1. Your health is the foundation, not the reward. Most of us treat fitness, sleep, and strength as things we will get to once the real work is settled. The problem is that health is the one asset you cannot easily buy back later at any price. You can rebuild a career, recover from a bad investment, and repair most mistakes given enough time. The capacity you let slide in your forties and fifties is far harder to reclaim, and some of it does not come back at all. Invest in it now.
@hjluks Price range? For our every day use & guest towels, we enjoy Member’s Mark Hotel towels. But upper end, I’d probably stick with Restoration Hardware. They are glorious.
@hjluks I witnessed this a lot when I was raising my kids. I also witnessed parents just wanting to let their kids get out and have fun while the coaches screamed at them when they made mistakes. Guess which parent took their child out of that league?
From a population health perspective... What’s the single most important variable when it comes to exercise for healthspan?
I write a lot about specific workouts... HIIT vs zone 2, power vs strength, how long, how often, or how hard. And to be fair, once you’re in the game, those variables matter.
But…
The single biggest factor in whether exercise improves your health is the decision to do something rather than nothing.
At the population level, the data is so strong it’s almost silly. Going from nothing to something is where the biggest bang for your buck comes from.
-Move daily
-Occasionally walk fast
-Lift heavy things a few times a week.
That's where the massive health gains lie. Not in the optimization, or in the perfect program.
It’s all about showing up.
Everything I write about after that is fine-tuning. Don’t get me wrong… It’s important fine-tuning— but fine-tuning nonetheless.
The gap between doing nothing and doing something is a canyon. The gap between a good program and a perfect one is a crack in the sidewalk.
Sweating the details keeps too many on the couch… let’s focus on getting off the couch first.
Most of my patients don't need less activity… they need more. I’m not sure how or why… but somewhere along the way we convinced an entire generation that aging means fragility, and that your body is one wrong move from breaking.
I've spent 30 years in orthopedic surgery, and I’ve witnessed that belief do more damage than the injuries themselves.
Your tissues adapt to load.
Your cardiovascular system responds to demand.
Your bones get stronger when you ask them to work.
The problem isn't that you're getting older. The problem is that someone told you to stop.
The patients who reverse the narrowing are not the ones with the best genetics, or the best knees, or the best circumstances.
They are the ones who decided to do something.
Something made them stop accepting the losses as inevitable, and they started doing things differently from that day forward.
@hjluks Thank you for the explanation. Recovering from insertional Achilles tendinopathy. Man, it’s a process. What do you think about stem wave treatment accompanied with the isometrics? Shoes with lift? Barefoot walking?
A patient asked me yesterday why so many orthopedic surgeons seem to be in good shape. I told her... Because we know what happens to the human body when we're not.
We see it every day. The loss of muscle that makes a preventable fall catastrophic. The joints that hurt not because of decades of neglect and inactivity. People who struggle to get to the exam table. The person who needed a surgery that could have been prevented. The ones who waited too long to start and are frail at 70.
Granted... there are those who had no choice in this... but that's not the majority.
You don't need a medical degree to act on this information. You just need to understand that the body you have at 70 will largely be the one you are building today.
Sarcopenia (age-related muscle loss) isn't inevitable; it's often a result of disuse. After age 30, we can start to lose muscle mass, which directly impacts our metabolic rate and bone density.
Resistance training isn't about vanity - it’s about maintaining the armor that protects your joints and keeps your blood sugar stable. Two days a week of lifting "heavy-for-you" weights is the best investment you can make. 🏋️♀️
What’s one strength exercise you’ve grown to love lately?
#StrengthAfter40 #Longevity #FitOver40
I never would have supported the legalization of marijuana had I known what would end up happening to young people and our cities. I deeply regret it.
Every major city and uber in them just reeks of weeds everywhere. It is absolutely vile.