HealthSpan Pillar One: Muscular Strength

Healthspan is the time during your lifespan where you are healthy, not just alive. What we are starting to see is that people’s lifespans are now far exceeding their healthspan. That’s not something you want. What good is living an extra eight or ten years if you are infirm and incapable of enjoying the time?

To that end, let’s explore what the literature has to say about increasing healthspan. If we can get our healthspan to come as close to equaling our lifespan, we’ll be able to make good use of our golden years until the end finally calls.

I’m starting this series off with the most important factor for increasing Healthspan, which is muscular strength (within reason). We live in a society of convenience and easy access to food and entertainment. More people are working in front of a glowing rectangle than ever before, and although I think I can make the case that this is the best time in history to be alive, it is also the easiest time in history to get soft and weak.

Getting stronger will keep you alive longer. More resistant to disease. It will help you be the grandparent (one day) who is an asset to his family instead of the family cause for concern.

Sarcopenia, the loss of muscle that happens as we age, is the thief of our vitality. In my clinical practice, I hear people tell me nearly every day that they just can’t do the things that they used to do. The reason is that they’ve grown too weak to mow the yard or do the gardening or enjoy the hike.

Here’s the good news: you can stave off sarcopenia with weight training. Here’s the bad news: most people refuse to train with weights. The number one reason people start an exercise program is to lose weight, and the number one exercise program people begin to accomplish that goal is running.

Before you fire off an angry email to tell me that running is all that, let me first say that yes, I agree that being able to run a few miles should be on the list of abilities of your average person.

But I also think the evidence makes a clear case that starting with running is doing this backward. Let’s first tackle why lifting weights instead of running should be the priority in people’s weight loss efforts. Then we’ll examine the evidence when it comes to weight training and longevity and disease resistance.

Weight Training Helps with Muscle Retention

First off–you want to lose fat, not weight. If you drop weight without preserving muscle, you’ll find that you’ve become a skinny-fat version of where you started. You’ll look better in clothes, but when the shirt comes off, you’ll just look like a smaller version of what you were. Nobody wants that.

If you want to lose weight to enhance your appearance, you need to lose fat and hold on to all the precious muscle you can. Running won’t do that for you nearly as well as lifting.

The truth is that in the game of fat loss, eating less food is far more important than trying to burn off excess calories with exercise. Reducing caloric intake is far easier than trying to run it off (at least in theory). You ever spent an hour on a treadmill that was telling you how many calories you burned? Did you then look at the number of calories in one tablespoon of peanut butter and get depressed?

Yeah, it’s a lot easier to skip the peanut butter and call it a day.

So here’s the formula: eat fewer calories to create a caloric deficit, make sure you’re getting adequate protein while in said deficit, and lift weights to stimulate muscle retention during the process. Run a little if you want to. Don’t if you don’t.

There are, of course, a lot of details being left out in that last paragraph, but you can take that and run with it (no pun intended) for several months just like it is. For a lot more details, check out my books. It should be said that the leaner you get, the more your body will fight back. Your body doesn’t care about you having six-pack abs. It cares about you not dying, and getting magazine cover lean is controlled starvation.

Also, there’s no real health benefit to being sub 10% body fat, which is where most people would have to be to show off their abs. I’m not saying it’s not cool or whatever, but for your average person, dieting down to a healthy body fat percentage is far more important than looking like an underwear model. Unless, of course, you are an underwear model. But you’re not, so let’s move on.

One last thing on dieting (there will be more articles about that here in the future)–since I have a healthcare job I see more dudes with no shirt on than the average person ever will. I can tell you that the physiques you see on television and in magazines are the exception. Only once or twice a year do I see anyone even close to that level, and they are usually 24-year-old Crossfit athletes. Having realistic expectations for yourself is the first step toward getting the body you want. You have to want what’s possible.

But we’re here to talk about the benefits of gaining muscle and strength that go beyond looking good naked.

Compression of Morbidity

What I want to talk about is the concept of “compression of morbidity.” Believe me; you want to compress your morbidity. Allow me to explain. “Morbidity” is a five-dollar word for the disease state that often leads to mortality. Many diseases are known for their “comorbidities.” Diabetes, for instance, has common comorbidities of neuropathy, heart disease, and so forth. It’s the accumulation of morbidities that eventually end your life.

To “compress” your morbidities means to compress them on the timeline of your life–in other words, you want to have none of them until the last days of your life when they eventually rear their ugly heads and cause a swift end with the least amount of downtime possible.

In plain English, compressing morbidity means you stay strong and healthy until the last days of your life when you finally contract whatever it is that brings you home. Like running a hard race and then jumping off a cliff at the finish line. Compression of morbidity means increasing your healthspan.

And of all the things possible that can compress morbidity that you can affect– it’s your strength that has the most significant impact. Please note that I’m not saying diet, cardio health, or whatever don’t matter. There are plenty of things that matter. But the thing that matters the most is how strong you are.

In 2008 a landmark study was published called, “Research
Association between muscular strength and mortality in men: a prospective cohort study.”

Now, this was not a small study. The researchers followed 8,762 men after initially grouping them according to their cardiorespiratory fitness levels as well as placing them into one of three tiers based on how strong they were. The measuring stick for strength was one rep max on bench press and leg press.

Then, the researchers watched what happened over the years. 19.2 years on average, to be precise. As it turns out, the strongest men in the study had close to 60% lower all-cause mortality. In other words, 60% less death from any cause during the study.

60% less chance of dying. From cancer. From heart disease. From anything. For being stronger. It would seem that whatever the condition, iron is the cure. This is good. If you’re weak, you can do something about it. You can start today.

Mark Rippetoe, who is one of the more famous strength coaches in the world and the author of Starting Strength, sums it up best when he says, “Strong people are harder to kill than weak people and more useful in general.” Not only does that quote ring true in a general sense, but the literature also bears it out.

Next in our series will be cardiac endurance. Cardio does indeed have a place in increasing healthspan. Stay tuned!