I can’t stop chronological aging, but can I slow biological aging so that I can function like a younger person?

I want to hold on to some of these things. I don’t want to lose these yet, you know.

How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were? How old do you feel? And can you improve that?

Welcome to the Strength Changes Everything podcast, where we introduce you to the information, latest research, and tools that will enable you to live a strong, healthy life. On this podcast, we will also answer your questions about strength, health, and well -being. I’m Amy Hudson. I own and operate three exercise coach studios. My co -hosts are Brian Sagan, co -founder and CEO of The Exercise Coach, and Dr. James Fisher, leading researcher in evidence -based strength training. And now for today’s episode.

Today, we’re kicking off a new series all about the topic of aging. Now, aging can be quite the concept to consider, right? No matter what age you currently are listening to this today, the concept of aging for you might mean something very specific. And, you know, to me or Dr. Fisher or other people listening, it might mean something totally different. Aging is really complex, but we are going to start off this series on talking about some of the features of aging and how strength training can positively impact that. But Kind of to start us off on this topic today, we’re going to just talk about what aging means to each of us and kind of consider some of the elements that we want to flesh out in future episodes today about what aging typically looks like and what we think about when we think about getting older.

This is going to happen to all of us. And so, you know, I think that you’re going to find today’s conversation super interesting. Now, Dr. Fisher, kind of what sparked this series of episodes that we did to record is a quote that you came across recently that you haven’t really been able to stop thinking about. So tell us, you know, what was that quote and why did it really stick with you?

Yeah.

So thank you, Amy. Um, so, uh, we had Dr. Doug McGuff on the podcast recently, and I’d heard him in a previous conference presentation, um, quote, a baseball player, uh, called Satchel Paige. Now Satchel Paige was a rookie pitcher in major league baseball in 1948. And he entered major league baseball as a rookie aged 42. And he was questioned about how he can be a rookie age 42 and how well his body would hold up to the, you know, performing at that high level in the game. And the quote, his response to those questions and the quote that has stuck with me is he said back to the reporters, well, how old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?

And it really resonated with me and it really made me think on multiple levels, you know, on a superficial level about how we feel day to day, but also about how our body functions and what we can do to make ourselves feel better and function better. And whether there’s appearance factors or physical factors or cognitive factors around this. And it left me thinking about a lot of the research that talks about. potentially reversing aging or helping us retain quality of life as we age, which of course is the purpose of this podcast. So that was the quote that really kicked all this off, Amy.

Yeah.

I mean, if you’re listening today and thinking about that, if I asked you, how old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were? Like basically how old do you feel right now in your body? If you had no chronological age, to go back on and what year was I born again? how old do you feel so it it brings up the idea in general about aging and What we think about to indicate how old we feel, right? So, I mean, let’s talk about some of the elements that people typically think about or associate with getting older You know, what are some of the initial things that you think about?

Dr. Fisher?

Yeah, well, I find aging really interesting. I have an eight year old son and I can remember being young and, and effectively feeling invincible. You know, when I was in my teens and in my twenties, I, I felt like I could do anything. And now I’m in my forties and I’m so much more. Anxious about doing things that I know historically I would have just done without thinking about it because of the potential risk of injury. Now it’s interesting because some of that is wisdom.

and an understanding of the consequences of an injury or of an outcome. But some of it is also maybe anxiety or apprehension. So there’s kind of positives and negatives from that psychological perspective. I definitely think there’s a lot in the idea that our chronological and biological age can differ. In answering your question, I’m 47 years old, but in my head, I’m still somewhere in my 30s. I don’t want to say my young 30s, but I’m still somewhere in my 30s in the way that I can function and the way that I you know, can play basketball and lift weights and I’m active through the day and so on.

So I really think that there’s, you know, a forethought in our exercise habits and our lifestyle habits to say, okay, I can’t stop chronological aging, but can I slow biological aging so that I can function like a younger person?

So what I’m hearing you saying is you feel younger than your chronological age today because of the way you can function and perform for the most part, right? Like you mentioned playing basketball and just how your body feels and functions. Is that fair?

Yeah, absolutely.

And so kind of like the opposite of that then would be like non -functioning. Reduce like ability to functionally perform or maybe like aches and pains or a weakness that your body might experience which would preclude you from doing the things that you want to do. Would that be fair?

Yeah, absolutely. So I definitely think there’s so much in kind of what I would refer to as like early aging. Somebody that maybe doesn’t, I’m going to make the reference to doesn’t exercise, but for whatever reason has more aches and pains and discomfort, doesn’t have the functionality to get up and down off the floor and play with kids or lift, I don’t know, things in and out of their car, even though there may be maybe the same age as me, you know, some of the people that I maybe went to school with that simply physically don’t function at the same, in the same way that I do, because maybe they haven’t spent the same time looking after their body and looking after their functional ability, um, as I have through sort of the recent decades. So, and yeah, to me, that’s a sign of, of biological aging, you know, I perceive weakness and frailty and dependence on other people as things that will happen to us later in life, but hopefully much, much, much later. I think, you know, biological youth is independence and vitality and energy, and to some extent, freedom. You know, not dependence upon sticks or motor vehicles or things like that.

The ability to just go for a run or go for a walk or, you know, perform whatever task we might want to perform. So yeah, so I definitely think there’s something in, in that contrast between healthy aging and, um, you know, perhaps early onset aging as far as physical function.

If you think about it, you know, when you were describing sort of like the differential or the Delta between, you know, somebody who starts, who’s, who’s taking care of themselves. and somebody who isn’t, you imagine some of the implications of somebody who’s sort of just like let their health go to the wayside, which might be like obesity and disease and inflammation and chronic pain and, um, immobility and joint pain. And, and so all of that together actually makes one closer to death than right. Like really aging means the closer you are to death. So when Doug McGuff was talking to us, he talked about the area under the curve, the curve being like sort of the healthy years of your life or health span and how to keep that pushed up as long as possible until the day that your last day that you’re alive. I think we all think about people that we know that have passed away and sometimes people don’t seem to have a a huge amount of decline before the day that they die.

And other people do, right? It’s a long time that they’re really not in a good place with their health or functioning. And so most people do want to feel as good as they can, as long as they can.

Yeah. And it’s a really interesting concept because I think, you know, if we think about celebrities, they’re the ones that are in the media. We often hear of such and such a celebrity has recently died and then they might report, well, they were battling. X comorbidity, let’s say, you know, I’m not going to name anything specifically, but they may have been unwell for a number of years or decades even. And you think, oh, well it was, it was almost kind of coming to them and you, you know, for whatever reason, you almost kind of justify that it’s okay. But the shock factor almost comes the opposite way when we say, oh, so -and -so’s died and they were in you know, perfect health and so on and so forth, even though they were 87 years old.

And actually we shouldn’t be shocked by that because.

Like you say, you know, death is going to come to us all, but we should celebrate that they are in, you know, such fine physical and cognitive function up to their, uh, up to their last days. Right. And, you know, I just want to acknowledge too, like, I think there are some positive associations of aging. Some that come to my mind are increased wisdom. You, the older you get, the more of life that you’ve lived and you understand how things work. Sometimes it involves more freedom.

You might retire. You might travel more. You might’ve, you know, made the money that you’re going to make in life and no longer have the stresses of, you know, working really hard every day to get your kids through college and, and go at a hundred miles an hour. You, you might have a more, um, general satisfaction with life. So this is all good, right? You might be involved with your peers a little bit on a deeper level with a sense of, you know, serving your community, hopefully, or in a pickleball club.

You might have the joy of having grandkids and being able to travel. and take joy out of that, that it’s, it’s not the same level of responsibility. So things like that, I think there are some very positive elements to aging, you know, but there’s another camp of, there’s another part of it that is loss. Loss is a word that comes to my mind. We’re losing certain things. Um, we’re losing, you know, Well, we can think about our youth.

What does that mean? We’re losing the color in our hair. Our hair will go gray or white. That’s a big loss. Your appearance will change. Your skin changes.

You get wrinkles. Your body starts to betray you sometimes. Now, that’s a dramatic language. in the sense that sometimes it won’t allow you to do things that you used to be able to do. And if you’re not paying attention, sometimes that can come by surprise. Your brain can slow down, you know, and you can’t think of the words as fast as you used to be able to when you tell stories or you just, you know, people notice sort of that mental decline, um, going on where they’re just not as sharp anymore and you’ve lost some ability there.

And it can be sad, you know, when you when you think about it in that way of like, hold on, I want to hold on to some of these things. I don’t want to lose these yet, you know. And so I think that that opens the door to the conversation that we’re going to be having in these next several episodes of we actually do have a choice, to some extent, in how quickly we lose some of the elements, you know, or don’t lose some of the elements of our lifestyle that we typically associate with being younger. And, you know, some of the ones that we’re going to discuss are going to be appearance. We’re actually going to discuss about strength training and its impact on one’s appearance, genetic expression, skin elasticity, cognitive function.

We’re going to be talking about how strength training can positively help people’s cognitive function and keep that functioning well. What are some other ones, Dr. Fisher, that we’re going to be talking about? Yeah, well, probably the most obvious ones from our perspective are sarcopenia. So sarcopenia is a loss of muscle mass with age. And in fact, they broaden the definition of sarcopenia to include what would typically be called dynopenia, and that’s muscular function. So a loss of muscle mass and a loss of muscle function, and physical, kind of physical capacity, I guess.

There’s also increase in chronic disease and comorbidities. There’s You know, typically older adults suffer with a really poor, what’s called sleep architecture. So they have different, uh, sleep patterns. They might take longer to fall asleep. If they wake from sleep, they might not be able to get back to sleep. Um, the sort of the brain waves during sleep differ quite substantially.

Um, so there’s, there’s a lot of things kind of associated with, with aging. And of course, typically. There’s a wealth of research that kind of looks at all of these variables and says, Hey, hold on. If you engage in strength training, then. You know, maybe, maybe you improve your sleep or improve your risk against chronic diseases and, and reduce risk of joint pain and osteoarthritis and, and, you know, all of those factors.

So, uh, and of course it stands to reason that we would talk about those things, but I think this, this introductory podcast will take us on a really nice journey through this series. of talking about each of those research studies and getting into some detail on each of those variables. Right. So if you’re listening today and you already have a couple of those topics that jump out at you, maybe because you’re already experiencing some decline in those areas, you’re going to have a hierarchy of episodes that you want to really pay close attention to that really are applicable to you, or maybe ones that you are the most concerned with. So definitely don’t miss those because when you learn the connection between a small amount of strength training and how that can impact that area of your life, I think that it will be pretty motivating for you to consider, you know, what you can do today to push that further down the road or kick the can down the road, so to speak. But I encourage you to listen to all of these because even if it’s not your concern, it’s somebody else in your life’s concern.

So I’m super excited for this series to kick off next time and to delve into some of the research. So the claims we’re making is that strength training will help reverse these things. That’s a pretty powerful claim. So we’re going to back that up in these coming episodes, which I’m super excited about.

Um, so stay tuned and we will delve into these topics starting next week. Dr. Fisher, any other comments that you have today related to aging or this series that we’re about to start?

Yeah, I really just want to impress upon listeners to ask themselves the question that we started all this off with, with the quote, how old would you be if you didn’t know how old you were?

How old do you feel and can you improve that is the question. I love it. Yes. Awesome. Well, I hope you did that today. Write that number down in a notebook and take copious notes as we go through the rest of these episodes.

No, we’re kidding. But do enjoy it and tune in. So we will see you next time on the podcast. And until then, we hope you remember, strength changes everything. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed today’s episode, please share it with a friend.

You can submit a question or connect with the show at strengthchangeseverything . com. Join us next week for another episode and be sure to follow the show on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts so that you never miss another episode. Here’s to you and your best health.