Today I want to talk about an easy way to build muscle. Why? There are many reasons, but the one I focus on the most is blood sugar control. High spikes of blood sugar damage so many aspects of our health. They are very inflammatory, particularly damaging the walls of our blood vessels. Throughout human history, high blood sugar spikes were never a problem because simple sugar was such a rare part of the diet. In our historical diet, the only sugar we came across was in fresh fruit and occasionally honey. Up until human intervention with plant breeding, most fresh fruit did not have that much sugar in it. Natural fruits are small, irregular, and fairly tasteless. With the passage of the Plant Patent Act in the 1930s, there has been a huge push to make fruit bigger and sweeter. It has now gotten so bad that fruitarian animals in the zoo are no longer allowed to eat most fruits because it makes them lose teeth and become obese.

How does building muscle help with blood sugar spikes? Muscles are the spot in the body where excess blood sugar can be stored. The more muscle you have, the better you can regulate excess blood sugar from the diet. You could just never eat foods that contain or turn into sugar, which may be necessary for short periods if your blood sugar is too far out of balance. But your body needs some sugar. Your immune system only runs on sugar, and most cells in your body prefer to burn sugar for energy, even though they can burn fat. But too much sugar all at once (like what happens when you drink a soda) is damaging. Having a place where your body can dump that excess sugar temporarily, like in the muscles, is a big help for avoiding cellular damage.

There are lots of other reasons for having good muscle mass. Unless the lifestyle of being bedridden appeals to you, you need muscle mass to be able to move around and do things. Poor muscle tone is a major sign of aging and a major cause of early death. Why death? The typical senior death begins with a fall caused by poor muscle tone and resulting poor balance. The bed rest after a fall allows fluid to accumulate in the lungs setting up pneumonia, which is the most common cause of death in senior citizens. Seriously, look at the quality of life of a person who has lost mobility. Their world shrinks immensely.

So having muscles is important. The very best way to maintain a strong physique is through an active lifestyle. Working on a farm or having a very physical job makes keeping your muscle tone easy. But modern life has eliminated most of these lifestyles. Consequently, we have to actively choose to do things that activate our muscles. Doing physical sports and playing activities are great. I do indeed have some patients who regularly (meaning several times a week) cycle, play tennis, or engage in sports with friends. But the truth is for most of us we have to choose to exercise. Muscle activity is a chosen goal for most of us instead of being a byproduct of working or playing. In terms of getting the most bang for your buck, weightlifting is at the top of the list. You can build more muscle in less time with weight lifting than any other activity. And yes, weight lifting also builds aerobic fitness. However, weightlifting as a lifestyle is not what most of my patients are after. A few love going to the gym every day and working out, but most just roll their eyes at the mere thought of it.

Truth be told, greater numbers of my patients are going to the yoga studio, doing Tai Chi, or just getting out and walking. These activities are great for many reasons, but they don't build muscle mass. Muscles build when you insist that they do more than they are capable of doing. As long as your body can do the job with what it already has, it won't build more. It is only when you push it to its limits that it decides it needs more muscle. Even with this general principle, some nuances are important. Research over the last 10 years has shown that we build twice as much muscle while we are putting something heavy down as we do while we are picking it up. Gradually setting a weight down is called an eccentric contraction while picking it up is called a concentric contraction. This is one of the keys to what I am about to introduce.

When you watch folks working out with weights, it is always the same. They strain to pick the weight up and then let the weight drop quickly and then strain to lift it again. Most folks in a gym setting only do concentric contractions with their weights. This type of workout uses a lot of energy, which requires a lot of oxygen, which in change means a lot more blood flow to the muscles. This pumps your muscles up with fluid and makes you look 'pumped'. It makes your muscles look bigger, so you then feel good about yourself. That is all nice and that is why such gyms have mirrors everywhere. But exclusively concentric contraction exercises are very inefficient at building actual muscle. Pumped-up muscles are not going to help us metabolically with blood sugar regulation.

In the past, I have written about super slow weight lifting as a superior way to build muscle. That is what I have been doing for years until I learned about the powerful impact of eccentric muscle exercise. My old pattern was to use a weight that was about 60% of my maximum capacity and slowly raise the weight over 10 seconds then lower the weight for another 10 seconds. I would continuously repeat this until my muscles reached exhaustion and could not lift anymore. This pushes the muscle to the point that the message gets sent out to build more muscle. Once I learned about how much better gains you get with the eccentric (letting down) portion of the exercise, I changed my pattern to doing a quick lift-up and then really slowly letting the weight down for about 20 seconds. I've been doing that for the last 6 months or so.

A few weeks ago I added a new twist to my protocol. I am calling it micro contractions, or just micros for short. As I start the eccentric phase of my contraction letting the weight down, I reverse and back up a few degrees. So I lower the weight about 10 degrees then reverse and back up (contraction) for a few degrees, then slowly lower another 10 degrees, and back up a few degrees. The eccentric lowering of the weight now has 15 to 20 steps to it. I believe there are several advantages to this new technique. Time efficiency is one advantage. With this process, I reach muscular failure or exhaustion in only 3 or 4 reps. Once I hit failure, I move immediately on to a new exercise. While 3 or 4 reps may seem like very little, you have to look at the fact that I am doing 15 to 20 micro contractions with each repetition and the muscle is under continuous contraction for 90 to 120 seconds. My workout generally involves 14 different weight machines, so I am getting fully worked out with only 21 to 28 minutes of actual exercise. (I usually start with an aerobic warm-up on a bike or elliptical for 10 to 15 minutes.) My full workout takes 45 to 50 minutes twice a week.

My rationale for this protocol is weightlifting in the gym is not a real-world movement. Life does not start at full extension and ask for full flexion of your muscles. There is different neurology involved in starting a muscle movement when the joint is half bent versus fully extended. With micro contractions, you are engaging your brain with both concentric and eccentric contractions every 10 degrees of joint motion. This should translate to much better brain-body connections, and therefore greater safety and usefulness in the real world.

There is one downside to focusing on doing eccentric muscle exercises. Although it uses less energy, the muscle fibers split more. It is this splitting that stimulates muscle growth as the growth is a repair of the split. This is different from tears which stimulate scar tissue growth. Scar tissue may give you the appearance of big muscles, but scar tissue is not metabolically active, so it does not contribute to strength or blood sugar stability. Nevertheless, splitting does create DOMS, Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness. You must rest two to three days between workouts to allow the muscles to repair – so twice a week is the maximum frequency of this type of workout.

If you want to try out my micro technique then I suggest that you begin with light weights or a low weight setting on a machine and do the stepwise let down of each contraction just until your muscle gets tired. You will be surprised how quickly your muscles get tired. This is not going to pump you up and make you look like a muscle magazine model, but it will make you stronger in a way that is useful in your real life. Plus there are the benefits to your metabolic health.

Take care,

David      

Ellen 

Last Saturday was another block party in our neighborhood celebrating St. Patrick's day. We had a smaller turnout than usual, but we got the chance to catch up on a few neighbors. I made some sous vide corned beef on top of some bright green rice and topped with bread and butter pickles. Ellen preferred the sweets at the potluck on the excuse that she does not get enough sweets at home. I guess my cottage cheese pie does not count.