Are you becoming frail with your lifestyle?
Hello, hello, hello. Good morning to you all. So what's this question then? Frailty and aging are not the same thing. Okay.
Speaker 1:So a lot of people think as you get older, become more fragile and things happen or things go wrong, right? And to a sense there's a strong correlation with this obviously. But you see people that go against this a lot. There's really fit people in their 50s, 60s, 70s, even 80s. They're still moving about, they're still doing day to day activities and they're still fit.
Speaker 1:They're still fit to live, fit to do things, fit to be independent. So in this research I'm looking at now, 10% of what they call community dwelling seniors and that is defined as this, community dwelling is the official shorthand for older adults who don't live in a hospital, institution or long term care. So basically anyone living back in the villages, in the towns, kind of independent. Only ten percent of those people meet the criteria for frailty. So that means they're highly vulnerable and potentially devastating health problems.
Speaker 1:So that's what frailty means here. So that's a codon also, right? We had recently published review from the gerontologists based in Canada and Mexico. Max, I definitely messed that up. Okay, so frailty rate approaches sixty percent for older adults with advanced cardiovascular disease.
Speaker 1:So from ten percent to people in the towns and villages living their life to sixty percent with advanced cardiovascular disease. So in these cases right heart attack or major surgery, can be defined as people in this category right and things can go downhill very very quickly from here. So they looked at patients ending up with a maximum aerobic power VO2 max peak which becomes below the clinical threshold for frailty. So what does that mean? The threshold for frailty is a VO2 peak below 18 of oxygen per kilogram of body weight per minute for males and 16 for females.
Speaker 1:Okay so the average US adult is 33 and for females is 26.2 so going below 18 and below 16. Now in the new turtle Octagon four challenge, we're gonna be doing a week on heart health and VO two max and what this all means and how you find your own one out. Now you can keep an eye on it, right? But if the person's VO two max peak is below these cutoffs, simple household tasks might push them beyond their lactic threshold. So the point where the muscles can no longer use oxygen to generate energy and instead shifts to anaerobic energy systems which is very costly and actually quite scary right.
Speaker 1:And my father was going through this a lot. You know, he was he had heart failure, triple heart bypass, angina, diabetes. He was on oxygen. And there's a chart I'm looking at now where, you know, at rest these people using 23%, right, of their VO two VO two maxes. And then just making the bed, it goes up to 59%.
Speaker 1:And, you know, this is their threshold, their lactic threshold. So just putting on clothes, put some beyond the threshold they need to be at and anything beyond that it can go to peak which is like dangerous dangerous territory. So in this chart it shows that just like walk into the toilet puts them above their peak VO two, milliliters per kilogram of weight. Right? So, you know, this is like when you look at this data, okay, what it's trying to say is that you want to be able to be for you to be functionally independent you still need to be in your aerobic threshold for movement.
Speaker 1:So you need to be able to walk to the toilet, walk to the shop without going into your anaerobic systems, which means you're not going to be like breathing really heavily and you're not going to feel like you're dying. For you to be functionally active and fit and being able to live really, you've got to watch out for this, right? So people in that state, they can't go beyond that. So I I I my father used to walk into the toilet, and, you know, that was like doing a 100 meter sprint. Even when you go slow, you're like, the movement, everything is just just horrible to watch, but it just goes to show how, like, how frail he was really.
Speaker 1:Like, and this is important stuff for us to to focus on because once your life gets to that stage, your life quality goes way down, way down. And we can look at numbers or look at this, but the reality of it is horrible. In my father's case, he couldn't drive anymore. He was a he had a minibus business, and he was known around the village, around the valley for being this bus driver, the bus business, being, you know, going around checking in on garages, driving about, seeing his drivers. You know, he couldn't do that anymore.
Speaker 1:He lost that independence. He couldn't even just get up and go to the toilet on his own. He couldn't do anything on his own. I feel to your life to be taken away from you. He's in 76 when he passed.
Speaker 1:Right? You know, last year, not not that old in our sense. You don't wanna get to this position. You know? It's it's not nice to think about it.
Speaker 1:It's not nice to see someone go through it. But what is, you know, what do we do to not get there? You know, what what do you do to get there is another question. What should I do to make sure that I become risk, high risk of cardiovascular disease and all this by the time I'm age 60? All right, well, keep over consuming my calorie intake, keep gaining weight over time, not getting my steps in, not drinking water, making sure I'm being functionally active day to day, not trying to find an exercise that I enjoy that moves my body, know, not ever looking on my nutritional intake, not ever, you know, joining the community of people who want to improve their health, drinking too much all the time.
Speaker 1:You know, that's what I would do if wanna get into this position. So, you know, you do the opposite to make sure you don't get on that position. So the opposite is, well, for me to not get into this position, you know, smoking is another one. Right? My father said, biggest regret was smoking.
Speaker 1:He'd smoke something 40 a day. Biggest regret he had. I remember taking him to the gym once when he wasn't as bad. He's on the portable oxygen machine, and he was saying, yeah, smoking, see? Smoking did this to me.
Speaker 1:I said, yeah. The doctors told you, man. They told you twenty years ago, you you had the first surgery angina, they told you, you know, come on guys, don't let it get there. You know, you really need to shake yourself sometimes and be like, What am I doing? Why am I not going off my walk today?
Speaker 1:I can do it today. I can I'm I'm functionally active. I can do it. There might be one time in the future when me putting my socks on puts me into my anaerobic threshold, and that's dangerous for me. This is what's happening to these people.
Speaker 1:You know, walking three miles per hour. Takes them above the anaerobic threshold. Carrying groceries goes beyond their peak. Dangerous. Jogging five miles per hour, 188% over, like way too dangerous, you know, life threatening stuff.
Speaker 1:Okay? So this is not like trying to scare monkey. It was just looking at what the data says. Right? And this is a heart failure and stuff.
Speaker 1:And it is easily preventable essentially if we do the basics. If we do the basics, we don't want get to that position. So people say what does exercise do, And obviously exercise works your core, works your muscles, helps your balance, right? But any movement does everything really. It is it's it's exercise works on the mind, it's holistic, it's cardiovascular, It works your muscles, your nervous system, it activates muscles, releases signals that helps with inflammation, regenerates cardiac tissue, improves brain function, does all of these amazing things exercise, but you have to do something you enjoy so it becomes part of your lifestyle.
Speaker 1:It's not something, oh shit, should I exercise? I don't want to. It's holy hell, I love my the movement I do. I I wake up and I look forward to the movement I'm doing. Right?
Speaker 1:And obviously some of you who already have health problems and you've speak to your doctors and stuff and they tell you, you know, you need to follow the prescribed what they do. This is not like medical advice in our sense but it is like the basics need to be done. The fundamentals are there. If you got the fundamental there, things are gonna improve. Okay?
Speaker 1:But the thing is pushing yourself too much with exercise like we traditionally do with aerobic exercise for people who are unfit and is is not a good idea. You know, that's because like when you get to that lactic threshold, when you get really, really tired from exercise, you're wobbly, you your coordination goes, your your head's all over the place. You know, we've all been there. Your head's pounding. You're breathing heavily.
Speaker 1:You are really in a bar position. You don't need to go there. Right? You don't need to go there like every session. Maybe once in a while you wanna push yourself, it's fine.
Speaker 1:But the good stuff you could do is you can work on your balance and strength and cognition with really, really light weights. You know, this has been proven in people with Alzheimer's dementia that weightlifting can help, right? And the reason it does obviously is like I said, it's using your brain, mind muscle connection. It's moving your muscles, blood flow, it still works in your heart health like I covered last week, but I'll cover it more. So you start really light, you start with weights that are like 30% of what you can do for one rep.
Speaker 1:So say you can do 10 kilograms, 10 kilogram dumbbell for one curl, one bicep curl. And that's one, you do one, it's really, really hard. You use three kilograms, right? And you do like, you know, you work up to eight to 12 reps. And this is a key part about this is that you rest as long as you need between sets.
Speaker 1:Okay? You don't worry about if you're if you're in a position now and I'm talking to people whose fitness levels you feel are really low right now, you know, you got really low fitness levels, you're gonna build it up. You don't have to follow the forty five to sixty second rest periods because that's gonna push you into an anaerobic zone, and you're gonna start feeling that you're gonna get fatigued quicker. So when it comes to the base, you can rest two, three, four, five minutes if you wanted to. And you just do a nice set, controlled, lightweight, you keep going, right?
Speaker 1:And then you slowly build up over time. You don't have to do barbell squats and dead lifts military presses and pull ups like all the advice on out there is. You don't have to do this. These are big compound movements, they use multiple joints. You can start off with machines, you can do the bicep machines, the tricep machines, the single leg extension machines.
Speaker 1:You can work singular groups of muscles at a time. Okay? Because dead lifts, they will put you push you anaerobic, squats as well. And you know, you gotta remember, on these big exercises, they come with a level of risk. Yes, you can have the form correct.
Speaker 1:Yes, you know timing. But when you are exerting yourself too much, form does go out the window and it's hard to maintain good form when you're really, really tired. Okay? So, think it's important there because there was a study in 2011 that patients with chronic heart failure did a single exercise, so knee extensions, training each leg separately for eight weeks, right? And then thanks to increased oxygen delivery to the quadriceps, the patients were able to increase their VO2 peak by 40%.
Speaker 1:Okay? Elbow extension, sitting in your, you've got calf raise, of just bending your, bringing your fist to your head like that bicep curl, yeah? That's a single exercise, single muscle exercise. And then the other way is the tricep, okay? And then what do you mean by, knee extension?
Speaker 1:So you're sitting on a chair, you just kick your knee out and back in. So you're working your quadriceps, right? So you put a bit of weight on and you get some weight. And the same for the hamstrings, you lay down on your front and you do the other way. You know, and then maybe you can do single arm chest press, you know, maybe lightweight.
Speaker 1:You know, you can do a wall press. Look 40% increase in oxygen delivery. Increase the VO2 max by 40%. Those numbers are crazy. You know, I remember when I was taking my father to the gym and if you compare it to what we've done at 18 years old and what people tell you to do in the gym, you think this can't be doing anything, right?
Speaker 1:That's what we think. Our brain goes there. But he was doing, on the on the machine, he started off in the bike, then on the machine, he was doing, leg press, single leg press. And it was an easy machine, foot, push back a bit, back down. Nice and easy.
Speaker 1:Okay. We get to five reps, six reps. Let's have a break. You know, take as much time. Go back again.
Speaker 1:And I'm telling you, his strength levels are going up very, very quickly. Things happen outside his control that put this condition worse, but he was definitely seeing some really big improvements in his walking ability and his strength when he was doing that frequently. Yeah. So who knows what would have happened if he was able to maintain that. You know?
Speaker 1:It would have been been maybe a very different outcome, maybe added years. You'd you just don't know, dear. And you can't really you can't think our way, when it comes to it, but I think yeah. Take it seriously, please. I beg you to take these things seriously.
Speaker 1:If you wanna challenge yourself, a lot of you listening, and you might be 26 years old and you're super fit and it's fine and, you know, but this is information not just for you, but for the people in your life as well. You know, you the all of you have got older people in your life, you know, and maybe people you see getting getting frail, maybe maybe people you see whose health is going down, and you feel like they're overwhelmed by stuff, and, you know, you you you can get tell them to listen to this podcast. Can tell them to you know, you can start slow. You can be there for them. You know, you can go to a PT and say, hey.
Speaker 1:Can you listen to this podcast on the research and this? Can you take them through really easy work? Because you gotta remember some PTs will go too too hard, too fast for any age. It's a big problem with them. You know, there's this this was one gear.
Speaker 1:And there's a lot of brilliant PTs out there with patience of a saint and they're really good. So, know, it's it's it's hard, but you can find the right one. And you need to see this and I'll finish in this, right? You gotta see like exercises like a health bank basically. Right?
Speaker 1:So if you maintain your fitness, you're able to overcome setbacks as you age. Simple as that. And the big reason why health experts talk about v o two peak, or v o two max for improving health span is because of that. Okay? So it builds a reserve of fitness and strength, but also significantly enhances your capacity to recover from illness or injury, know?
Speaker 1:Being fit and healthy, if things happen, you're in a good better position to overcome it, right? Simple as. So take this as some exciting news in a sense. Like, We can we can hey. It's not too bad.
Speaker 1:That's not too much out of my reach. It's not. And use it as a momentum. You know, even if you can do one workout this week or two short workouts or something. If you're not feeling like you wanna do a big workout, just do the single joint stuff.
Speaker 1:99.9% of people listening to this are not bodybuilders, not elite athletes. You're not in that camp, so we don't need to touch those things. Okay? So have a good day, guys. Hopefully, this podcast was useful.
Speaker 1:Again, heart health week in the Octagon Challenge is gonna cover more of these things, and we'll be having many things you can take away and you can share with other people in your life. If you wanna know more about the Octagon Challenge and need a link, then just pop me an email or message, I can send it to you. But other than that, guys, enjoy your day and speak to you soon.
