Archive for 02/27/13
Why You Need Muscle
The only difference between a beautiful, young, fit, athletic body and an aged, frail, and withered-up body is the amount of human growth hormone available. During exercise we release HGH. That's why exercise is so important to your health, youth, and wellbeing. HGH is also released during sleep and available by supplementation. But, the bottom line is that you need muscle to remain youthful. That's what this book is about.
First of all, the most important muscle in your body, your heart, wouldn't beat if the muscle was weak. In fact, you'd be dead without muscle tissue at work. You'd be a vegetable, unable to move even your littlest finger. Look what happens to people as they age; many have muscles so weak they're unable to even get out of their walkers. Soon, they become so weak they become bedridden, and then they die. Is this what you envision as your inevitable destiny?
I think it's outrageous when I hear people talk about the big 40. That's when somehow, like Cinderella's coach turning into a pumpkin once the clock struck twelve, you suddenly lose all your athletic ability. Nonsense! That's simply the time when age-related loss of muscle mass, strength, and function begins for most people.
It's also the time when the ratio of fat mass overcomes muscle mass, although you've got to admit that in developed nations, children appear to be born fat. It's no wonder researchers have drawn a correlation between waist size and the likelihood of developing diabetes. If your waist size is under 34 inches, you're probably safe; however, if your waist size is over 40 inches, you've probably already been diagnosed with diabetes. Now, the question resurfaces: do you want to be fat or fit? Don't answer. The fact that you're reading this book in the first place shows that you want to be fabulously fit and lean with lots of beautifully sculpted muscle.
While the medical fraternity generally focuses on the loss of bone mass (osteoporosis) in aging adults, the real problem is the creeping deterioration of muscle mass. Most people take it for granted that you're supposed to lose your athletic prowess as you age. I certainly hope you don't believe that. I don't, and as a pre-baby boomer senior, I still put on muscle easily and am as strong as I have been any time in my life.
Actually, after I first began eating 100% raw foods, I did lose muscle. I seemed to drop weight like a lead balloon—30+ pounds of it. My body fat index was at 6%, and I looked like an anatomy chart. However, I made a startling discovery: my body weight settled down at 172 pounds, and I soon began to gain muscle weight faster than in any time in my life. This discovery of how to gain muscle on a raw food diet is the reason I've written this book. You don't have to be thin as a rail and just as frail; you can pack on all the muscle you desire. Now, don't misunderstand me—you will have to work hard to do it. Have I scared you yet?
Well, this ought to concern you. The progressive loss of muscle mass is just like the unseen loss of bone density. The medical term for this loss of muscle tissue is sarcopenia. Sarcopenia is a multifaceted process including loss of growth hormone, loss of testosterone (needed by both men and women), oxidative stress, and loss of motor nerve cells.
One of the potential problems many experience on a raw food diet is a lack of adequate protein and calories. If this condition persists, there is a progression of sarcopenia that is difficult to reverse; however, it is not impossible if one begins today. Since sarcopenia is first evident in adults around the age of 40 and greatly accelerates after 75, now is the time to do something about it.
It is believed that this loss of muscle mass is associated with a decline in mitochondrial function. The mitochondria are where your body generates energy through the production of ATP. The lower the ATP levels, the more the body's muscle mass index declines. Without those energy molecules, it is more difficult for the body to detoxify and replace the cell damage that occurs with intense exercise.
More on how to increase the energy stores of your body later, but first understand that calories are needed for fuel. No matter what you hear about weight gain or weight loss, the bottom line is that it is measured in calories. Of course, the question arises, “Calories from what?” We will discuss that in detail when we discuss how you metabolize your food.
The point I really want to make is that you need muscle tissue and you should do everything you can to build and maintain it. Of course, there are things you should not do in an attempt to build muscle: taking steroids or eating chemically laden meat or cancerous chickens, for example. The bottom line is that muscles are good and it is unhealthy to be without them.
Listen, I've been lifting weights and exercising for more than 50 years. Once, I found an abandoned old tractor axle on my grandfather's farm. I could barely get my hands around it, but it made a great barbell. So, being the impetuous young man that I was, I began lifting it with regularity.
My aunt came to visit and saw me lean, tan, and fit. She scornfully rebuked me, “Why, you're going to get those ugly bumps all over your body from doing that!” (The bumps she referred to were muscles.)
I retorted, “I should be so lucky!”
She argued, “Look at my Paulie.” That was my cousin Paul. I just hated it when she called him Paulie. “Paulie doesn't exercise or try to hurt himself like you do, and he does just fine. Why, he's got a very good body!”
To which I countered, “He's FAT!”
She huffed off quite offended. By the way, he was not only fat—he's dead. Yep, died about 25 years ago. We were the same age.
So, does exercise kill you? Well, certainly not in my cousin’s case. But we hear the tales of strongmen who die young—is there any truth in that? What is the defining difference between strength athletes who break the century mark and those who die before 65?
Author Bob Brown conducted a study of the longevity of 70 old-time strongmen that was reported in the 2005 June-July issue of Iron Man magazine. When Brown checked the ages at death, here is what he found. He divided the group of 70 men into the early death group and the long life group. Then he compared the life spans of the strongmen to that of the average, untrained man.
Here's what he found: 55% of the average men suffered an early death before reaching 65 years of age. However, only 25% of the strongmen fell into the early death group. They had more than double the survival rate of the average untrained man—and consider, this was in spite of poor diet and bad habits! Of the average untrained men, only 10% lived past the age of 75. Again, the statistics are incredibly impressive—50% of the trained men made it to the long life group.
Now contemplate this: at the time when these strongmen lived, there were only 200 million people in the United States, and only 200 broke the century mark. That's 1%. Of the 70 randomly selected strongmen, with a vast difference in diets and habits, 2 men lived beyond the century mark. That means almost 6% of the strongmen lived beyond 100. That's 600 times more than the untrained group, in which only 1% of the population made it beyond 100 years of age.
Do you think it might be a good idea to maximize your chance of a long life by putting more muscle on your bones?
Well, I don't know about you, but for me it is definitely a priority. Of course, this also requires knowledge of the foods that can supply your muscles with what they need to grow. As an example, intense exercise can deplete levels of choline, a B vitamin. In a marathon, runners experienced a 40% drop in plasma choline levels. This could have been avoided by an increased consumption of phosphatidylcholine, a phospholipid rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids. These are very, very important in supporting your brain, nervous system, liver, and heart.
Now, the reason I bring this up is that I sincerely doubt any of those long-lived strong men knew anything about it. If they had, could they have lived even longer? If you're already on a raw food diet and you exercise on a regular basis, you may be lacking in choline, which is richly found in oats, cabbage, and cauliflower. This is one of my reasons for consuming lots of raw, organic oat groats for breakfast. You could say I'm usually feeling my oats—that means my testosterone is flowing strongly. Remember, muscles love testosterone; it’s one of the major muscle stimulators. It is both an androgenic and an anabolic. As an androgenic, it produces maleness; thus, in addition to other functions, you develop a larger sex organ. As an anabolic, which means it builds tissue, testosterone produces larger muscles and greater strength.
While we're on the topic of this growth promoting hormone, a warning: don't ever take injections of testosterone. When your body no longer produces its own, your pituitary gland will shut down your libido permanently, your testes will shrink, and you'll probably develop prostate cancer. None of that will happen if you obtain hormone stimulation from raw organic foods.
Your production of testosterone can naturally be increased by choosing the proper foods to make up your raw diet. To grow muscle, your body must have enough cholesterol; without cholesterol, your body would be incapable of producing steroid hormones. Steroids are a large group of lipids or fat substances that play many vital roles in maintaining the health of your biological systems. Testosterone is a steroid. Muscles love testosterone!
I'll try to keep this simple. Cholesterol affects the production of pregnenolone, which generates progesterone, which generates DHEA and androstenedion, which cause the production of testosterone, which stimulates muscle growth. All major steroids descend from cholesterol.
One of the difficulties of building muscle on a raw food diet is the lack of enough healthy cholesterol to promote an anabolic reaction. From my personal observations, men become feminized without these dietary essentials. I've also seen women looking like the skeletons used to teach students in an osteopathic college. Women also need testosterone; they produce it in both the ovaries and the adrenal glands. In a male, most testosterone is produced by the leydig cells in the testes, and some comes from the adrenals. In one study I read, older men had half the leydig cells of younger men—thus, half the sex drive and muscle, due to half the testosterone.
First of all, the most important muscle in your body, your heart, wouldn't beat if the muscle was weak. In fact, you'd be dead without muscle tissue at work. You'd be a vegetable, unable to move even your littlest finger. Look what happens to people as they age; many have muscles so weak they're unable to even get out of their walkers. Soon, they become so weak they become bedridden, and then they die. Is this what you envision as your inevitable destiny?
I think it's outrageous when I hear people talk about the big 40. That's when somehow, like Cinderella's coach turning into a pumpkin once the clock struck twelve, you suddenly lose all your athletic ability. Nonsense! That's simply the time when age-related loss of muscle mass, strength, and function begins for most people.
It's also the time when the ratio of fat mass overcomes muscle mass, although you've got to admit that in developed nations, children appear to be born fat. It's no wonder researchers have drawn a correlation between waist size and the likelihood of developing diabetes. If your waist size is under 34 inches, you're probably safe; however, if your waist size is over 40 inches, you've probably already been diagnosed with diabetes. Now, the question resurfaces: do you want to be fat or fit? Don't answer. The fact that you're reading this book in the first place shows that you want to be fabulously fit and lean with lots of beautifully sculpted muscle.
While the medical fraternity generally focuses on the loss of bone mass (osteoporosis) in aging adults, the real problem is the creeping deterioration of muscle mass. Most people take it for granted that you're supposed to lose your athletic prowess as you age. I certainly hope you don't believe that. I don't, and as a pre-baby boomer senior, I still put on muscle easily and am as strong as I have been any time in my life.
Actually, after I first began eating 100% raw foods, I did lose muscle. I seemed to drop weight like a lead balloon—30+ pounds of it. My body fat index was at 6%, and I looked like an anatomy chart. However, I made a startling discovery: my body weight settled down at 172 pounds, and I soon began to gain muscle weight faster than in any time in my life. This discovery of how to gain muscle on a raw food diet is the reason I've written this book. You don't have to be thin as a rail and just as frail; you can pack on all the muscle you desire. Now, don't misunderstand me—you will have to work hard to do it. Have I scared you yet?
Well, this ought to concern you. The progressive loss of muscle mass is just like the unseen loss of bone density. The medical term for this loss of muscle tissue is sarcopenia. Sarcopenia is a multifaceted process including loss of growth hormone, loss of testosterone (needed by both men and women), oxidative stress, and loss of motor nerve cells.
One of the potential problems many experience on a raw food diet is a lack of adequate protein and calories. If this condition persists, there is a progression of sarcopenia that is difficult to reverse; however, it is not impossible if one begins today. Since sarcopenia is first evident in adults around the age of 40 and greatly accelerates after 75, now is the time to do something about it.
It is believed that this loss of muscle mass is associated with a decline in mitochondrial function. The mitochondria are where your body generates energy through the production of ATP. The lower the ATP levels, the more the body's muscle mass index declines. Without those energy molecules, it is more difficult for the body to detoxify and replace the cell damage that occurs with intense exercise.
More on how to increase the energy stores of your body later, but first understand that calories are needed for fuel. No matter what you hear about weight gain or weight loss, the bottom line is that it is measured in calories. Of course, the question arises, “Calories from what?” We will discuss that in detail when we discuss how you metabolize your food.
The point I really want to make is that you need muscle tissue and you should do everything you can to build and maintain it. Of course, there are things you should not do in an attempt to build muscle: taking steroids or eating chemically laden meat or cancerous chickens, for example. The bottom line is that muscles are good and it is unhealthy to be without them.
Listen, I've been lifting weights and exercising for more than 50 years. Once, I found an abandoned old tractor axle on my grandfather's farm. I could barely get my hands around it, but it made a great barbell. So, being the impetuous young man that I was, I began lifting it with regularity.
My aunt came to visit and saw me lean, tan, and fit. She scornfully rebuked me, “Why, you're going to get those ugly bumps all over your body from doing that!” (The bumps she referred to were muscles.)
I retorted, “I should be so lucky!”
She argued, “Look at my Paulie.” That was my cousin Paul. I just hated it when she called him Paulie. “Paulie doesn't exercise or try to hurt himself like you do, and he does just fine. Why, he's got a very good body!”
To which I countered, “He's FAT!”
She huffed off quite offended. By the way, he was not only fat—he's dead. Yep, died about 25 years ago. We were the same age.
So, does exercise kill you? Well, certainly not in my cousin’s case. But we hear the tales of strongmen who die young—is there any truth in that? What is the defining difference between strength athletes who break the century mark and those who die before 65?
Author Bob Brown conducted a study of the longevity of 70 old-time strongmen that was reported in the 2005 June-July issue of Iron Man magazine. When Brown checked the ages at death, here is what he found. He divided the group of 70 men into the early death group and the long life group. Then he compared the life spans of the strongmen to that of the average, untrained man.
Here's what he found: 55% of the average men suffered an early death before reaching 65 years of age. However, only 25% of the strongmen fell into the early death group. They had more than double the survival rate of the average untrained man—and consider, this was in spite of poor diet and bad habits! Of the average untrained men, only 10% lived past the age of 75. Again, the statistics are incredibly impressive—50% of the trained men made it to the long life group.
Now contemplate this: at the time when these strongmen lived, there were only 200 million people in the United States, and only 200 broke the century mark. That's 1%. Of the 70 randomly selected strongmen, with a vast difference in diets and habits, 2 men lived beyond the century mark. That means almost 6% of the strongmen lived beyond 100. That's 600 times more than the untrained group, in which only 1% of the population made it beyond 100 years of age.
Do you think it might be a good idea to maximize your chance of a long life by putting more muscle on your bones?
Well, I don't know about you, but for me it is definitely a priority. Of course, this also requires knowledge of the foods that can supply your muscles with what they need to grow. As an example, intense exercise can deplete levels of choline, a B vitamin. In a marathon, runners experienced a 40% drop in plasma choline levels. This could have been avoided by an increased consumption of phosphatidylcholine, a phospholipid rich in polyunsaturated fatty acids. These are very, very important in supporting your brain, nervous system, liver, and heart.
Now, the reason I bring this up is that I sincerely doubt any of those long-lived strong men knew anything about it. If they had, could they have lived even longer? If you're already on a raw food diet and you exercise on a regular basis, you may be lacking in choline, which is richly found in oats, cabbage, and cauliflower. This is one of my reasons for consuming lots of raw, organic oat groats for breakfast. You could say I'm usually feeling my oats—that means my testosterone is flowing strongly. Remember, muscles love testosterone; it’s one of the major muscle stimulators. It is both an androgenic and an anabolic. As an androgenic, it produces maleness; thus, in addition to other functions, you develop a larger sex organ. As an anabolic, which means it builds tissue, testosterone produces larger muscles and greater strength.
While we're on the topic of this growth promoting hormone, a warning: don't ever take injections of testosterone. When your body no longer produces its own, your pituitary gland will shut down your libido permanently, your testes will shrink, and you'll probably develop prostate cancer. None of that will happen if you obtain hormone stimulation from raw organic foods.
Your production of testosterone can naturally be increased by choosing the proper foods to make up your raw diet. To grow muscle, your body must have enough cholesterol; without cholesterol, your body would be incapable of producing steroid hormones. Steroids are a large group of lipids or fat substances that play many vital roles in maintaining the health of your biological systems. Testosterone is a steroid. Muscles love testosterone!
I'll try to keep this simple. Cholesterol affects the production of pregnenolone, which generates progesterone, which generates DHEA and androstenedion, which cause the production of testosterone, which stimulates muscle growth. All major steroids descend from cholesterol.
One of the difficulties of building muscle on a raw food diet is the lack of enough healthy cholesterol to promote an anabolic reaction. From my personal observations, men become feminized without these dietary essentials. I've also seen women looking like the skeletons used to teach students in an osteopathic college. Women also need testosterone; they produce it in both the ovaries and the adrenal glands. In a male, most testosterone is produced by the leydig cells in the testes, and some comes from the adrenals. In one study I read, older men had half the leydig cells of younger men—thus, half the sex drive and muscle, due to half the testosterone.