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There's a new kid on the block when it comes to longevity: Wisdom Wednesday · Hardiness with Dr Paul Taylor

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, welcome to another edition of Wisdom Wednesdays. Now.
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  Speaker 1: Over the years I have spoken quite a bit about
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  Speaker 1: two of the strongest physical predictors of longevity. The first
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  Speaker 1: is your VIO two max, or your cardioespiratory fitness. That's
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  Speaker 1: basically how well your heart, lungs, blood vessels, and muscles
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  Speaker 1: work together to transport and use oxygen. And the second
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  Speaker 1: is muscular strength. And we've looked at research before involving
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  Speaker 1: grip strength and other measures of how much fesherr muscles
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  Speaker 1: can produce, and they're both very powerful predictors of longevity,
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  Speaker 1: in fact, much more powerful predictors of longevity than blood pressure, smoking, diabetes,
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  Speaker 1: or even carny artery disease. But a fascinating new paper
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  Speaker 1: published in the journal Mayo Clinic Proceedings puts a slightly
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  Speaker 1: different twist on the strength story. The title of the
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  Speaker 1: paper is Muscle versus Strength as a predictor of mortality
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  Speaker 1: in middle aged and older men and women, And the
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  Speaker 1: key finding was that muscular part that's powe r. I
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  Speaker 1: can't pronounce that word in a way that people other
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  Speaker 1: than Northern Irish can understand it, but muscular power appears
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  Speaker 1: to be considerably stronger predictor of mortality, then muscle strength.
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  Speaker 1: And by the way, muscle strength is a strong predictor
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  Speaker 1: in and of itself. Now, this distinction in matters because
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  Speaker 1: strength and power are related, but they're not the same thing.
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  Speaker 1: Strength is your ability to produce force, but power is
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  Speaker 1: your ability to produce that force quickly. So in physical terms,
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  Speaker 1: par equals force multiplied by velocity or force times distance
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  Speaker 1: divided by time. And think of strength as the size
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  Speaker 1: of your engine. Par is how quickly you can put
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  Speaker 1: that engine's horsepar onto the road. So you might be
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  Speaker 1: strong enough to stand up from mature as an older adult,
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  Speaker 1: but can you stand up quickly when you need to.
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  Speaker 1: You might be strong enough to climb a staircase, but
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  Speaker 1: can you generate enough force quickly enough to climb it
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  Speaker 1: confidently without putting yourself up by the handrail? And really importantly,
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  Speaker 1: and power is the ability to rewrite yourself or find
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  Speaker 1: your footing when they be your trip. And this is
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  Speaker 1: important because if you're in your sixties and you fall
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  Speaker 1: over and you break a hip because you haven't got
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  Speaker 1: the muscular power to be able to regain your feet,
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  Speaker 1: You've had a fifty percent chance of being dead within
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  Speaker 1: the next five years, right, And this is why muscular
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  Speaker 1: power is incredibly important, especially as you age. So in
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  Speaker 1: this study, the researchers followed nearly four thousand men and
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  Speaker 1: women age between forty six and seventy five. Now, their
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  Speaker 1: averages was about fifty nine and they were followed for
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  Speaker 1: a median of nearly eleven years. And during that time
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  Speaker 1: and nearly five hundred people died. And the researchers measured
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  Speaker 1: two different aspects of muscle function. They used strength and
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  Speaker 1: they used the hand grip dynamometer for grip strength, which
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  Speaker 1: as you know, is a proxy for overall muscle strength.
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  Speaker 1: And power was measured using an upper upper body rowing
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  Speaker 1: movement that has to a pulley system, so it was
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  Speaker 1: both were upper body measures, if you like, and the
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  Speaker 1: participants were instructed to pull different loads as quickly as possible,
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  Speaker 1: and then a device calculated the amount of power they
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  Speaker 1: produced by combining the force generated with the speed of
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  Speaker 1: the movement. Now, importantly, in this study, both strength and
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  Speaker 1: power were express relative to body weight, and grip strength
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  Speaker 1: by itself is a really powerful predictor of longevity, especially
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  Speaker 1: when it's normalized relative to body weight right, and that
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  Speaker 1: matters because moving a particular weight is very different for
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  Speaker 1: a sixty kilog person compared to one hundred and twenty
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  Speaker 1: kilogram person. So what the researchers then did is they
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  Speaker 1: divided the articipants into four groups, ranging from the lowest
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  Speaker 1: to the highest relative strength and par. And this is
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  Speaker 1: where it becomes really interesting. So they adjusted for what
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  Speaker 1: we call confounding factors. They used statistics to adjust for age,
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  Speaker 1: their waste of height ratio, whether they had carny artery disease, hypertension, diabetes, obesity, dysleepidemia,
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  Speaker 1: and general health status. And even after adjusting, men in
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  Speaker 1: the lowest muscle PAR category had approximately six times the
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  Speaker 1: mortality risk of the highest character was actually five point
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  Speaker 1: nine but for women the risk was six point nine
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  Speaker 1: times higher. So broadly speaking, the men and women with
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  Speaker 1: the lowest relative muscle par had around six to seven
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  Speaker 1: times the mortality risk of those with the highest PAR. Now,
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  Speaker 1: this is more predictive than muscle strength, and it's more
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  Speaker 1: predictive than cardio respiratory fitness. So this pouch your muscular
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  Speaker 1: power right at the top of the tree as the
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  Speaker 1: biggest predictor of how long you're going to live when
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  Speaker 1: you're in your middle age. That is right. Then the
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  Speaker 1: research has performed the same analysis using grip strength, and
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  Speaker 1: the differences are actually much much smaller, and the lowest
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  Speaker 1: strength man had approximately one point six times the mortality
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  Speaker 1: risk of the strongest man. For women, it was one
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  Speaker 1: point seven and that's a bit lower than other research
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  Speaker 1: that I've quoted. But I think the key thing here
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  Speaker 1: is this is the same cohort and power was way
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  Speaker 1: more powerful than just strength alone. Now normal caveats here.
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  Speaker 1: This was an observational study, and it doesn't prove that
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  Speaker 1: increasing your muscle power will directly extend your life by
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  Speaker 1: a particular number of years. But there are plausible explanations,
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  Speaker 1: and this is where we get more strength of evidence
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  Speaker 1: from observational studies when we have a plausible explanation. And
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  Speaker 1: the first is that par is central to everyday physical function,
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  Speaker 1: especially as you get older. Getting out of a chair,
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  Speaker 1: climbing stars, lifting a bag onto a bus, but importantly
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  Speaker 1: catching yourself when you stumble getting up from the floor.
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  Speaker 1: They all require you to generate force with a limited
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  Speaker 1: amount of time, and life rarely gives you five seconds
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  Speaker 1: to slowly produce your maximum force when you trip, you
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  Speaker 1: need it instantly. When you lose that balance and your
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  Speaker 1: nervous system, it's this speed at which your nervous system
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  Speaker 1: activates your muscles may determine whether you recover or fall
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  Speaker 1: over and break a hip. So PAR is a broader
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  Speaker 1: snapshot of the health of the entire neural muscular system.
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  Speaker 1: It reflects muscle mass and strength, but it also involves coordination,
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  Speaker 1: motor unit recruitment, reaction action speed, and the rear at
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  Speaker 1: which force can be developed. And it's this overall neuromuscular
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  Speaker 1: coordination that is really really important because as we age,
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  Speaker 1: muscle part declines faster and earlier than your maximum strength,
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  Speaker 1: So you can still appear to be reasonably strong while
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  Speaker 1: gradually losing your ability to express that strength rapidly. And
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  Speaker 1: this can show up as slower walking, difficulty with stirs
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  Speaker 1: hesitancy when stepping over obstacles, and a growing reliance on
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  Speaker 1: your arms to raise from mature. So this paper really
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  Speaker 1: does RAI is an important possibility. Perhaps we have been
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  Speaker 1: paying too much attention to how much force someone can
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  Speaker 1: produce and not enough to how quickly they can produce it.
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  Speaker 1: And I actually have been guilty of that by focusing
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  Speaker 1: on strength. Now, that is not to say that strength
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  Speaker 1: is irrelevant, far from it. Strength remains extremely important and
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  Speaker 1: for preserving that muscle mass, your bone health, glucos regulation, independence,
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  Speaker 1: and physical capacity, as does the size of your muscles.
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  Speaker 1: And it's also about producing these mile kinds, these molecules
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  Speaker 1: that are produced from contracting muscles. But par is built
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  Speaker 1: on top of strength, right, But strength and partraining they're
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  Speaker 1: not identical. Traditional strength training involves lifting relatively heavy weight
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  Speaker 1: at a controlled speed, whereas par training attent is about
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  Speaker 1: moving that weight quickly, particularly during the lifting or the
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  Speaker 1: concentric phase. You lower the weight under control and then
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  Speaker 1: you accelerate it as forcefully as your technique allows. So
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  Speaker 1: the wear itself doesn't necessarily need to move fast with
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  Speaker 1: the heavier load. It can still look relatively slow. But
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  Speaker 1: what's really important in partraying is the intention to accelerate.
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  Speaker 1: You're telling your nervous system to recruit the high threshold
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  Speaker 1: motor units that are the ones that decline most quickly
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  Speaker 1: as we age, and research reviews and older adults suggest
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  Speaker 1: that high philosophy par training can improve muscle power and
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  Speaker 1: functional performance. Although the ideal prescription does vary by exercise
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  Speaker 1: and training history. So how do we actually train muscular power?
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  Speaker 1: So firstly, continue doing your regular strength training squats, deadlifts, presses,
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  Speaker 1: rose lunges, all of these things, they are still highly valuable,
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  Speaker 1: but then adding in one or two focused exercise near
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  Speaker 1: the beginning of your session after you've warmed up, right,
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  Speaker 1: so you do power training when you're fresh, or you
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  Speaker 1: can do a whole session based around PAR training. So
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  Speaker 1: things that would include are that we would develop. This
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  Speaker 1: would be like box jumps, jumping up onto a box,
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  Speaker 1: stepping down, broad jumps, jumping as long as you can jump, squats,
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  Speaker 1: squatting down and jumping up. In the medicine ball chest
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  Speaker 1: passes are throwing medicine balls over a wall overhead, slamming
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  Speaker 1: a medicine ball down onto the ground, kettlebell swings. I'm
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  Speaker 1: a massive fan of kettlebell swings, explosive push ups and
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  Speaker 1: then doing sled pushes really fast. Or the other thing
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  Speaker 1: that you can do is you do resistance exercises but
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  Speaker 1: with maximal acceleration. Right, So basically for PAR training, you
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  Speaker 1: take a load that's about thirty to fifty percent of
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  Speaker 1: your one rep max or one ram, so this is
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  Speaker 1: something you can do for way more than ten reps.
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  Speaker 1: Are we but you're the key is to move it
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  Speaker 1: as fast as you possibly can, right, And there's not
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  Speaker 1: a magic range for every exercise, but the key principle
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  Speaker 1: here is use the load that you can control and
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  Speaker 1: do the lifting fees as quickly and explosively as good
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  Speaker 1: technique lives. Now, for part training, you should keep the
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  Speaker 1: repetitions relatively low and sort of three to seven per rep,
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  Speaker 1: and you shouldn't be exhausted at the end of it, right,
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  Speaker 1: And you tend to need to have enough time to
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  Speaker 1: rest between sets, and you only stop the set when
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  Speaker 1: the speed is the one that falls off. So this
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  Speaker 1: is different to metabolic conditioning. You're actually having more rest
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  Speaker 1: periods because it's recruitment of those fast twitched nerve fibers
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  Speaker 1: that were really after. So after part training session, you
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  Speaker 1: shouldn't be lying on the floor breathing out your arsaor
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  Speaker 1: covered in sweat. And this is about high quality, high
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  Speaker 1: velocity efforts while you are fresh. And if you're in
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  Speaker 1: a category of you know, older adults sort of seventy
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  Speaker 1: plus or you know, something like that, they can still
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  Speaker 1: do part training, right, they can still do resistance bans
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  Speaker 1: and moving them fast light medicine, ball throws, and they
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  Speaker 1: can do leg press, which is quite a seaff exercise,
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  Speaker 1: but the intention of moving the platform quickly, so the
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  Speaker 1: movement doesn't have to be spectacular. The objective is to
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  Speaker 1: practice producing sea if rapid force. You know, they can
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  Speaker 1: be getting up and out of the chair very very quickly,
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  Speaker 1: so it is important that we adjust it as we
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  Speaker 1: eage as well. So the takeaway here it's pretty simple.
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  Speaker 1: Being strong is important, but as you ege, you also
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  Speaker 1: need to preserve your ability to use that strength quickly,
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  Speaker 1: So we need to keep lifting challenging weeds. But we
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  Speaker 1: also need to include some movements in which you deliberately
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  Speaker 1: accelerate jump through, swing, push, pull or jump with intent
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  Speaker 1: scaled appropriately to your body and your level of experience.
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  Speaker 1: So it's important that you maintain your Vio two max.
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  Speaker 1: It's important you maintain your muscle mass and maintain your strength,
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  Speaker 1: but don't forget your power because the ability to produce
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  Speaker 1: that force is useful. It enables you to catch yourself
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  Speaker 1: whenever you fall, to climb the stairs, to raise from
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  Speaker 1: the floor, to continue playing sport, and they remain capable
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  Speaker 1: when life suddenly demands action, and according to this new research,
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  Speaker 1: it may also tell us something very important about how
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  Speaker 1: long you're likely to live. That's it for this week, folks,
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  Speaker 1: catch you next time.