The F Word

It is not what you are thinking.

I talked about fear recently, the other F Word and how it holds us back from living. I listed a variety of random things that I am afraid of and I have thought of a lot more since then, but what I am truly afraid of is the F word.

It is happening to more of us, by our own doing, it is happening earlier, it is preventable and it is harming our health.

Think you know what I am talking about?

It is not what you might think.

The F word I am referring to is frailty.

It is not an inevitable step in the ageing process, it is a result of inactivity and a result not doing any resistance training. Frailty increases the risk of infections, illness, and surgical complications while increasing the odds of losing your independence by as much as twenty times.

It reduces your strength and speed.

It is preventable at any age.

Muscle is health.

It starts early, you just might not notice it until later. A recently published study done over 22 years on over 22,000 Norwegian men and women aged 20 and older proved what we already know.

Getting less physical activity doubles your risk of death from all causes, but there is good news. The people in the study that went from inactive to highly active reduced their risk, but it goes both ways.

Those young adults that became sedentary increased their risk.

You can compensate for inactivity, but you need to keep active for life.

Frailty is the loss of muscle.

Loss of muscle mass comes with age and with inactivity. More bad news? It doesn’t matter how much you run or ride your bike you still need to increase your muscle mass with resistance training.

Muscle is what keeps you efficient, powerful and fast.

I often hear this “I run/ski/cycle/hike/ so I don’t need to go to the gym.”

Sorry, no. The answer is no.

For at least two very important reasons.

First, the more you do something the better you get at it and you need to go harder, longer, and faster to get the same results. That means all-day training to get the same effects as an hour in the gym.

Second, doing the same motion over and over strengthens only one muscle. This leads to muscle imbalances, overuse injuries and inflexibility. Strengthening all the muscles around a joint is more effective than simply repetitively stressing one or two muscles.

Muscle is efficient and to build more, or keep what you have, you need to stress it. In strength training, this is referred to progressive overload principle. It is easy to do in the gym or at home, really the point is to just do it.

More research found that many British adults over 55 were frail, or had muscle loss normally found in older adults. Now 30% of British adults pre-retirement age can be classified as frail.

Make it a part of your routine.

For many older adults, resistance training may not be part of their daily routine, but a new position statement suggests it is vital to improving their health and longevity.

Lower grip strength in children and older adults is associated with a higher risk of cardiovascular disease. Low muscle strength is associated with a higher risk of dying. It is a stronger predictor of all-cause mortality than blood pressure.

Another study has shown that grip strength “has a predictive validity for decline in cognition, mobility, functional status and mortality.” 

Muscle strength is an indicator of your ability to withstand diseases,” says Darryl Leong, a cardiologist with the Population Health Research Institute at Hamilton Health Sciences and McMaster University in Canada. “When you are stronger and you become ill, you have reserves that you can draw on to help fight the disease,” he says. “Without muscle strength, your odds are significantly poorer.”

Leong says. “It’s the old adage of ‘use it or lose it,’ ” he says. “Resistance training and strength preservation should be part of the routine as you age.”

“Just improving grip strength will not improve your overall health,” Stuart Gray, professor of exercise and metabolic health says.

Cathleen Colon-Emeric, head of the geriatrics division and associate dean for research mentoring at Duke University School of Medicine, says that we should use grip strength as a marker of health, but not focus on simply improving it.

“Instead, we should focus on maintaining or improving muscle mass, which greatly reduces the risk for many conditions,” she says.

The F word.

There is no reason to fear the F word. It is preventable. Frailty is not a condition of age. You can avoid it and reverse the changes.

The answer is exercise, especially resistance training. Need help? Any questions? Let me know.

Change your mind, change your health,

Shayla