Latest / Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40 / Brain Aging and Barbells (How Lifting Weights Slows Cognitive Decline) | Ep 474

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Brain Aging and Barbells (How Lifting Weights Slows Cognitive Decline) | Ep 474 · Wits & Weights | Strength & Fat Loss Over 40

• 0:00
  Philip Pape: If you've heard for years that aerobic exercise is what protects your brain from dementia, a brand new randomized controlled trial might give you a new perspective.
• 0:09
  Philip Pape: One year of lifting weights made people's brains test almost two years younger on a functional brain scan.
• 0:16
  Philip Pape: And then the effect kept growing for a full year after the training stopped.
• 0:20
  Philip Pape: And the brain regions involved are not the same ones targeted by cardio.
• 0:24
  Philip Pape: Today I'm walking you through what is happening inside your skull with your brain when you lift weights, why it works through pathways more associated with lifting weights than cardio, and a dead simple lifting protocol with the most evidence behind it if you're trying to improve your brain age.
• 0:46
  Philip Pape: Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that puts a popular piece of fitness advice under the microscope, finds the hidden reason it doesn't work, and gives you the deceptively simple fix that does.
• 0:56
  Philip Pape: I'm your host, Philip Pape.
• 0:58
  Philip Pape: And if you are aging, which we all are because we can't go back in a time machine, especially if you're over 40, over 50, you know, I'm 45 years old.
• 1:07
  Philip Pape: My grandmother had Alzheimer's.
• 1:09
  Philip Pape: There's dementia in our family, there's dementia risk in my genetics.
• 1:13
  Philip Pape: And you, maybe in the back of your head, there's a worry about dementia or Alzheimer's.
• 1:19
  Philip Pape: And maybe it's a parent or grandparent that has it.
• 1:21
  Philip Pape: You have personal experience.
• 1:22
  Philip Pape: Maybe it's, you know, just you walk into a room and you forget why you walked in, or somebody asks you a question, and you forget what you were going to say.
• 1:29
  Philip Pape: Maybe it's all the headlines about Alzheimer's and the anxiety behind that.
• 1:34
  Philip Pape: And every time you, you know, hit the Google machine about what to do about it, a lot of the advice is super generic because a lot of this is cutting edge right now.
• 1:42
  Philip Pape: The research into Alzheimer's, and a lot of it is more bio more about the biology and the pharmaceuticals and things like that.
• 1:49
  Philip Pape: Or you see advice like, hey, you've got to just move more, you've got to walk more, you've got to run more.
• 1:54
  Philip Pape: You know, just general, generic, kind of worthless advice, in my opinion.
• 1:58
  Philip Pape: And so I'm all for encouraging people to move.
• 2:02
  Philip Pape: I definitely think the vast majority of the older population is way too sedentary, and it has led to the frailty and the lack of strength and also often lack of function, polypharmacy, you know, all the things we're trying to avoid in general, but it also affects your brain massively.
• 2:19
  Philip Pape: You know, things like muscle mass affect your brain massively.
• 2:22
  Philip Pape: We're going to be talking about lifting weights today, but really the brain is so important.
• 2:27
  Philip Pape: I mean, just doing this podcast and the work I do and being an engineer and all that, having a family, trying to solve problems, wanting to live a long life, wanting to lift weights.
• 2:35
  Philip Pape: I'm like, if I didn't have my brain, where would I be?
• 2:38
  Philip Pape: And the research on resistance training and the brain has been building over the last few years.
• 2:43
  Philip Pape: I'd say the last decade and a half, uh, we've seen some more studies.
• 2:46
  Philip Pape: And there's a study that came out a few months ago that's really strong evidence, yet again, I will say, that lifting weights uniquely does something for your brain that nothing else, including aerobic exercise, can replicate.
• 3:01
  Philip Pape: And it's not just like one area of your brain, like the hippocampus, it's not just memory.
• 3:06
  Philip Pape: It's it's how the front of your brain kind of wires together, the whole, you know, neurostructure of the brain, if you will, if that's even a proper word.
• 3:16
  Philip Pape: Forgive me, I'm gonna butcher a lot of probably fundamental science here for the neurofolks out there, but I'm gonna do my best.
• 3:23
  Philip Pape: So today I'm gonna walk you through that study.
• 3:25
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna show you the mechanisms that make it work, and I'm gonna give you a lifting protocol that is evidence-based that can go along with all of this.
• 3:32
  Philip Pape: And then stick around to the end because I'm going to share a 30-second self-test that might give you a little bit of a read on your own dementia risk having to do with this topic.
• 3:43
  Philip Pape: I'll tell you the muscle metric that we really care about the most, a statistic from one of the biggest cognitive aging studies ever done, a specific stat that you want to care about, and then what to do if you don't like what the information is telling you.
• 3:58
  Philip Pape: What do we need to do differently, guys?
• 3:59
  Philip Pape: Okay, so I'm gonna give you a little history here because this is one of those situations where I think the advice is probably outdated or there just isn't good advice.
• 4:09
  Philip Pape: So, starting in the early 2000s, a group of researchers led by Art Kramer at the University of Illinois, they ran a series of randomized trials and they showed that aerobic exercise, especially walking, increased the size of the hippocampus in older adults.
• 4:25
  Philip Pape: Now, that's the part of your brain that handles the formation of memories.
• 4:29
  Philip Pape: And then their 2011 study in adults over 60 found that one year of walking grew the hippocampus 2%, which is very meaningful when the typical trajectory with age is a one to two 1 to 2% shrinkage per year.
• 4:45
  Philip Pape: And so that study and a bunch like it became the foundation for the exercise protects your brain message that you hear everywhere now.
• 4:53
  Philip Pape: And that's a good message, right?
• 4:54
  Philip Pape: Walking is great, cardio is great.
• 4:55
  Philip Pape: I'm definitely not anti-any of that.
• 4:57
  Philip Pape: We need to move more.
• 4:58
  Philip Pape: Almost everybody listening to this podcast probably has to move more in the right ways, let alone also lift weights.
• 5:04
  Philip Pape: But where I think a lot of this gets oversold, which could be detrimental, let's say, is that, you know, because it's easy to standardize aerobic exercise and research and it gets more studied than lifting.
• 5:18
  Philip Pape: And because the assumption is, okay, the brain is all about blood flow and oxygen delivery.
• 5:24
  Philip Pape: So of course cardio is going to be aligned with that.
• 5:26
  Philip Pape: I would say the resistance training side just didn't get studied to the same level for a long time.
• 5:32
  Philip Pape: And so, you know, it's it's more of an omission, let's just say, or a lack of study.
• 5:37
  Philip Pape: It's kind of like women's health, you know, where there's a lack of a lot of information because certain populations of women just aren't being studied.
• 5:44
  Philip Pape: So I would say there are three things I want to challenge with some of the research to date so that we can lead into talking about the topic.
• 5:54
  Philip Pape: The first one is the brain is really, really complicated.
• 5:57
  Philip Pape: It isn't just one tissue, right?
• 5:59
  Philip Pape: It's a very complex structure that we still don't know a lot about.
• 6:03
  Philip Pape: And the hippocampus is one part of it.
• 6:06
  Philip Pape: And I think, you know, looking at the research, cognitive aging and the hippocampus has been tied together quite a bit.
• 6:13
  Philip Pape: But there's also the prefrontal cortex, and that's right behind your forehead, a different, completely different part from the hippocampus.
• 6:20
  Philip Pape: That part handles decision making, planning, your working memory, it's called, and impulse control.
• 6:28
  Philip Pape: And it's also the part that we look at that tends to fail early and the first thing that goes in Alzheimer's, as well as in just normal cognitive aging.
• 6:40
  Philip Pape: And it responds to different stimulus in the hippocampus.
• 6:42
  Philip Pape: So again, now we we add to some of the nuance.
• 6:44
  Philip Pape: The second thing I want to challenge is that muscle, muscle mass is just incredible and does things to your body that we did not know about 10 years ago.
• 6:55
  Philip Pape: For example, when you contract your muscle against load, against resistance, it releases proteins called myokines into your bloodstream.
• 7:02
  Philip Pape: Now, myokines by themselves are incredible.
• 7:05
  Philip Pape: Some of those proteins cross the blood-brain barrier.
• 7:08
  Philip Pape: Some of them support the growth and survival of brain cells.
• 7:11
  Philip Pape: We have discovered an entire muscle-to-brain signaling system we didn't know existed not long ago.
• 7:18
  Philip Pape: And it's primarily activated by lifting weights and having muscle mass.
• 7:22
  Philip Pape: So, and this is just a tiny scratching the surface.
• 7:24
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna do an entirely separate episode soon, very soon.
• 7:28
  Philip Pape: It's on my list, about why you need to bring build muscle and it and it's gonna cover the holistic view of it, you know, well beyond just general health and fitness.
• 7:37
  Philip Pape: The third thing I'm gonna challenge is, or not challenge, the third thing I want to bring up is that we now do have resistance training studies.
• 7:44
  Philip Pape: And I'm gonna walk you through the new one that I mentioned earlier.
• 7:47
  Philip Pape: So here we go.
• 7:48
  Philip Pape: The study is a Danish trial published in the journal GeroScience in February.
• 7:52
  Philip Pape: So February 2026, I'm recording this in late May 2026.
• 7:57
  Philip Pape: It's out of a group called the LISA study.
• 7:59
  Philip Pape: LISA stands for Live, Active, Successful Aging.
• 8:03
  Philip Pape: And I did come across this study again through Bill Campbell's Body by Science Research Review.
• 8:07
  Philip Pape: I love that guy.
• 8:08
  Philip Pape: I love Bill.
• 8:09
  Philip Pape: He was on Lane Norton's podcast recently too.
• 8:11
  Philip Pape: That's a great episode you guys should check out.
• 8:13
  Philip Pape: And if you don't subscribe to his review or really any reviews and you're into this stuff, consider it because it's a good way to get the latest and greatest studies that's kind of filtered through some of the good uh evidence-based academic guys today.
• 8:27
  Philip Pape: So, anyway, Bill Campbell's been on the show.
• 8:29
  Philip Pape: He's a great science communicator, and it was him, his review that turned me on to this.
• 8:35
  Philip Pape: So, what they did is they took 309 adults aged 62 to 70, they randomized them into three groups for an entire year.
• 8:44
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 8:45
  Philip Pape: Group one had heavy resistance training three times a week on machines, and it was supervised, so they were working in the 70 to 85 percent of their one rep max range.
• 8:57
  Philip Pape: And they did six to 12 reps per set.
• 9:00
  Philip Pape: Okay, so good heavy traditional resistance training.
• 9:03
  Philip Pape: Group two did moderate resistance training, so they did mostly bands and body weight, and it was just one supervised session a week, plus two at home, in the 50 to 60 percent rep range or yeah, one RM.
• 9:16
  Philip Pape: So lighter, right?
• 9:18
  Philip Pape: Light, lighter work.
• 9:19
  Philip Pape: And then group three was the non-exercising control group.
• 9:23
  Philip Pape: They were just told to keep doing what they're doing.
• 9:25
  Philip Pape: And so they did this for a year, they trained for a year, or didn't train for a year, depending on which group, and then they stopped and then they checked everyone again later.
• 9:32
  Philip Pape: Oh no, then they checked everyone a year after that.
• 9:35
  Philip Pape: So it's like a two-year arc to the study.
• 9:38
  Philip Pape: Now, here's the wild part, okay?
• 9:40
  Philip Pape: They didn't just measure strength or body composition, they actually put everyone in an MRI scanner and they ran a machine learning model on their brain scans.
• 9:50
  Philip Pape: And the model had been trained already on over 2,400 other brains.
• 9:55
  Philip Pape: It looks at how different regions of the brain communicate with each other.
• 9:59
  Philip Pape: So the patterns of functional connectivity between the brain, and then estimates how old the brain looks compared to a typical person of that chronological age.
• 10:09
  Philip Pape: And then the difference is called the brain age gap.
• 10:11
  Philip Pape: So I wanted to set it up this way so you guys know this is some pretty serious science.
• 10:15
  Philip Pape: It's not just some random, you know, DNA test or something like that.
• 10:19
  Philip Pape: Now, I want to explain why this matters.
• 10:21
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna let me slow down on this for a bit.
• 10:23
  Philip Pape: Okay, so first, the brain age gap.
• 10:26
  Philip Pape: Let's just explain that real quick.
• 10:28
  Philip Pape: It's been linked in multiple large studies to dementia risk, to mortality, to Alzheimer's risk.
• 10:36
  Philip Pape: There's a 2025 paper that looked at the UK Biobank.
• 10:39
  Philip Pape: This is over 38,000 people, and they found that every one-year increase in brain age gap was associated with a 16% higher Alzheimer's risk and a 12% higher all-cause mortality risk.
• 10:54
  Philip Pape: So a younger-looking brain is actually a healthier brain when it comes to things like dementia Alzheimer's.
• 11:03
  Philip Pape: Okay, so back to the study.
• 11:04
  Philip Pape: They scanned everyone, they ran the model, you had the two-year time frame.
• 11:08
  Philip Pape: So, what were the results?
• 11:09
  Philip Pape: All right, the heavy lifting group, their brain age dropped by 1.4 years after the first year of training.
• 11:16
  Philip Pape: The moderate group, it dropped by 1.39 years, so almost exactly the same.
• 11:20
  Philip Pape: So 1.4, 1.39.
• 11:21
  Philip Pape: So it's 1.4.
• 11:23
  Philip Pape: And then the control group had no change.
• 11:25
  Philip Pape: So both lifting groups at both intensities, they they cut a year and a half of their measured brain age a year later, you know, within a year.
• 11:37
  Philip Pape: And then I would say one of the surprises from the research is that when they checked again a year later, after everyone stopped the formal training, the brain age reductions actually grew.
• 11:49
  Philip Pape: So the heavy group was now even younger with their brain, 1.8, 40 years younger.
• 11:54
  Philip Pape: The moderate group was 2.26 years younger.
• 11:56
  Philip Pape: So the brain kept getting younger after they stopped lifting.
• 12:01
  Philip Pape: This is just so good.
• 12:03
  Philip Pape: I mean, think about that for a second.
• 12:05
  Philip Pape: Okay, it wasn't just the benefits in the moment or right after they were done, but they continued, they compounded.
• 12:10
  Philip Pape: How often do we talk about that principle when it comes to health and how much good you're doing for yourself by starting now?
• 12:17
  Philip Pape: It's never too late.
• 12:18
  Philip Pape: And then there's another piece of data I want to give you for the practical stuff today, in that the researchers looked at which brain regions change the most.
• 12:28
  Philip Pape: The heavy lifting group, only the heavy lifting group, right?
• 12:31
  Philip Pape: Not the moderate, definitely not the control group, only the heavy lifting group showed significantly increased functional connectivity in a big cluster of brain regions, primarily the prefrontal cortex, the exact part of the brain that handles executive function, working memory, decision making.
• 12:47
  Philip Pape: Like we mentioned earlier, the part that tends to degrade first in aging, in dementia, in Alzheimer's.
• 12:55
  Philip Pape: So both intensities of lifting weights helped reduce the brain age.
• 13:00
  Philip Pape: And then only heavy lifting also reshaped the connectivity of the prefrontal cortex.
• 13:06
  Philip Pape: And that's gonna be useful when we come back to the protocol a little bit later in this episode.
• 13:12
  Philip Pape: So let's talk about why this works.
• 13:14
  Philip Pape: I think the mechanisms are really cool to understand.
• 13:17
  Philip Pape: This is where I nerd out, and I hope you enjoy this podcast for this reason.
• 13:20
  Philip Pape: Muscle is an endocrine organ.
• 13:22
  Philip Pape: It's an endocrine organ, something that we didn't even really frame it as like a decade ago.
• 13:28
  Philip Pape: When you do a heavy set of squats or rows or pulldowns or whatever, your muscle fibers contract and release a bunch of signaling proteins into your bloodstream.
• 13:37
  Philip Pape: I mentioned the myokines earlier.
• 13:39
  Philip Pape: And the two that get the most attention right now in brain health research specifically are irisin or ericin, I think it's ericin, I-R-I-S-I-N, and cathepsin B.
• 13:52
  Philip Pape: So iricin is really, again, I don't know if I'm pronouncing these right, guys.
• 13:55
  Philip Pape: So iricin is released from the contracting muscle and crosses the blood-brain barrier.
• 14:00
  Philip Pape: And in animal studies, boosting the levels of iricin in your brain actually retrieves memory or recovers, helps memory recover in Alzheimer's models.
• 14:12
  Philip Pape: And in humans, erizin levels in the cerebrospinal fluid are actually lower in people with Alzheimer's.
• 14:18
  Philip Pape: This was, I think this was published in Nature Medicine in 2019, if you want to look it up.
• 14:23
  Philip Pape: Cathepsin B is another myocine and also crosses the blood-brain barrier.
• 14:27
  Philip Pape: It directs directly supports the birth of new brain cells in the hippocampus.
• 14:32
  Philip Pape: So that's what we call neurogenesis, the creation of new brain cells in adulthood, and it's driven by muscle contraction.
• 14:40
  Philip Pape: I mean, that is so cool.
• 14:42
  Philip Pape: I'm smiling as I record this because I just love how we have control over this, guys.
• 14:47
  Philip Pape: We really do.
• 14:48
  Philip Pape: Just by using your body as it's meant to.
• 14:50
  Philip Pape: And I think this paper was from cell metabolism in 2016.
• 14:54
  Philip Pape: So these are legitimate publications, legitimate scientific groups, you know, oftentimes, well, these aren't randomized controlled trials, but they're high quality, let's just say.
• 15:02
  Philip Pape: And then there's BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic factor.
• 15:05
  Philip Pape: You probably heard about this on lots of different podcasts.
• 15:07
  Philip Pape: I've talked about it on the show before.
• 15:09
  Philip Pape: It's like miracle growth for your brain.
• 15:11
  Philip Pape: Other than maybe that's a bad analogy because then we think of pesticides and stuff.
• 15:15
  Philip Pape: Don't think of that.
• 15:16
  Philip Pape: It's like steroids for your brain.
• 15:18
  Philip Pape: That's not a good analogy either.
• 15:19
  Philip Pape: Anyway, it supports the survival of neurons, and it also supports the growth of new connections between neurons.
• 15:26
  Philip Pape: There was a 2024 meta-analysis of 35 randomized trials in older adults, and they found that resistance training raised the resting BDNF levels with an effect size larger than aerobic exercise did.
• 15:41
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 15:42
  Philip Pape: So the mechanism, like summary, it goes as follows.
• 15:47
  Philip Pape: If we would put all this together, lifting weights tells your muscle to release these chemicals, these myokines.
• 15:53
  Philip Pape: Those chemicals tell your brain to grow.
• 15:56
  Philip Pape: Aerobic exercise, right?
• 15:58
  Philip Pape: Cardio does some of this too, but not all of it and not always to the same degree.
• 16:01
  Philip Pape: And the prefrontal cortex connections and structure, that seems specifically responsive to heavy mechanical load from resistance training.
• 16:12
  Philip Pape: So not only lifting weights, but making sure it's at a high enough level, which is interesting because I've been talking about osteoporosis as well and how some of the benefits of preserving bone density come from higher loads.
• 16:23
  Philip Pape: So it's not just about hypertrophy.
• 16:25
  Philip Pape: If all you care about is muscle size, fine.
• 16:27
  Philip Pape: A lot of this wouldn't necessarily apply.
• 16:29
  Philip Pape: But if you care about the other 90% of things that affect your health and dementia, brain risk, all of this, then lifting heavy occasionally could actually be its own unique benefit.
• 16:42
  Philip Pape: So doing cardio for your brain, no longer the whole picture, right?
• 16:46
  Philip Pape: There's this entire signaling system activated by resistance training and muscle mass.
• 16:51
  Philip Pape: And this is just one study that's a pretty good piece of evidence that lifting weights is good for your brain.
• 16:57
  Philip Pape: Speaking of lifting weights as brain medicine, if you need a little bit of help with lifting, how to lift, how to progress, how to support your lifting with your nutrition and the other things that support your brain and your lifestyle, everything from sleep to stress, whether you're in perimenopause, menopause, over 40, dealing with hormonal changes, you've tried things before and they don't work, or what you did in the past doesn't work anymore.
• 17:22
  Philip Pape: That is what I created Eat More Lift Heavy for.
• 17:26
  Philip Pape: This is our six-month program.
• 17:28
  Philip Pape: It walks you through building skills one week at a time, and we help you hit your goals in a sustainable way so you can maintain them.
• 17:36
  Philip Pape: Not only that, by the end of the program, we will have taught you how to judge your own data and approach so you really never need a coach again.
• 17:45
  Philip Pape: That is the ultimate goal.
• 17:47
  Philip Pape: And if you want to accelerate your results far more than what you can get just by absorbing information on this podcast, I encourage you to check it out.
• 17:53
  Philip Pape: Go to eatmore liftheavy.com.
• 17:56
  Philip Pape: EatmoreLiftheavy.com.
• 17:57
  Philip Pape: The reason I bring it up in this episode is because, you know, the women and men in EMLH are not lifting to look a certain way necessarily.
• 18:06
  Philip Pape: Of course they want to look better and they're going to look better.
• 18:08
  Philip Pape: I mean, they like the muscle, but the deeper motivation is what we're talking about today.
• 18:13
  Philip Pape: They want to be sharpened to their 60s, their 70s, their 80s.
• 18:16
  Philip Pape: They want to read books and play with their grandkids.
• 18:19
  Philip Pape: They want to keep their independence.
• 18:21
  Philip Pape: And lifting heavy, now heavy is a subjective term.
• 18:24
  Philip Pape: We can get into that on another episode, is how we do that.
• 18:27
  Philip Pape: So eat more liftheavy.com.
• 18:29
  Philip Pape: Check it out.
• 18:30
  Philip Pape: Now we're gonna get to the protocol, right?
• 18:32
  Philip Pape: So you've heard the study.
• 18:34
  Philip Pape: What does the research show?
• 18:35
  Philip Pape: What are the mechanisms?
• 18:36
  Philip Pape: Now what do you do?
• 18:38
  Philip Pape: And the answer is pretty simple.
• 18:41
  Philip Pape: You want to lift weights at least twice a week.
• 18:44
  Philip Pape: Three if you can swing it.
• 18:46
  Philip Pape: I generally tell people three is a good solid minimum to get the most of the results, but two will get you a lot of results.
• 18:53
  Philip Pape: And honestly, one will get you far more results than zero as well.
• 18:57
  Philip Pape: But I really hope you strive for at least two, if not three.
• 19:00
  Philip Pape: Anything less than twice a week from the brain perspective, we're just not sure.
• 19:06
  Philip Pape: But in general, I would say you need a bit of frequency to stimulate your muscles to grow, to get enough mechanical tension from the volume, et cetera.
• 19:16
  Philip Pape: Okay, so that's the amount per week.
• 19:18
  Philip Pape: I would say full body sessions are perfectly fine and sometimes quite effective as opposed to splitting it until you get a little bit more advanced.
• 19:27
  Philip Pape: Today we're talking about brain health.
• 19:30
  Philip Pape: So I want something that is, I'll say the minimum you will absolutely do the shortest sessions you could do, again, at a minimum, to get your muscles moving and also to give them the load they need.
• 19:42
  Philip Pape: And so this is where things like compound movements, variations of squatting and deadlifting, you know, hip hinge, pushing, pulling are hugely beneficial.
• 19:53
  Philip Pape: You don't have to do the power lifting variations of those, like the conventional deadlift per se.
• 19:58
  Philip Pape: I'm gonna do another episode in the future talking about why most lifts are safe if you do them right.
• 20:04
  Philip Pape: So that's not the concern here.
• 20:05
  Philip Pape: It's just a function of what you want to do and why.
• 20:09
  Philip Pape: As far as the actual programming, that is an episode in and of itself.
• 20:13
  Philip Pape: But if you're working in, say, the six to 12 rep range and the last two to three reps feel genuinely hard and you are, you know, two or three reps shy from failure, or even as little as zero to one if it's a smaller movement, that's gonna give you the mechanical tension you need to support strength and muscle growth.
• 20:33
  Philip Pape: And so if you could do two or three sessions a week, 30 to 45 minutes, it's a great protocol to start with.
• 20:39
  Philip Pape: And that is the whole thing.
• 20:40
  Philip Pape: Now, obviously, I have lots more resources behind this.
• 20:42
  Philip Pape: If you join Eat More Lift Heavy, we give you all sorts of training templates.
• 20:46
  Philip Pape: We give you the protocols on breathing and bracing and adjusting programming and all that, but that is the basics.
• 20:53
  Philip Pape: Now, you might be saying, Philip, I am listening to your show.
• 20:57
  Philip Pape: I'm 55, I've never lifted a barbell, or I've never lifted out lifted weights, or I'm really not sure what to do in the gym.
• 21:02
  Philip Pape: It sounds intimidating.
• 21:03
  Philip Pape: All right, two things.
• 21:04
  Philip Pape: First of all, the LISA subjects or the participants in the LISA study were 62 to 70 years old, and the moderate lifting group that still got a benefit from the brain age.
• 21:17
  Philip Pape: And remember, they were using bands and body weight.
• 21:19
  Philip Pape: They weren't even using barbells or going to the gym.
• 21:21
  Philip Pape: So it's still far, far, far better than not lifting weights.
• 21:25
  Philip Pape: That's that's the first thing I'm gonna say is like, what is your entry point?
• 21:29
  Philip Pape: It doesn't have to be barbell squats per se.
• 21:31
  Philip Pape: The entry point is like showing up and getting some load that is difficult for you so that you can grow and difficult in a good way, right?
• 21:38
  Philip Pape: It challenges you and you're gonna get stronger and progress over time.
• 21:41
  Philip Pape: Start where you are.
• 21:42
  Philip Pape: Number two, I'm gonna say that heavy, heavy is relative.
• 21:47
  Philip Pape: Heavy doesn't mean a ton of weight or more than the next the person next to you, or you know, strong for your body size or weight.
• 21:55
  Philip Pape: No.
• 21:55
  Philip Pape: Heavy means it's challenging for you on this day, and for someone.
• 22:00
  Philip Pape: Who's never lifted, you've got to test that out as you get started.
• 22:03
  Philip Pape: It's okay to go too light and then realize, oh, that's too light and easy.
• 22:06
  Philip Pape: And now I get it.
• 22:07
  Philip Pape: I get what Philip's saying.
• 22:08
  Philip Pape: I need to get to where I don't have too many reps left in the tank.
• 22:12
  Philip Pape: Okay.
• 22:13
  Philip Pape: And there's lots of ways to test that and push that and ever.
• 22:17
  Philip Pape: But as long as you're progressing on the same lifts over time, you're going to be able to find where that is and start to hit those walls that make it feel heavy enough where you know you're at that point.
• 22:28
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 22:28
  Philip Pape: Now that said, remember the heavy group got an extra advantage with the prefrontal cortex.
• 22:36
  Philip Pape: All right.
• 22:36
  Philip Pape: So there are definitely advantages to lifting heavy loads, and there's ways to do it safely.
• 22:42
  Philip Pape: And there's a payoff to all that, including bone density, including strength, et cetera.
• 22:46
  Philip Pape: Function, we can go on.
• 22:48
  Philip Pape: But I want you to start where you're at at least two or three times a week, full body, compound movements, make the last few reps hard.
• 22:53
  Philip Pape: Do that for six months.
• 22:55
  Philip Pape: And I'd love to hear how that affects your brain, especially if you're on the older side and starting this out in your 60s, 70s, maybe 80s.
• 23:02
  Philip Pape: I mean, look, people have built muscle mass in their 90s who didn't lift before.
• 23:05
  Philip Pape: We've seen it in some of the literature.
• 23:08
  Philip Pape: Before we close out, I promised you a 30-second self-test for your own dementia risk.
• 23:13
  Philip Pape: I'm going to share that in a second.
• 23:15
  Philip Pape: But, you know, quickly just another reminder: if today's topic landed for you, if you've been hearing me talk about lifting weights for your brain and for your bone health, for body composition, for visceral fat, all of that stuff.
• 23:27
  Philip Pape: And you're like, okay, where do I even start?
• 23:29
  Philip Pape: That is what Eat More Lift Heavy is for.
• 23:31
  Philip Pape: I mentioned it earlier.
• 23:32
  Philip Pape: I mentioned it one more time.
• 23:33
  Philip Pape: Just check it out.
• 23:34
  Philip Pape: EatmoreLiftheavy.com.
• 23:36
  Philip Pape: It's a nutrition and training program that includes human coaching, includes live calls, and includes tons of support and accountability, but it helps you build skills.
• 23:46
  Philip Pape: It doesn't just help you get quick weight loss, it helps you build skills.
• 23:50
  Philip Pape: And that is the point.
• 23:51
  Philip Pape: So go to eatmoreliftheavy.com, take a look, see if it fits.
• 23:55
  Philip Pape: Doors always open.
• 23:56
  Philip Pape: EatmoreLiftheavy.com.
• 23:58
  Philip Pape: So here is a finding from a study called the Rush Memory and Aging Project.
• 24:04
  Philip Pape: This is this is the thing I promised you, okay?
• 24:07
  Philip Pape: Researchers followed over 900 older adults for four years and they measured their muscle strength at the beginning.
• 24:13
  Philip Pape: And then every one standard deviation increase in muscle strength was associated with a 43% lower risk of developing Alzheimer's.
• 24:22
  Philip Pape: Now, the most, I'll say accessible, the easiest way to measure your own muscle strength is grip strength, in terms of if you're trying to compare it to uh charts and data points and studies and things like that.
• 24:37
  Philip Pape: It's not something that I train.
• 24:38
  Philip Pape: I don't ever, I've never told anybody to train them grip strength.
• 24:42
  Philip Pape: Some old school, you know, factory workers and manual laborers and like our grandpa probably had stronger grips just from their day-to-day job.
• 24:50
  Philip Pape: And it predicts a lot of things, including dementia, mortality, recovery from illness.
• 24:56
  Philip Pape: I know that when I had my, what was it?
• 24:59
  Philip Pape: One of one of the first surgeries I had, they had me test my grip strength later on.
• 25:04
  Philip Pape: I think it was for my shoulder, right?
• 25:06
  Philip Pape: For my rotator cuff, uh, by squeezing this device.
• 25:08
  Philip Pape: And I remember how, you know, the physical therapist is like, okay, we never have to do this again.
• 25:13
  Philip Pape: You've got more than sufficient grip strength.
• 25:15
  Philip Pape: And that's because I had already trained for years before that point.
• 25:18
  Philip Pape: I stayed strong.
• 25:19
  Philip Pape: I started training after I had surgery right.
• 25:21
  Philip Pape: And it's a good, you know, the fact that they're telling me to test that, and there's some expectation that some people will not have good enough grip strength tells you there's a link there.
• 25:30
  Philip Pape: And you don't need a fancy device to do it, though.
• 25:32
  Philip Pape: You can hang from a pull-up bar and see how long you can hold and then kind of like progressively overload that, if you will, which comes with strength.
• 25:40
  Philip Pape: You can, you know, obviously, if you know that it's hard to open a jar or something on a good day, like that gives you a signal as well.
• 25:48
  Philip Pape: There are grip strength little devices you can get, like at Amazon or whatever.
• 25:53
  Philip Pape: But regardless, my point is you're not trying to fix your grip specifically.
• 25:57
  Philip Pape: You're just trying to get stronger generally.
• 26:00
  Philip Pape: And so if you start lifting, if you do it regularly, if you do all the different parts of, you know, exercise all the parts of your body, build that engine, your grip strength will also go up as well.
• 26:10
  Philip Pape: But I'm just telling you that this is a good sign that if you feel like you have a very weak grip, you're probably not very strong and you have a lot of potential.
• 26:18
  Philip Pape: That's that's where I'm going with that.
• 26:20
  Philip Pape: All right, until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights.
• 26:23
  Philip Pape: And remember, your muscle strength and muscle mass isn't just about looking good in the mirror, being generally healthy.
• 26:31
  Philip Pape: It protects everything else, including your mind.
• 26:35
  Philip Pape: I'm Philip Pape, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.