head down.

But I hope it compels you to incorporate some form of weight training in your life today.

Thanks for listening!

P.S. leave us a 5 star review and let me know your thoughts and feedback.

Transcript

0:02

Welcome to the Won Body Won Life Podcast. Hi, I am your host, Dr. Jason Wan, Lifestyle Physical Therapist. And what we do is we help people specifically to help them eliminate chronic pain, get stronger, feel more resilient as they get older. And in order for you to get there, you need to stay proactive with your health. So on this podcast, if you're new here, Welcome. I'm really excited for you to be a part of this. And so if you enjoy this episode, definitely hit the hit the review button as well as leave us a five star review. That way more people can be able to we can reach more people that may be interested in these topics. So today what I have for you guys, and this is a very, this is a very popular subject yet. It's never been done on my podcast. And I want to explain the risk that you are taking if you are not weight training. Okay, so this is something that's a very touchy subject because many people are married to the specific things that they do and it's whether they love biking, they love running, they love cardiovascular activity, they love yoga, Pilates, there's a lot of things out there and I think that specifically what I'm referring to as far as weight training is not just carrying your own body weight, it's actually putting external load onto your body and in the form of dumbbells, barbells, Bands, kettlebells, maces, and any other gym machine that's out there. And I think it's very important for anybody across the span of any age, from the age of, let's say five, they, at the age of five, they could be working on some form of weight training, but even upwards of up to 90 to a hundred years of age. Most people can benefit from weight training and you are taking a very serious risk as far as your quality of life and of health if you're not weight training. And I'm going to explain to you a few reasons why. I can pretty much go for this subject for along the lines of one to two hours, but I'm going to try to consolidate all Some of the main facts on why you should be thinking about weight training specifically for you. So research shows a systematic review in 2022 actually shows that strength training is associated with a 15 percent decrease in all cause mortality versus doing nothing. What all cause mortality means is anything that can kill you, whether it's diabetes, you're talking about heart disease, cancer, you have a 15 percent reduction across any disease, killing you. And that's very important because, I actually did a post one day around somebody that had cancer, right? And if you have cancer, You shouldn't be thinking about just modifying your diet, right? And you should also, hopefully, be not thinking about just sitting there and hoping and praying that things are going to happen. People that strength train even during cancer or even before cancer, what that has been shown to do is you put on muscle mass. And as you put on more muscle mass, If you were to get into any form of chemo or radiation therapy, which can affect all systems of the body, but specifically one of the main system that it impacts is the musculoskeletal system. So you'll notice that you'll have atrophy of muscle. You're also not going to be as active if you're like undergoing chemo radiation therapy. So a lot of this here, what's it been shown is that if you want to survive that round of chemo or radiation therapy, you want to have more to lose. And what that means is if you have more muscle mass in storage in your body, you have more to lose and therefore the likelihood of you surviving that therapy is vastly increased. Okay, so this is really important for people to understand. And a lot of people are like what about cardiovascular activity? What about the other things? All of that is very important, too. So another study showed that combining strength training with cardiovascular activity is associated with a 21 to 23 percent reduction in all cause mortality. So that increases again, the reduction of all cause mortality by at least 8 to 10%. And get this year, combining strength training, cardiovascular activity, And doing that for 150 to 300 minutes each week, that led to a 22 to 31 percent reduction in all cause mortality. That is insane. And I think that if you're thinking about this 150 to 300 minutes, that sounds like a lot. Break that down into days, right? So if you're thinking 150, divide that by six or seven, that is only about 25 to 30 minutes of your day. Okay, and I know that a lot of people, including Americans, are not used to just getting in 25 to 30% 25 to 30 minutes of moderate to various intense activity. A lot of people don't like the feeling of their heart rate increasing. A lot of people, when they strength train, they don't like their muscles burning. But I think that there's a lot of things in life that are hard to do, yet we still do it. Okay. And I always relate this to like things like taxes, things like even being in a marriage, right? If you're not willing to fight for your marriage, then obviously then there's, that, that ends up in divorce, but there's a lot of things that we fight for that are still important to us. Okay. Taxes specifically, we don't like taxes, but every single person, almost a hundred percent of people, they try to do it, or if they evade taxes, that's not a good thing. But if you are somebody that, you have to do things that you don't want to do. Exercise might be one of those things, but many people over time, if they actually force themselves to exercise or do some form of strength training, they realize that they can move better. Their joints feel better. Their quality of life feels better because they can do more things with less effort. It lessens the likelihood of injury there. Again, I can go for days on the importance of strength training and the risk that you're taking if you're not doing any weight training. But even if you're somebody that says, man I feel like I'm never going to enjoy exercise to me. It's like tough luck. I think that if you're willing to, if you're okay with one dying at an early age or two, potentially spending the last five years of your life in a wheelchair, for example. And I'm painting this dark picture not to point fingers at anybody, but to simply say, that's the reality of people that don't strength train. You will lose your mobility, you'll lose the ability to walk, you'll lose the ability to get off a couch because that requires strength as well. You'll lose the ability to get off a toilet. Okay, you're going to have to use guardrails, you're going to have to rely on your kids or your spouse in order to get you off the couch and off the toilet and get you out of bed. And I think that's obviously, if that's somebody that's you right now, then obviously you still have some ways to go. You can still strength train and do a lot of things to try to combat that. But even if you're somebody that says, I don't want. that type of future for myself. I want to enjoy my retirement be able to travel, enjoy the many things of that life has to offer. And I think that you should be looking at strength training and weight training as a means to improve the likelihood of you surviving, living longer and living that great quality of life. Okay. So I want to also want to talk about this other thing that actually strickens a lot of people about one in eight people, and this is diabetes. Diabetic management. What is diabetes? Diabetes is basically it's becoming insensitive to insulin. Insulin is a, it's a hormone that we secrete in order to generate take any form of glucose and shuttle that into the working muscles or into our liver. Okay. So we have these two hormones called insulin and we also have glucagon. And so insulin is basically when we eat glucose or we eat any form of carbohydrates. There is, carbohydrates are broken down into glucose, and then glucose is sugar, and that is either stored into muscle or into liver, but also it's therefore being utilized as energy. So insulin basically puts money into a bank account. Money is the sugar, and we're putting that into a bank account. Now, when we need to withdraw from that bank account, that's where glucagon comes into play. Glucagon is where glucagon is secreted. It basically takes the storage form of glucose, which is called glycogen, breaks the glycogen back down into glucose, which is called glycogenolysis, and then therefore we're able to utilize that glucose for energy output in the form of exercise or daily activities. Okay. Now, when it comes to diabetes, we basically become insensitive to the insulin. Basically, it's like money that does, you're like just dropping off money, and it's just like being scattered onto the roads. And so that creates a habit, right there. They're basically, if you have glucose that's just swimming around in your bloodstream, the bloodstream is connected to every part of your body. So glucose can affect your liver. Glucose can affect your brain. It can affect your eyes. It can create retinopathy. It create peripheral neuropathy. It starts to impact your ability to feel things. It can impact your weakness. Sorry. It impacts you in the way where it makes you weak and intolerant to exercise. And basically diabetes is literally the precursor to then therefore. pneumonia also heart disease as well as cancer. Okay. So diabetes is something that obviously you don't want in your life. Most people As far as like type two diabetes is where type two diabetes is usually there's rarely even like a huge genetic component to it. A lot of it is just due to lifestyle behavior. It's usually lack of exercise, excessive eating, excessive glucose intake, and therefore insulin gets basically insulin becomes insensitive because there's too much glucose coming into the body. And then therefore that's what ends up occurring is people end up being stricken with diabetes. What strength training does though, is if you think about it this way, if we're taking the analogy back of basically glucose being shuttled into muscle. Is that we want to have the muscles be as large as possible or even as large as possible be as dense as possible. Okay. So if you are strength training, you are building muscle mass and muscle mass is basically take the analogy of if you're shuttling money into a small private bank. Then therefore there's only a certain capacity that bank can handle. And if you think about it, like you start to strength train and basically you convert that little small bank. into Chase Bank or Bank of America or some sort of larger bank. And therefore, glucose has, you can store more glucose into the working muscle. And if you have more muscle, not only does your insulin stay sensitive, but you also have more glucose to store. And if glucose has, can be put into storage form in the form of glycogen, that means glucose is not, it's no longer just. Staying in the bloodstream and in creating havoc across the entire body. Okay. And so therefore, when you're looking at the research, one of the main things to help combat diabetes or even reverse diabetes is in fact strength training. And specifically parameters around the lines of if you stay within three to four sets. and you hit about 6 to 12 repetitions and you're hitting every muscle group at least 5 to 10 times over, that is usually a very good protocol to reverse diabetes or even prevent diabetes from occurring. Okay. So again, you're looking at all cause mortality. You're talking about reversing or even preventing diabetes from occurring. And the last thing I'll say here on this podcast is thinking about strength training as Something that is more preventative of injury. And I understand that a lot of people are going to say, Hey like I've hurt myself during strength training and I've, and I, every time I strength train, I always end up injuring something or straining something for one. If that's the case, you potentially may need. You may need somebody that's going to refine your form and technique. You may want somebody that's going to actually build the protocol for you, so that it's a very structured protocol where you're not overdoing it all the time. And if you're somebody that just does it in isolation, you do it by yourself, but you have very little knowledge, Of strength training that knowledge. Therefore you're just going to be doing random exercises with no structure. And that's how most people hurt themselves. So one of my favorite quotes that I've seen is this training to get strong, isn't dangerous. Being weak is dangerous. So you potentially not engaging in strength training because you hurt yourself during strength training. That's actually less of a risk than being weak where you potentially hurt yourself just grabbing garbage off the floor or grabbing a garbage bag off the floor. Maybe it's like getting to the floor and playing with your kids and you stand up wrong. That, to me, that makes it seem more like a fragile quality of life. If you hurt yourself on occasion with strength training, that is a risk that I'm willing to take because I'm currently building muscle mass. I am building more capacity for my body to tolerate the other daily activities that don't require as much effort. So I'll say that again, and I'll say that in a more example form is if there is a garbage bag, That's on the floor. And let's say the garbage bag is 20 pounds. So I pick it up and I throw it my back. Okay. That happened. And that can oftentimes cause fear. It can cause a sense of fragility. Okay. And a lot of times you just want to rest it up. But if you do any form of strength training and let's say you repeatedly lift 20 pounds off the floor for three sets of 10. So you do that for 30 repetitions. Okay. So 30 repetitions times at least. 20 pounds, that is 600 pounds worth of work. Okay. Three, basically 30 reps times 20. But if you're looking at it that way, if you can do 30 pounds for at least 20 to 30 repetitions, does that not make picking up that piece of garbage a lot easier or pick up that bag a lot easier? Does it not make picking up your child who's, 15, 20 pounds, does it not make it a lot easier on your body? Okay, so you have to think about relatively speaking, the amount that you can lift in the gym or at your own home gym, lifting some form of weight is preparing yourself Or the demands of other things in your life that you want to do that are just simply just daily activities. And if you're hurting yourself and you're, that is essentially what I'm saying is that it's more dangerous to be weak than it is more than it is for danger to be weight training. Okay, some people, it happens, even for me, 18, 20 years worth of. Exercise and weight training experience is that I'm still going to make small mistakes here and there. I'm still going to hurt myself once in a while. But what I know that is that if I hurt myself, I know that I can easily, I, the chances of me recovering from the injury is greater because I have already had more muscle mass and the likelihood is that with the tool that I have and the knowledge that I have, I know that I should just continuously just keep going. Okay. One day I just strained my lat just recently. I strained my arm doing some deadlifts. But instead of just calling it like calling it and just saying I'm not going to wait train for three weeks. I simply just modified. I was able to modify my lifts. I was able to find the right exercises that didn't cause as much pain so that I'm still even though that area or that tissue is injured. I'm still trying to put some form of load or stress into that system so that area is not getting weak. Okay. And if you're somebody that's not like me, but just simply just contemplating weight training, I highly encourage you to think about all the things that I just said when it comes to decreasing all cause mortality to reversing or preventing diabetes. I haven't even talked about the effects of strength training on the brain and your hormones and many other areas, but that's also another subject to be talked about. But the last thing I'll say, and the most important is that, as far as your quality of life. And being able to do more things without hurting yourself. is to strength train is to put in that work. Even if it's just two to three days a week, even if you just started off at five minutes per day, I think that somebody that can go from zero can start off at just five minutes a day, which is like 35 minutes a week. And that's pretty easy to do. If you put the effort into it and actually put into your calendar over time, you'll realize that strength training benefits your body in many ways, from your clothes fitting better to you feeling stronger. So you'd be able to walk and do everything for a longer period of time without your body hurting itself. And that's a huge component too. One of the biggest things as far as like when people join my program, which is all about helping people with persistent and more chronic. aches and pains is the fact that they start strength training, and when they start strength training, they realize that a lot of their chronic issues that they're dealing with, it starts to go away because their body is just more resilient to gravity, is more resilient to doing daily activities chores, cleaning the house, picking up your child, all these things, all of that becomes much better with strength training. Okay. So my message to you, if you're taking this into account is get a set of dumbbells. If you have a, if you have a set of dumbbells. Brush it off, brush off the dust and start lifting it up and down. If you have a gym membership, start actually going, start to prepare that time, even if you don't enjoy it. Now, I think what you'll say is that if you don't enjoy strength training, you'll still be able to realize the gains that you've made and enjoy the other parts of your life. Okay, sometimes people don't like strength training. I'll say that again. Some people are not like me where like I actually enjoy strength training. I feel more depressed if I don't go to the gym, you don't have to be that way. But I would say if you're ever a person that says, man, I'll never really like strength training. I'll never like weight training. But I think what you have to realize is that you'll like the other aspects of your life that come with it. You'll be able to walk longer, you'll live longer, you'll have less disease, you'll have a better quality of life, your body won't hurt as much, your joints will feel much more secure, you'll decrease your risk of early onset of arthritis, it may reverse your diabetes any sort of disease that may kill you, or that starts to weaken your body will be more apt to tolerating those types of treatments. Okay, you'll be happier if you enjoy it, you'll be happier. And you'll have a happier quality of life if you can endure the temporary suffering of doing some form of weight training. Alright, so that's what I got for you guys today. I really hope that this message kind of syncs in with you and resonates with you. And if you have any questions for me, feel free to text me 415 965 6580. Give me some feedback on this podcast. Really appreciate that. Also you can email us at support at flexwithdrday. com. Follow us on social media.@flexwithdoctorjay on many different platforms from YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, we're all over there. And also again, if you really enjoyed this episode and it compelled you to make some changes, definitely leave a five star review and also leave a written review. I think that would really help not just grow this podcast, but also allow other people that are looking for topics like this, they'll be able to be seen a little bit easier. And I'll leave you always with the quote that I always leave with all my clients. We only have one body, one life. Make every action you take be one that makes you a better version of you. Take care and have a beautiful rest of your day.