How to Strengthen Your Bones, Boost Your Muscles, and Live Longer

 So just the other day, a new patient shared something that was kind of shocking to me. He felt like his whole body was turning against him. He was primarily experiencing aches and soreness and enjoy pain. Your body doesn't actually turn against you. It's more like your body has a reaction to your lifestyle choices. The structural system keeps you upright and moving, includes bones, muscles, and fat. And when it works against you, it can cause weight gain, osteoporosis, back and neck pain, loss of height and strength, decreased muscle mass, memory issues, and more. And it's not just about pain. It can impact your organs as well as your cognition, how you think, remember things. A lot of us tend to take our health for granted and only notice when things go wrong. And it's really important. To not neglect the well being of our bones and muscles because the consequences can be pretty severe. And I'm talking about things like injuries, frequent fractures, and just difficulty in healing from accidents. And these issues obviously can limit your mobility, but in worst case scenarios can have fatal outcomes. Good question. So there's a lot of factors at play. Genetics can influence your bone health, but lifestyle choices are often the key culprits, and this is what we're going to focus on for a bit. So things like smoking, excessive alcohol consumption, a poor diet, indulging in sugary soft drinks, all hinder your body's ability to absorb calcium and form new bone tissue. And there are certain medications, as well as hormonal deficiencies, that can also contribute to weakened bones. Finally, let's not forget about degenerative conditions like osteoporosis and osteoarthritis, which not only affects your bones, but also your joints, cartilage, and overall joint health. Good nutrition and exercise can do a lot, but without a more focused approach, their effect is somewhat limited. So in terms of good nutrition, things like calcium rich foods like greens, seeds, and beans along with calcium supplements if needed. Magnesium rich foods like nuts and seeds, in addition to magnesium supplements if needed. Obviously you want to test these with your physician. Vitamin K1 supplements along with a particular type of vitamin K2 called MK7, which is highly absorbable and very important in terms of bone and skeletal muscle health. And then vitamin D3, very important for calcium absorption in the gut. Well, it's really key that we eliminate foods that contribute to calcium loss, and typically these are foods that are high in sodium, as well as soft drinks and caffeine. So soft drinks in particular tend to have caffeine, along with, uh, high amounts of sugar, which can actually contribute to increase urinary calcium. So this has been readily studied. Here's an article that was published in Nutrients in 2020. What they found was that participants with daily consumption of soft drinks had an odds ratio of 2. 72 for fracture. So in other words, the odds of them developing a bone fracture was almost three times as much as those individuals that did not consume soft drinks. What about diet soft drinks? Now, not all diet soft drinks use aspartame. But aspartame is found pretty commonly, and what we found is that aspartame definitely increases urinary calcium excretion, but we've also noticed that high amounts of sugar can increase calcium excretion as well. So the key thing with these soft drinks is they tend to be high in sugar, and even if you choose soft drinks that are diet soft drinks, that may also contribute to urinary calcium, and if you're leaching calcium in your urine, you're more likely to develop. Exactly, more, more likely there is potential that you can develop osteoporosis. Well, it really depends on, on the patient. I have noticed some people do need salt, and typically these are individuals that follow super healthy diets, which tend to have an absence of salt, or they tend to work out pretty regularly like your wife does. She's an avid runner. And so, yes, I've been adding perhaps like a half teaspoon of iodized sea salt to a gallon of water would be a great way to encourage um, electrolyte supplementation. Okay. But the vast majority of my patients don't have that issue because they tend to follow a diet that's compromised of ultra processed foods, which tend to be very heavy in terms of their usage of sodium. So when you think about muscles, you really want to think of three types. There's cardiac, there's smooth, and there's skeletal muscle. Everyone's familiar with skeletal muscle, like in your biceps, and they definitely facilitate movement, as you mentioned, but cardiac and smooth muscle are equally important. So skeletal muscle is voluntary, like you can contract your bicep or triceps muscles when you're lifting up something. But cardiac and smooth muscle, so cardiac muscle being found in your heart and smooth muscle being, uh, found in your organ systems, is involuntary, so they work independent of you. Cardiac muscle is extremely important. Appropriate functioning cardiac muscle is, is really key to make sure that your heart beats at an appropriate rate and contracts at the appropriate intensity. Any issues in terms of disruption of the system can affect your heart's performance and obviously make you feel a lot more fatigued. Remember, there's 700 muscles connected to our bones, which is our skeletal muscle mass, and that's about 30 to 50 percent of our body weight. So this is a very significant system. Absolutely, so it's more than soreness, working out and consuming protein is crucial for maintaining muscle mass. But, let's get to the point, your muscles are made for moving, and movement is really what keeps them in top shape. And so, whereas you do want to consume protein, we really gotta focus on the idea of doing resistance training. When you skip exercise, in particular resistance training, weight based exercise, your tendons shorten, your joints become stiff, and your muscles atrophy. They wither away. And this leads, obviously, to a reduction in your energy levels, but your organ function can also decline. You can get accumulation of fat, and that can lead to weight gain, and that can set the stage for many other health problems and risks like diabetes. So it's really key to obviously eat enough protein, but also move because that's really going to help ensure that you have enough skeletal muscle. And when I talk about protein, I'm really talking about prioritizing lean protein sources like chicken breast, cod, egg whites, and really trying to cut back on sugars. At Gotsuma Up, we try to focus on longevity and health optimization through, you know, a holistic method where we kind of view the body as a whole. Because, you know, we think all of these systems are being connected, and we try to search for root causes and treat the problems rather than just masking symptoms. So we bring patients in and do a detailed assessment and kind of go from there. And not all doctors take a holistic approach, but I will say I do believe most healthcare providers do share a sincere desire to help patients.