Surprising New Science on Cardio vs Muscle to LIVE LONGER

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we all possess the ability to improve our health span improve our longevity but the hard part is that what we do know that works is really difficult to deploy the large observational studies the large bodies of research that demonstrate decreases in all cause mortality well those have to do with things that are difficult to do exercise we don't want to always exercise we'd rather take a super pill we'd rather eat something but what I want to break down here is the relationship between VO2 max between your muscle mass and muscle strength and how it truly sincerely is one of the strongest predictors of all cause mortality that we can look at so let's dive into the research foreign thing I want to focus on is VO2 max now there's a study that was published in the journal Cardiology this is really interesting because it took a look at 122 000 people 122 0007 people and it measured their VO2 max it had them go on a treadmill and they measured their VO2 max okay and then they were divided into different categories based upon their VO2 max their level of cardiorespiratory Fitness now they adjusted for all other factors okay so when they looked at the data from here it was very much independent data like independent of anything else and what they found is that there was an inverse correlation between cardiorespiratory Fitness and all-cause mortality those that had a higher VO2 max had a lower risk of mortality those with a lower VO2 max had a higher risk of mortality the top five percent in terms of VO2 max the people that had the highest VO2 max in the top five percent they had 80 percent less chance of dying than those that were in the bottom 25 now I know at first that sounds discouraging because you're thinking I'm not that person that's in that top five percent so dang it well even still the 25 that were in the below average group compared to the low group well even that alone was a 50 difference so just by being in the below average group versus the low group was a 50 Improvement in risk of all cause mortality so that's a little bit of a win right because even if you're in that low category now if you can just improve your VO2 max to get yourself up to the below average category that alone makes you 50 better off than the people in the category below it is fascinating now what does this have to do with longevity like why does this correlate the reality is is that VO2 max is sort of an indicator of your accumulated endurance over the years now I don't mean to say this in a sense that you can never go backwards and never achieve it but when you look at someone's VO2 max it's something that you don't just earn overnight you work for it so generally speaking someone that especially in the elite category if they have a very high level of VO2 max that's probably something that they've worked for for a long time where at least for a large part of their lifetime right now in some of these other categories maybe it's a little less intense but it is an indicator of the work that you've put in and the cumulative endurance that has accumulated so this is very important to realize that the body recognize these things and although there could be independent factors within this cardiorespiratory Factor it is a very good indicator of longevity now before I move into this next one surrounding muscle mass I think it's important that you know that I wasn't always in shape so I don't know how you got to this channel because it happens all kinds of different ways on YouTube but I was 300 pounds so I've allowed myself to go from the depths of Despair and being really out of shape to being in shape so I want to make sure that that's said because it can be discouraging when you think all these people that have worked their whole life for this and I'm just starting now I'm in my mid-40s and I just got no you can do it you absolutely can make the change I just want to make sure I plug that in there before I move on so this next one looks at muscle mass not strength but the amount of muscle we actually carry now as we age men on average are going to lose about 4.7 percent of their muscle mass per decade and women about 3.7 percent per decade that is significant and muscle mass itself is an indicator of longevity well what ends up happening is as we age we have accumulation of fat and accumulation of fat will secrete what are called adipocins or cytokines or cytokines potato potato right so when these are secreted they have a catabolic effect they break down muscle tissue what can happen is these macrophages these immune cells can actually get into your muscle cell as a result of lipid accumulation and from there they can break down the muscle tissue they can have all kinds of an inflammatory response that makes the muscle not work so well and if you look look at the images on the screen right now so the image on the right is a 66 year old male they're both 66 years old the image on the right is a 66 year old that exercised and used strength training four times more than the person that's on the left you can visibly see the difference in muscle density and you can visibly see the amount of fat that is inside the muscle cross-sectional area of the person that did not exercise that much what does this have to do with longevity though that's where we insert an interesting study it was published in the American Journal of Medicine took a look at 3659 people that were ages 55 and up so what they did is they divided them into quartiles the bottom 25 the two middle 25 percents and the top 25 in terms of muscle mass compared to the bottom quartile the top three quartiles had a 20 percent less risk of dying from all cause mortality what's interesting is that this is not explained by other risk factors so we're not looking at other risk factors here like this mortality is directly related to muscle mass which means that it is an independent risk factor that means independent of everything else everything else not even on the table muscle mass itself is a predictor of all cause mortality or how long someone lives or their risk of dying now we've seen this happen with muscle function before but we've never really seen it happen uh in studies like this this American Journal of Medicine study was the first one that actually looked at Mass versus Muscle function and strength Okay the reason that this is so so so important for longevity is twofold for one protein reserves the more muscle you have the more protein you are you have on reserve and I'll give you an example okay my little pup Timmy was 15 years old okay he got cancer and he wasted away very fast okay this is an accelerated version of it but he wasted through his muscle stores now outside of something that's totally terminal let's look at something that let's say you're older and you just get sick and you get taken down you're in the hospital for a couple of months that could be really bad and you're going to waste a lot of muscle away but if you have muscle reserves that's a protective mechanism but the other piece is that more muscle that is on your body allows you to be able to have fuel for what's called gluconeogenesis so you can pull from that protein tissue to create glucose to help fight off an infection to help fuel the brain to do all kinds of things that you ordinarily wouldn't be able to do when you're in a serious deficit or not able to eat or you're sick so it's very important so no matter what prioritizing protein is very very important okay I put a link down below for butcher box if you like steaks or if you like chicken or if you like but good rib eyes or like brisket any of that good kind of protein that you like I put a link down below so it's all grass-fed grass finish they're a big sponsor on this channel they always have been and for those of you that are looking for just higher quality protein and want to have good delicious meals with the family and want to get it delivered to your doorstep that link is down below so down in the description you'll see a little arrow pushed down and you'll see a link for butcher box so you can click on that link and then you just choose whatever cuts of meat you want so whether you want chicken whether you want fish again whether you want New York's flank steak you want top sirloin you want filet mignon brisket ribeye whatever they have it all and it's all grass-fed grass finished really on top of their game so use that link down below I promise you it's going to change the way that you end up eating meat because first of all it's easy no more grocery store comes to your doorstep secondly the flavor is Just A Cut Above no pun in it so that link is down below in the description the other piece that we have to look at that's very very important is going to be your muscle strength now you might think muscle mass muscle strength aren't these the same thing no they're not at all so muscle mass is your glucose sync gets your protein Reserve it's the mass that you carry the strength is the functionality of it and there's different data that's independent of muscle mass that is associated with longevity here so there was a study that was published in the bmj took a look at 8 000 people okay follow them around for 18 years and measured their upper body strength and their lower body strength okay and what they found is that the people that ended up having the lowest one-third of strength in those that were 60 and up they ended up having a 50 increased risk of mortality compared to the top one-third okay so the top third in terms of strength had a fifty percent less chance of all cause mortality compared to the bottom third the interesting thing is that this inverse correlation between muscle strength and death was independent of their cardio respiratory Fitness so what that means is that their level of Fitness didn't affect things like their VO2 max or anything like that this was purely how strong they were so even someone that was just strong and there's been studies that look at like mice with grip strength and things like that like strength is a really good indicator metabolically of someone's like Longevity if you have an older person that's 75 years old and they're strong as heck it's a good indicator of Vitality and Longevity it just is the bottom line is that it's a different mechanisms from just having muscle mass okay muscle mass is more metabolic more fuel substrate muscle strength is more functional so think about it like this like having muscle as just an appendage hanging on your body is great because it's storage and it's metabolically active realistically if you take two people someone that's 150 pounds and someone that's 200 pounds of muscle they're super lean the person that has 200 pounds of muscle isn't burning that many more calories per day than the person that's 150 pounds of muscle if they're just sitting on the couch it's very minimal but once those muscles are in action that is when the difference is pronounced because big muscles in action incinerate calories and are very metabolically active and most of the researchers are hypothesizing that the muscle strength and the mass and that whole interrelationship there it just has to do with being able to Stave off obesity being able to Stave off adipose accumulation if we're not having a bunch of fat accumulating we're not having the same adipocins secreted we're not having cytokines secreted we're not having that inflammatory response that immune response we are lean and that Master regulator within the body the adipose tissue that really influences so much especially negatively is kept at Bay so then we ask the question which is a very interesting one and this is a little bit more in depth mtor is what allows muscle to grow okay mtor is the signal that allows us to build muscle and there's a lot of evidence out there that mtor needs to be turned off in order to induce longevity so like autophagy for example is the opposite of mtor so there's Pharmaceuticals like rapamycin rap myosin is used to inhibit mtor and we can see that there is an increase in lifespan when mtor is diminished but then it begs the question what is the difference between Health span and lifespan if you could take a drug like rap myosin and be able to squash mtor but you wouldn't gain muscle because there's studies that demonstrate that when rap myosin was taken the response to exercise was like totally crushed the muscle the hypertrophic response was crushed so you could be weak decrepit and just laying in bed but living for a longer period of time or you could have Vitality you could have as much as you can with the Best of Both Worlds by maintaining muscle mass but also keeping cognizant of an occasional caloric deficit because now the evidence is starting to show that you can maintain muscle a heck of a lot easier than we thought before you can even maintain muscle in a deficit if you're using it and you're keeping it active and the body sees it as a priority so I know this was long-winded but it's very important the rule of thumb here is above all else above even making nutritional changes get moving lift some weights lift some rocks lift your dog whatever as always keep it locked into my channel I'll see you tomorrow