Resistance Is Useful! (Especially As We Get Older)

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⏰ IN A RUSH?

Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

• Regular moderate exercise (150 minutes per week) is super important to good health

• Mobility training is also very important to health-related quality of life

• Resistance training, however, has an important part to play too, especially as we get older

  • Resistance training can include:

    • Lifting weights (you don’t have to look like the Terminator)

    • Bodyweight exercises (your body is also a weight too!)

    • Resistance band training (as in Pilates and similar)

    • Resistance machine exercises (various)

• Resistance training is important because:

  • Building/maintaining strong muscles means better stability

    • This means fewer falls in old age

  • Building/maintaining strong muscles means stronger bones

    • This means fewer fractures in old age

• As to how much is the right amount, there’s a stack of science for this, so we’ve provided you with resources that are comprehensive, and resources that are bite-size, so you can go with what works for you

  • See today’s main feature for this!

• Omega-3 fatty acids have a lot of health benefits—including for the brain—but not all sources are created equal

  • Today's sponsor, NativePath, are offering a convenient, sustainable, and highly bioavailable form—far better than cod liver oil!

Read on to learn about these things and more…

👀 WATCH AND LEARN

The Half Year Reset: how to turn your year around

How are your New Year’s resolutions going? So well? A little bit well? Didn’t do New Year’s resolutions? Whatever the past six months have been like, if you’d like the next six months to be better, here’s a good way to do a reset and make it work:

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PS: if you don’t care for video introductions, click here to skip the video to 0:59 where he actually gets started with “Step One”

🏋️ MAIN FEATURE

Resistance Is Useful!

At 10almonds we talk a lot about the importance of regular moderate exercise (e.g. walking, gardening, housework, etc), and with good reason: getting in those minutes (at least 150 minutes per week, so, a little over 20 minutes per day, or 25 minutes per day with one day off) is the exericise most consistently linked to better general health outcomes and reduced mortality risk.

We also often come back to mobility, because at the end of the day, being able to reach for something from a kitchen cabinet without doing oneself an injury is generally more important in life than being able to leg-press a car.

Today though, we’re going to talk about resistance training.

What is resistance training?

It can be weight-lifting, or it can be bodyweight exercises. In those cases, what you’re resisting is gravity. It can also be exercises with resistance bands or machines. In all cases, it’s about building and/or maintaining strength.

Why does it matter?

Let’s say you’re not an athlete, soldier, or laborer, and the heaviest thing you have to pick up is a bag of groceries. Strength still matters, for two main reasons:

• Muscle strength correlates to bone strength. You can’t build (or maintain) strong muscles on weak bones, so if you take care of your muscles, then your body will keep your bones strong too.

  • That’s assuming you have a good diet as well—but today’s not about that. If you’d like to know more about eating for bone health though, do check out this previous article about that!

• Muscle strength correlates to balance and stability. You can’t keep yourself from falling over if you are physically frail.

Both of those things matter, because falls and fractures often have terrible health outcomes (e.g., slower recovery and more complications) the older we get. So, we want to:

• Ideally, not fall in the first place

• If we do fall, have robust bones

See also: Effects of Resistance Exercise on Bone Health

How much should we do?

Let’s go to the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research on this one:

Read the statement in full:

Resistance Training for Older Adults: Position Statement From the National Strength and Conditioning Association

There’s a lot of science there and it’s well worth reading if you have the time. It’s particularly good at delineating how much is not enough vs how much is too much, and the extent to which we should (or shouldn’t) train to exhaustion.

If you don’t fancy that, though, and/or just want to start with something accessible and work your way up, the below is a very good (and also evidence-based) start-up plan:

Healthline's Exercise Plan For Seniors—For Strength, Balance, & Flexibility

(it has a weekly planner, step-by-step guides to the exercises, and very clear illustrative animations of each)

❤️ OUR SPONSORS MAKE THIS PUBLICATION POSSIBLE

Convenient, sustainable, highly bioavailable omega-3s (and more)

We've mentioned their other products before, and with good reason. NativePath's mission is very much aligned with our own: they want to help people live their healthiest lives possible.

They also believe that eating, moving, and living in harmony with the natural state is key to achieving optimal wellness. That's why they keep their products as close to nature as possible, without unnecessary additives. So, what's in this one?

• Krill oil: oil from krill, tiny creatures that are a potent (and sustainable!) source of omega-3 fatty acids, in a highly bioavailable form

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Please do visit our sponsors—they help keep 10almonds free

🌏 AROUND THE WEB

What’s happening in the health world…

• New insight into the damaging impact of chronic cocaine or alcohol use on cognitive flexibility

• Adiponectin can be a potential therapeutic target for obesity and diabetes

• Why is eczema sometimes treated with a diluted bleach bath? And what do I need to know before trying it?

• Does previous antibiotic treatment affect COVID-19 severity?

• High-intensity interval training before surgery can improve recovery

More to come tomorrow!

📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

Why Diets Make Us Fat: the unintended consequences of our obsession with weight loss, and what to do instead - by Dr. Sandra Aamodt

It's well-known that crash-dieting doesn't work. Restrictive diets will achieve short-term weight loss, but it'll come back later. In the long term, weight creeps slowly upwards. Why?

Dr. Sandra Aamodt explores the science and sociology behind this phenomenon, and offers an evidence-based alternative.

A lot of the book is given over to explanations of what is typically going wrong—that is the title of the book, after all. From metabolic starvation responses to genetics to the negative feedback loop of poor body image, there's a lot to address.

However, what alternative does she propose?

The book takes us on a shift away from focusing on the numbers on the scale, and more on building consistent healthy habits. It might not feel like it if you desperately want to lose weight, but it's better to have healthy habits at any weight, than to have a wreck of physical and mental health for the sake of a lower body mass.

Dr. Aamodt lays out a plan for shifting perspectives, building health, and letting weight loss come by itself—as a side effect, not a goal.

In fact, as she argues (in agreement with the best current science, science that we've covered before at 10almonds, for that matter), that over a certain age, people in the "overweight" category of BMI have a reduced mortality risk compared to those in the "healthy weight" category. It really underlines how there's no point in making oneself miserably unhealthy with the end goal of having a lighter coffin—and getting it sooner.

Bottom line: will this book make you hit those glossy-magazine weight goals by your next vacation? Quite possibly not, but it will set you up for actually healthier living, for life, at any weight.

Click here to check out Why Diets Make Us Fat, and live healthier and better!

May you go always from strength to strength,

The 10almonds Team