Here’s what’s on the healthspan menu today:
- What is Muscle Memory and Is it Real?
- The Fear of Death Declines with Age
- Uncontroversial Health Advice
What is Muscle Memory and Is It Real?
Just like not riding a bike for years and being able to quickly pick it up again, Muscle memory does the same for your strength and muscle gains.
When you workout consistently, your muscle cells duplicate in order to meet the needs of your training.
When you stop training, the old and new muscle cells may shrink due to atrophy, but they don’t just disappear.
Re-strengthening and building up existing muscle cells can be much quicker than starting from scratch.
Another reason you may find it easy to regain your strength after weeks or months of not working out is that you create neural pathways within your Central Nervous System when you lift and train.
Even though some pathways may not have been used for a while, reactivating ones you’ve already made are much quicker than creating new ones.
Building muscle takes a long time, but the good news is so does losing muscle you’ve built.
One take away from understanding muscle memory is that you should start lifting early and consistently.
For those of us over 30, it’s even more important to be consistent with your weightlifting due to a gradual decline in muscle mass known as sarcopenia.
The Fear of Death Declines with Age
Why do the elderly fear death less than the young?
One study shows that those in their 60s and 70’s feared death less than those in their 40’s and 50’s and even less than those that were even younger.
Another study found that after a peak in your 20’s the fear of death slowly decline.
Some say this is because quality of life is lower as you climb into old age. This means your body doesn’t work as well, food doesn’t taste as good, and your general passion for work and life slowly declines.
But what if you can maintain and even increase your healthspan by continuously training your body and mind as you age? Or, is it possible to reignite your passions with new interests or purpose?
Just something to meditate on.
Uncontroversial Health Advice
Debates about the best exercise, diet and health routines have always been debated.
And there are always exceptions to the rules, but here are some that are hard to dispute:
- You should avoid all added sugars in your diet 90% of the time
- Walking around 10,000 steps a day, preferably after a meal
- Getting enough sleep, whether this is 6 and a half hours for you or 9 hours
- Building or maintaining muscle mass through some type of resistance training
- Doing yoga or some other form of mobility exercises
Of course there are nuances to how you get good sleep, and what resistance training and mobility exercise work best for you.
