Your Power Years: Musculoskeletal Health for Women Over 40 – with Will Harlow

Dr. Mindy  

On this episode of The resetter podcast I bring you will Harlow, now this is really cool discussion, because I we’ve only dabbled a bit in musculoskeletal changes that happen throughout menopause, and I haven’t really brought you much on posture and keeping our actual structure like I’m not talking about fitness, I’m talking about bone health, and I’m talking about how we keep ourself from hunching forward. How do we keep ourselves in a place where we can get down on the ground and get back up. How do we keep ourself in great musculoskeletal health as we age? And so I really wanted to dive in with will, and I’ll tell you why. He’s a physiotherapist. He’s out of the UK, and he has an incredible YouTube channel, over 900,000 subscribers, where he teaches the language of musculoskeletal health. I don’t know another way to say that. It’s pretty epic. And in this discussion, we’re going to talk about how do you keep yourself strong musculoskeletally As you move into your perimenopause and menopausal years. And the reason this is so important is that so many of us start to see the effects of the loss of collagen. Remember that when estrogen goes away, collagen goes with her, and we can definitely see it on our face, but we can feel it in our joints. And so I can tell you what I’m starting to see is really necessary in the culture and a conversation that I feel like needs to come to the forefront is, what can we do at 35 what can we do at 40 what can we do at 45 to keep our musculoskeletal system in optimal health, knowing that as we go through these years, we are going to see a decline. And I can tell you, even for my own self, that I at 54 I’ve really noticed that I have to focus more on posture. I have to focus more on like, the muscles on my back, right? I mean, when we look in the mirror, we often see the muscles on the front, but because that’s what what we think visually other people see, but it’s the muscles on my upper back and the muscles on my lower back and my core strength and all those things have now become incredibly important to me at 54 so that I don’t start that hunching forward scenario that so many people start to get when they age. So Will is he’s he’s a beautiful man. He has a big heart, and he is such a beautiful and clear communicator. So if you’re looking for that moment where you can dive more into better musculoskeletal health, you can stop the progression of gravity coming down on top of us. This is the conversation for you. It was sweet. We had it in London when I was there. And what a beautiful man with a big heart, and he has some words of wisdom for us as we age. So here you go. Will Harlow, welcome to the resetter podcast. This podcast is all about empowering you to believe in yourself again, if you have a passion for learning, if you’re looking to be in control of your health and take your power back, this is the podcast for you.

Let me just say, welcome, will it’s, it’s, it’s been a joy to talk to you this morning, and I’m now excited to record everything we’ve been talking about, but most importantly, I’m excited to connect with you, and the topic is critical to my audience, so I’m super happy to have you here. Well,

Will Harlow  

first of all, thank you so much for having me Mindy. I really appreciate the opportunity to come on. And I just wanted to say first of all, thank you for your content, because, as I was saying to you, before we started, I listened to your podcast with Stephen Bartlett, and the thing that really hit me the most was the information you shared about the menstrual cycle. Yeah. And as I mentioned to you, I thought I had a rough grasp of what was going on, but when you went into the detail, I was like, I didn’t know any of this stuff. Yeah, and what it’s done for me is really helped my communication with my partner, Briony, amazing. Before your episode, I just knew, are you have, you know, you have a day per month where you’re in pain, and yeah, no, we we’re sympathetic, and we try and help that day. But I didn’t really understand what else happened on the other 27 days. Amazing. So now, when we like, we’ve got a big thing to talk about. First of all, let me just check what’s

Dr. Mindy  

so happy. That’s how it should all work, yeah, because now you have an understand of a lens of which she’s coming, you know, in the into the conversation with

Will Harlow  

and I was so poorly informed on it, and I think that’s why it resonated so much with people of my. By age and gender, amazing, because we just didn’t know Yeah. And it’s like, it’s almost taboo, isn’t it, that yeah sometimes and it shouldn’t be Yeah,

Dr. Mindy  

thank you. Oh, thank you for taking the information and doing that so and you know, what’s interesting is that we were talking prior to this, the changes in hormones, whether they are over a 28 day period, or whether they’re over a life period, when estrogen comes in, she brings collagen with her, and when estrogen goes away, then there’s not as much collagen. So interesting. Fun Fact is, like in the ovulation window, which is about day 11 to day 15, estrogen is at her peak, and a woman’s muscles and tendons are so flexible that, like, actually, if she’s doing a lot of HIIT training or Plyometrics, she could actually injure herself, because there’s not as much stability there. So I think that’s really pertinent for what we’re going to talk about today. The other thing that we’ve talked of that I’ve seen a lot, and I saw it in my clinic, and then we see it in our online community, is women over 40 start to have these injuries that don’t heal themselves, and that’s because, as per during perimenopause, the college estrogen goes down, collagen goes down, and Then we have estrogen receptor sites in every single joint. So now injuries hang around, and we don’t have the estrogen to be able to help in the healing process. So through that lens, that musculoskeletally, we are changing monthly, and we are changing over a course of a life. For sure, I know your specialty is 50 and over, yeah. If I could take you down to 40, I’ll do my best explain, from a musculoskeletal standpoint, what you see in women after 40, yeah, and what we can just general good musculoskeletal prevention. What can we do to support our structure so we can navigate that turbulence.

Will Harlow  

So one of the things, I think, is a bit of a travesty, really, is that the menopause stuff is only really starting to gain more traction and more attention. Yeah, because this is not a new problem, right? It’s, it’s something that all women will go through. It’s natural, and obviously it’s characterized by that loss of estrogen, right? And as you were saying, that’s such an important hormone, yes, and it is very important for your muscle structure and your tendon structure. So as you say, these overuse or soft tissue injuries are more common as you’re going through that change, right? But the other thing that estrogen is really important for is actually an anabolic hormone. It helps with muscle growth and maintenance. Yep, and I know we were having a conversation just before we started recording, and you were saying, it’s so difficult now to maintain my muscle mass. And this is something I help people with all the time. It’s one of my big things, is trying to help people in their 40s, 50s and beyond, to maintain muscle mass, and with that loss of estrogen, it does become more difficult. Yeah, it

Dr. Mindy  

so my background, to give a little bit about me, I was a competitive tennis player, so I played on a tennis scholarship at the University of Kansas. We had fitness like strength trainer coaches in the morning, we’d have to get up at 430 and go lift a bunch of weights. Then we had two practices a day, like in between classes. I got too bulky back in like my, you know, 1918, 1920 my muscle structure, my genetics, I just I would get so bulky I didn’t like it. Fast forward to 54, years old. I am like, working out in the gym so hard, and I’m doing my protein loading, and I’m doing tons of strength training, yeah, and it’s incredible how hard it is to build muscle, yeah. So can you, can you start with just helping us understand if there was some basic Muscle Building Principles for women over 40, what would they be

Will Harlow  

absolutely so I have four things that I focus on that are really important, amazing, especially for women over 40. Now the first one, and this might surprise you, don’t get injured. Okay, so this is this has to take priority over everything else for this group. Okay, because, as we said, injuries are easier to cause, yeah, because of the change, they also get worse with or they get more common with age. In both genders, you’ve got age working against you, and the actual quality of the tissue does decrease slightly as we get older. And when you’re injured, it takes longer to heal, as you said, with the women you helped, if they’re Peri or postmenopausal, those soft tissue injuries are going to take longer, so those muscle strains and tendon tears, it could be twice the length of time it takes for a 20 something, right, right? Get better. So a soft tissue injury can be catastrophic. Fit for your progress. Okay, so this is the vein I start with, for everyone that runs through the whole thing, just don’t get injured. Okay, so

Dr. Mindy  

on that, yeah, let me, like, walk through a scenario. So I decided at the end of December that I was gonna start doing more strength training. I hired a trainer, and I was like, I’m gonna go three times a week. And I told her, I’m like, I wanna lift really heavy weight, yeah. And at some point, about eight weeks in, I started feeling a funky shoulder thing. And then I happened to go play tennis that week, and I hadn’t played in a while, and that shoulder thing got a little bit harder, yes. And then I kept work, trying doing my old technique of like, let me push through it. Yeah. And it kept getting worse and worse until I had to do nothing. Sure. So where along that journey? Just because some people will say, Well, I have aches and in my joints, does that mean I shouldn’t work out? Like, what does it mean to not get injured? And what? At what point do we, you know, read the body’s warning signs and just say, Okay, I need to rest now.

Will Harlow  

So I think we all have these problem areas in our body, and we all kind of know where our problem areas are. Maybe it’s a past injury that you picked up when you were younger, or maybe it’s just something that you know your knee just nags from time to time. Yeah, if you know you have that problem, one of the most important things to do is to make sure that you’re trying to almost proactively manage it, yep. So that might mean paying extra attention to it in the warm up before you start. Okay, and that brings me on to another important topic. Is that your warm up is incredibly important when you’re going through the menopause and afterwards, much more important than when you were in your teens and 20s, right? Okay, so coming at it from the lens of a man when, when I was 18 years old, I could go into the gym, I could however much weight I wanted on the bar, and I could just, I could lift it, and yeah, I wouldn’t feel anything, even if it was bad technique, even if I hadn’t warmed up, I was fine. Fast forward to 32 I can’t really do that now. I do have to have a little bit of a warm up. Otherwise, I do get an ache in my back. I do get a funky shoulder, right? But takes me about two or three minutes to warm up, and then I’m good to go. Okay, now that length of time will increase with age, right? And especially for females as well. Okay, so if you spent five minutes warming up when you’re in your 30s, you’re probably looking at 15 or 20.

Dr. Mindy  

Oh, wow, yeah. And what’s a warm up look like?

Will Harlow  

So a myth about a warm up is that it’s just to get on a treadmill and walk, yeah, for 10 minutes, or to get on the bike and cycle for for 10 minutes. I’m afraid, if we’re lifting weights or if we’re playing sport, it doesn’t really cut it. It can help, right? And it’s good if you’re physically cold, right? So if you are middle of winter, it’s minus five outside whatever that is in Fahrenheit for you, yeah, and

Dr. Mindy  

we have winter in California.

Will Harlow  

We do here. It’s still winter right now. Yeah, right. But if you’re very, very cold, warming up the body to raise core temperature is fine, but you need to be practicing the movements you’re going to be doing at speed, okay, slowly and controlled, and building up to the load you’re going to be using. Okay, so if we’re talking about resistance training, yeah, and let’s say you’ve, you’ve got your funky shoulder, right? And, and you want to go and do some bench press, yeah? So what you might do is you would go in and you would take a very, very light dumbbell, and just start doing some nice slow rotations to almost warm up that rotating cuff. Okay, okay. The next thing you would do is you would go over to the bench the exercise you’re going to be doing and practice the movement with no weight, okay, just to make sure that movement pattern is almost solidified in your brain, right? So your body knows what’s coming. It’s starting to get ready for what you’re actually about to do. Now, amazing. Okay, then you might put on 50% of the weight that you’re going to use. Yep. So very lightweight. Again, just practicing that movement, but this time doing more repetitions, just so you can feel that kind of warmth. Yeah, and the muscle right? It’s warming up right. Shoulder should feel warm at this point. Okay, painful, okay, should feel warm, then we slowly, incrementally increase the weight, getting closer and closer to the working set, okay, but dropping the reps right? And then when you feel ready, that’s when you start your first working set. What’s ready, though, if you are doing the warm up to take you back to your question, yeah, and the pain isn’t going away. It’s getting worse. I would then classify that as an injury, and you probably shouldn’t do that exercise until it’s fixed, okay, which means it needs some special attention. Ah, does that make sense? Yeah,

Dr. Mindy  

that I didn’t do that with my shoulder. I was like, just, you know, the younger version of me was like, just push through it. It’ll eventually,

Will Harlow  

yeah, all do it, and you can get away with it when you’re younger. But even now, in my 30s, it’s like, I can’t get away with that as much, yeah, and if I have a sticky shoulder and it feels bad, and I just try and rush that wall. Up stage. My body says, No, yeah, it’s not happy, yeah. So I have to go back, start the warm up stage again. And if I do it properly, guess what? The pain goes away, right? So that’s not an injury, that’s just a that’s an ache or a pain, okay? And we all have aches and pains, right? But if, if that doesn’t sort it out, yep, then it’s not wise to continue. Yeah, you should change what you’re doing. Does that? Oh, yeah,

Dr. Mindy  

amazing. No, that’s super helpful. Okay, so that’s the number one, is don’t get injured, injured. And is warm up within that, within

Will Harlow  

that, yeah. So your warm up is, you know, part of that, that’s one of the biggest parts. The second thing is resistance training, yeah. So this is absolutely key. And every single year that goes by, more and more research is coming out for the benefits of resistance training for every age group, yeah. And I would say particularly for 40 plus, yeah. And even when you get to 7080, years old, there’s huge benefits to it, right? So if I had one message to get out to people, it’s that everyone should have some kind of resistance training practice, if they can, right? Okay,

Dr. Mindy  

so on that, I will tell you there’s a couple of things I’m just gonna again tell you the concerns as a 54 year old woman, so as testosterone goes down, which can happen, especially if you’re have a high stress, I’ve found that my ability to do resistance training like there’s just no juice in the muscles anymore, and I don’t crave that kind of workout like I did before. Do we have a hack for that? Because I think a lot of women feel the same. Should you and what? And should you start with light weights or and then work yourself up. Should you do body weights? Like, how do like, give me a little more of what do you do if you really don’t like, resistance training?

Will Harlow  

That’s a really good question. Yeah, they all work. So light weights, heavy weights, body weight, okay, it all works. It all counts. Yeah. And the research into these things is really interesting, so we used to think that to build stronger muscles and bigger muscles, you have to go on the heavy side. Yeah, okay. And that’s kind of what everyone almost believes when they’re coming in, yes. And sometimes I find that, especially for the women that I help, like you, say, that the desire to go and lift heavy weights is not always there, no. And the energy might not be there for it, yeah. Well, recent research is now showing you can build an equal amount of muscle with light weights as you can heavy Okay, so you don’t have to do that. You can go in and you can do 1520, 25 repetitions of a lighter weight, okay? And you’re going to get very, very similar results when it comes to muscle gain and maintenance.

Dr. Mindy  

So isn’t the logic to fatigue a muscle, correct? And if you fatigue a muscle, it breaks down and builds itself stronger, exactly. So what I’m hearing and that is, there’s two ways to fatigue a muscle, lift a bunch of pick up a heavy weight and and within a few reps, yeah, you’ve now fatigued it. Or pick up a light weight and do more reps, yeah? And fatigue, it that way, 100% so

Will Harlow  

the goal is the same. We have to finish the set, okay, and feel fatigued. Yes. If we don’t have that fatigue, nothing has really happened. Yeah. So one of the things that you say, which I really like is your brilliant body, yeah, and your body is an adaptation machine, so it adapts to the stimuli that we place on it, and if the stimulus is enough to tell the body something, it will adapt. So with resistance training, what we’re essentially doing is we’re stimulating the muscle to say you need to be stronger, yeah, because we’re going to be doing this more often, and if you don’t get stronger, you know you’re not going to be able to cope. And the muscle responds by saying, Oh, I better start laying down more amino acids, growing in size and also strength. Yeah. Now, if we’re doing a set and we pick up a very lightweight that we could probably do 30 repetitions, but we just do 10, and then we put it down, yeah, the stimulus hasn’t reached the muscle. The signal’s not there. The muscle goes, well, I can already do this.

Dr. Mindy  

So, so let’s use, we’re gonna use my 84 year old mom as an example. These are my favorite

Will Harlow  

people to work with, yeah? So you

Dr. Mindy  

know, bless her heart, she’s never been like a very athletic person, yes. And so as she went through menopause and aged, Swimming was her thing, and so she would do go and do laps in the pool, and I remember she would feel so and then she would go and sit at the machines and Do a few reps. But I watched her do all of this, and one day in the gym, and I thought, She’s not really pushing herself, but she feels good about herself doing that. So if she goes in and just does what feels comfortable, is she doing anything worth it? Is it helping? Yes,

Will Harlow  

absolutely. So A, the mental benefits, right? Yeah. And B, if your goal is to maintain rather than to build, yeah, you don’t have to do as much. Okay? So. This isn’t backed by peer reviewed data. This is just kind of the accepted principle within the world of of muscles, right? It takes about a third of the effort and volume to maintain as it does to build. Does that make sense? So if she’s going in there and she’s just doing a few exercises, she’s doing her her sets of 10. She could have probably done 15, if she was really pushing, but she does 10, and she feels it a bit in the muscle, and she feels good. She’s definitely going to be going some way to maintaining it 100% so

Dr. Mindy  

if you’re over 40 and you never do any resistance training, yes, your muscles breaking down.

Will Harlow  

I’m afraid that the research is showing us that sarcopenia, which is muscle loss with age over the age of 50, this is where the data is. It’s happening at a rate of about 8% per decade, if you don’t do anything about it. Okay? Now you might be thinking, well, that’s less than 1% per year. It doesn’t sound too bad, right? But 8% might be the difference between being able to open a heavy door and not, that’s right, or being able to get out of a chair and not. It’s huge, yeah. And if we can just put a halt to it, rather than trying to get, you know, jacked and big and wrong, if we can just maintain what we’ve got, we’re going to do huge things for our independence and mobility.

Dr. Mindy  

Yeah, you know, it’s interesting you say that because my dad had knee surgery, and I like a knee replacement. I remember helping him, in the initial days afterwards, move his body out into a new position in the chair, yes, and he couldn’t use his leg, obviously. Yeah, it was in a straight out. And he went to go, like, lift his body out of the chair with his arms, yes. And he struggled a bit. And I pointed out to him, I was like, Dad, when you heal, we need to get your arms strong again, because you need to be be able to get yourself out of a chair. I think when you’re 40 and 50, you’re like, get out of a chair. I’ll always be able to do that. But can you talk just about like, is that a serious thing that when you get into your 70s and 80s, you really people struggle with something as simple as getting out of a chair is something

Will Harlow  

I help people with all the time at the practice, and it’s quite frightening how bad people can get to before they notice. Okay? And if you start in your 60s, using your hands to push up from the chair, and that just becomes a habit suddenly, when you can’t use your arm because you’ve injured it, or there’s no arms on the chair and you can’t get out of the chair, that can be quite frightening, right? But it’s very slow and it’s very subtle. It happens insidiously over time. Yeah? So this must like 8% per decade. That’s not fast, right? So you wouldn’t notice it year on year, but decor decade on decade, yeah, you’re going to notice a really big difference, yes. And when you get to that point, it’s harder to regain it than it is to just maintain it. Yeah?

Dr. Mindy  

I mean, I can one of the things, if I could go back to my 40 year old self, yeah, I would be like, stop running, because I love we live in Northern California, beautiful mountains that you can go run, and it’s like, get me out in nature and run. And that’s like the greatest, you know, antidepressant on the planet. So I was running a lot, but I would tell her, stop running, start lifting, because I started to become really serious about lifting again in my early 50s, and it’s hard to get it’s hard. It’s so hard to build muscle. Yeah, it’s easy. Really,

Will Harlow  

really hard. Okay, so

Dr. Mindy  

that’s number two. Is resistant training.

Will Harlow  

Can I just add before we go on any further. Mindy people often say, Well, you know, if I’m 6070, or even 4050, yeah, I can’t build muscle like I used to. Is there any point? And I saw a study just two years ago, which was with actually older, older people. So we’re looking at people over 70 years old, right? And the goal of the study was to find out, can people still build muscle in this age group? We think they can, but can they right? They did a randomized control trial 10 weeks of resistance training. Okay, okay. These people are all over 70. They went to the gym three times a week for an hour, and they had like, a guided exercise routine. Okay, so they’re doing resistance training three sets of 10 that kind of thing, right? And what they found was these people, in 10 weeks, they increased their muscle mass by three pounds, wow. They decreased their fat mass by four pounds at the same time, and they increased their resting metabolomix rate by 7% Wow, so they burned 7% more calories just to stay alive in just in 10 weeks. Just in 10 weeks. If you could give me those results in 10 weeks, I’d snap your hand off, right? That’s right. And one of the nice things as well, and this is probably one of the only free lunches in health, is that if you’re untrained and you’ve never been to the gym before, your results in the first 10 Oh yeah, are gonna be um. Amazing. Yes, because your body is getting all these stimuli, it doesn’t know what to do with it, so it just builds all this muscle and loses fat, probably at the same time. Wow. So if you’ve never trained before, and you think, Well, you know, that’s all right for you will, like you’ve obviously, you’ve done it for a while, and you, you know, you’re confident, I’m not confident. And you know these results are going to take ages. You’re going to get results quickly if you stick to it.

Dr. Mindy  

Yeah. One of my new favorite people to follow on Instagram are women that just started to work out post menopausal years, like 60 and 70 year old women. And I love watching what they’re capable of, and, and, and, like, there’s a couple, one woman’s always doing pull ups. And another woman is like, lift, you know, in her 80s. Now, lifting weights, it’s really spectacular. So, yeah, is it? How many days a week do we need to do resistance training?

Will Harlow  

It’s a myth that it needs to be five times a week. Okay? There’s studies to show that you can make gains in as this was one set. Oh, wow, if it’s well programmed. So you’d have to be careful which exercises you chose, and you know, it’s all the muscle groups in the body. Okay? So what we usually say to people is start with one, just to sort of get used to it. Yeah, if you feel confident, up, it’s two. And most people, you can get all the results you want with three times per week. Okay, okay, so you can go higher. But as we get over the age of 40, recovery takes longer, yeah, and now we’re coming into this first thing I said, which is, don’t get injured. Now we have to start, you know, being very careful. You know, bodybuilders go seven days a week, yeah, we have to remember that a they’re genetically gifted, they’re young, and they’re often enhanced with various well said, so don’t copy what they’re doing. All right, two to three times a week is plenty. So

Dr. Mindy  

I’ve played between two and three, and I’ve decided that I think I don’t get injured as much if I’m following your first rule, if I do too perfect, then there’s a better recovery. Yeah. So you need

Will Harlow  

and in those two sessions, try and have a couple of days between them, yeah. So you wouldn’t go Wednesday, Thursday, maybe go Monday, Thursday, okay, would be, would be great. It gives you a couple of days just for the tissues to recover and regenerate and then to go again. Great. Yeah, so just two days a week is plenty. You don’t need loads and loads. Great. Okay. Number three, so we’ve gone for don’t get injured, yep, resistance training, yep. Number three, and I know this is one you’ve spoken about before, is make sure you’re having enough protein. Okay, great. Oh, I’m

Dr. Mindy  

so glad that’s going to be one of these, because I have questions Absolutely.

Will Harlow  

So making sure we’re eating enough protein to actually gain muscle mass is vital. Great. So protein is made up of amino acids, and when the body breaks down the protein into those amino acids. That’s what goes to your muscles, and that’s what becomes the bricks. Okay, that builds new muscle tissue. Okay? Now, if you’re not consuming enough dietary protein, it’s like the signal is sending the builders there, but there’s no bricks for them to use, right? So not much happens, right? So you might still get stronger without gaining muscle, okay? But if you want to gain muscle mass, we need to be having enough protein, and that also helps with your recovery, right? It helps you get ready for your next session. Okay, so

Dr. Mindy  

Okay. On protein, I have so many questions on this, and I’ve been really trying to understand where I sit on the protein topic. So let’s start with this. Does the amount of protein matter? Like a lot of people believe, 30 grams per meal, there was a new study that came out, post workout meal should have up to 100 grams, a lot. It’s a lot. So do we have do you have a sense of what you’ve seen in your clinic, especially for women,

Will Harlow  

I have a sense the scientific literature is all over the place. With this, you’ve got people saying one thing and others saying something else, yeah, what I’ve settled on is that a good ballpark figure to aim for based on the data I’ve seen, and what I’ve seen in my practice is between one and two grams per day per kilogram of body weight. Yeah. Okay. So there was a study that came out a while ago that said optimal muscle gain is at two grams per kilogram, which is a lot. It’s a gram per pound almost, yeah. And then there’s another study that came out and said, Actually, anything over one gram per kilogram of body weight is going to be sufficient. Okay. Now, one thing we do know is that as people get older, they tend to actually eat less protein. Yeah, that’s all over the world. That’s interesting. Why do you think that is I think maybe they eat less in total. Metabolism goes down, so you can’t burn as many calories with it. Probably appetite does decrease. Yeah, interesting, yeah. But one study I found for for my book, showed that older adults that eat more than one gram per kilogram, so the bottom end of the scale, I said, have a 22% lower chance of any kind of disability later in life. Interesting. So it’s a correlation. It’s not a causation, but. From that, I think we can say, Do you know what? Having that volume of protein is probably a good thing, right? And I haven’t seen any convincing data to show me that protein’s harmful for the kidneys. Is one of the things that’s often spoken. I didn’t see anything that would would lead me to think that, yeah, one of

Dr. Mindy  

the things I’ve seen is some people convert protein into glucose very, very quickly, true, and that if the and then it actually acts almost like a carb, and then it gets stored as fat, that’s right. So what I’ve been telling my community around protein is, okay, I like this target of like, one gram or one and a half grams per kilogram or per pound of body weight, but don’t get rigid about it, like, find what works for you. So I go back to February, when I was doing all this lifting. I was like, powering up. I tried so hard to get what, just one kilogram, one gram for, for every pound of body weight I wanted to be. And I started gaining weight. And I was like, I think for my body, it may be a little too much, so I haven’t settled in on what I what the proper amount is, but I just throw that out there, because I’m my concern is some people are trying so hard to eat so much protein,

Will Harlow  

yes, yeah, and more is not better, and more may not be better for some exactly, and you’re totally right. So there are individual differences, so everyone’s going to respond differently. And if you were trying to push up to, you know, 300 grams a day, 350 grams a day, as you say, that’s just going to be converted and stored as glucose, or ultimately turned into fat. That’s right, it’s not going to help. Yeah. So there is a cap, so your builders can only lay so many bricks per day, and any extra bricks are just going to go somewhere else. Well said, Does that make sense? Yeah. Well said, so I think as long as you’re being mindful and eating, you know, enough, I would shoot for that one gram per kilogram as a minimum for most people, right, not for everyone, right? I think you’re covering your bases, okay, and you’re going to be okay, yeah, if you miss it, one it doesn’t matter. One day is not going to make a huge difference. So people don’t need to, like, tear the hair out over

Dr. Mindy 

Yeah, that’s what I with, with eat like a girl, when that book comes out, I’ve been really, like, I really wanted to free people of this rigidity we’ve created around nutrisense. Like, why can’t we just, like, take a concept and play with it, be curious about it? Why do we have to get so, like, I’m either doing it right or did it wrong, and the protein one is interesting, yeah. And

Will Harlow  

everyone’s different, right as well. And like, your dietary tastes gonna be different to mine, that’s right. So it doesn’t make sense for us both to eat the same thing. And there is no, like, one size fits all with this. Yeah, you’ve got to work, work out what works for you. That’s right. And I to go back to what you were saying about meal timings and amount per meal. I’m not sure it matters that much. I mean, I’ve seen studies that say both sides right. Personally, I prefer to spread it out, because it just makes sense in my mind that my body can handle it better, me

Dr. Mindy 

too, that’s what. So actually, this came up. This is interesting because this came up on my interview on diary the CEO last night, we got in a protein discussion, and he asked me about protein cycling. Now, I had seen some research that the best way to build muscle was to divvy out 30 grams of protein every couple of hours. One of my friends, Dr Gabrielle Lyon, has written a book called Forever strong. Great books you’ve got a great clinical brain, told me that the research is showing that that’s not necessary to divvy out every couple hours, but I always hold the line of what’s applicable. And it seems to me to sit down and eat massive amounts of protein three meals a day is a little little hard on the body to absorb all of that.

Will Harlow  

Have you ever tried to eat 100 grams of protein? Yeah, it’s

Unknown Speaker  

really hard, really hard, really

Will Harlow  

hard. It’s not 100 grams of chicken breast, yeah, it’s probably like 400 grams of chicken breast to get 100 grams of protein. It’s hard. It’s not nice. It sits on you and you know, it’s not, I just don’t like it, yeah. And if you want to do that, you can do it, but I just don’t think that’s the best way personally, yeah.

Dr. Mindy  

And so it’s all to me. It’s about these principles are great as long as we can apply them. And that’s a hard one. Do you think the type of protein like, you know, there’s a lot of discussion plant based versus animal based, yeah. Do you think that matters?

Will Harlow  

There’s some evidence to show that there are some superior types of protein when it comes to their availability, yeah. Ultimately, I wouldn’t want people to worry too much about that if you’re getting your protein, I think that’s fine, okay. I mean, the benchmark is the protein found in egg whites. That’s supposed to be the highest quality, yeah. And then after that, you’ve got whey protein, yeah, supposedly. But, I mean, not everyone agrees with whey protein, right? Just however it works for you. I honestly wouldn’t get weighed down into the nitty gritty of it. Agreed,

Dr. Mindy  

agreed. Yeah. So, okay, so protein, so that’s number three, yeah, okay, what’s number four? And

Will Harlow  

then your fourth one, and this almost links back to the first is make sure you’re sleeping and recovering. Well, super important. And I know that this fourth one is really tricky for people going through, yeah, hot. Got flashes and just changes in energy levels throughout the day can can really interfere with sleep? Yeah, but there’s some quite scary research about how a lack of sleep can hamper your results. There was a study done very recently, and they showed this was for people trying to lose weight, and they had two groups of people who had the same calorie they use calories for this because it’s easy to measure same calorie deficit with these two groups. One group slept for eight to nine hours a night, and the other group was only allowed to sleep for four to five hours per night. They found that both groups lost a similar amount of weight, but when they dug into the data, they found that the group who was well rested lost 80% fat, okay, and a little bit of muscle. And the group that was not well rested, the ratio almost switched. Oh, wow. They lost mostly muscle and only a little bit of fat, wow. And the only difference between them was the sleep. Wow. So sleep is vital, and I know this is something that’s becoming more and more well known, yeah, yeah, at the moment, but I think we underestimate it, yeah. So making sure your sleep is good is key,

Dr. Mindy  

and is the quality sleep, like REM sleep, deep sleep. Do we know if that

Will Harlow  

matters? I’m not sure. I’ve not seen the data on whether that influences it. This is still quite an evolving area from my point of view. Yeah. So I would imagine that you need to be having all three stages at probably decent ratio. Yeah, if I think has to be a healthy has to be a healthy sleep. Yeah, I would have thought so,

Dr. Mindy  

and that’s what, that’s where you like alcohol before you sleep, things like that change the quality of your sleep. And I will tell you, as somebody who has studied sleep for many years and tried to apply different techniques to myself, I’ve come to this conclusion that, yes, the amount matters, but then rem and deep also matter big

Will Harlow  

time. So I think the research has shown that deep sleep seems to be when the body, yeah, mostly repairs. That’s I know there’s crossover between all yeah and REM sleep seems to be best for the brain. I’m not sure if you’ve come across Yeah, that’s

Dr. Mindy  

so REM sleep is where your brain actually takes the information from the day, yeah, decides what to hold on to and what to let go of interesting. So if you’re, like, in a big, like, work time, or you’re, you’re, you’re worried about losing memory as you’re aging, like, that’s where REM is. So it’s all about memory and cognition, whereas deep, I always think, is detoxing, because the brain actually shrinks and the cerebral spinal fluid goes up and washes the brain when we’re in deep sleep. Yeah. So interesting. So, like, Alzheimer’s dementia, you know, if you think about if you’re missing rem and deep, like you’re a, you’re not integrating the information from the day in a throw away, so you’re not going to hold on to that. Oh, yeah. And then B, you’re not, you’re the amyloid plaquing. You have all those toxins that are creating more of the plaques. Yeah. So that’s one of the major contributors to Alzheimer’s scary, right? I don’t know, yeah. But I also, now that my kids are older, I have decided to that I can sleep eight night hours and that, like, when I’m home, I prioritize that it feels great. Yeah? So I there’s so much to say on sleep, but I’d never heard it from a muscle loss standpoint, yeah, it was brilliant,

Will Harlow  

yeah. And the research does show that people sleep less, yeah, as they get older, but we still need the same amount of sleep, right? So their habits change, and people tend to get off to sleep slightly earlier and wake up much earlier. That tends to be like a shift in circadian rhythm, right? But the requirements remain the same. So it’s actually a myth that when you get older, you need less sleep, don’t you need the same?

Dr. Mindy  

Does the timing? I’m thinking now about circadian rhythm. And when I think of circadian rhythm, I think of hormonal patterns, and one of the things that we know is cortisol comes in about an hour after you wake up, yeah, and testosterone is highest in the morning, especially for women, yes. So logic tells me that would be the best time to work out. Do we have any research on that, or any from the people that women you’ve worked with? Have you seen if timing matters?

Will Harlow  

This is quite an interesting point, because it’s something I’ve manipulated myself. Yeah, and there is some interesting research on it. So the first thing I want to say is your workout still counts whenever you do right? Yes, so you’re still gonna get good results no matter what. And really what we’re going off now is how you feel and your strength. So there is a pattern for strength throughout the day. So we are technically weakest first thing in the morning. Oh, okay. And then, which is weird, isn’t it? Because testosterone is high, yeah, and cortisol is up, yeah. But the the theory behind that is that you almost haven’t warmed up, yeah, so your muscles, you can’t connect to them as well. Have you ever woken up in the morning and tried to squeeze your grip? Right? And notice you’ve got, there’s almost nothing there. Yeah, there’s no power. Yeah, I think it’s a, it’s almost a neural thing more than an actual hormonal thing. Does that make sense? And then slightly earlier in the afternoon, that’s when our strength reaches a peak. So typically, two to 3pm is when we’re physically strongest. Interesting. So 3pm Yeah. So if you, if you’re really serious and you’re trying to gain strength, like you’re competitive, right, you might want to do an afternoon workout if it fits your schedule.

Dr. Mindy  

Wow. And when we think about eating before the workout or going in fasted, again, I

Will Harlow  

think it depends on your goal. So one thing I found, just from a personal point of view, is if I eat too close to the workout, I do feel sluggish. Yeah, yeah, that’s me, and that happens no matter what I eat. I thought it was just if I had carbs, I’d get a carb crash, but it seems to be the case for anything, yeah. And I mean, what we have to remember is, when you’re working out, your blood is trying to supply the areas that need supplying, right? And when you’re digesting food, your blood is in your digestion system trying to help that happen, right? So when we eat and then we work out, it’s like the blood can’t be in two places at once. So it’s like, well, I have to leave here to go to the muscles, yeah, and then the digestion is possibly not as good, or at least it doesn’t feel as good, yeah. What we do know is that post meal nutrition is very important, yeah,

Dr. Mindy  

and how and how far after the workout do we need the post meal?

Will Harlow  

We used to think it was super close. That’s what I heard. Yes,

Dr. Mindy  

it’s kind of changed now. Yeah, okay, good. Because I’ve come rushing home from the gym. I’m like, I got, I know factor in the post recovery mail.

Will Harlow  

Do you know I want to confess something to Mindy, when I was young and I was into all the supplements and stuff like that, and I was like, Well, I don’t have my protein shake with me today, so there’s no point me going to the gym. Because I was like, it’s going to be longer than half an hour before I can get my protein shake, so the workout is pointless. Yeah, of course, that’s not true. That’s like, that’s not good thinking. No, it’s not good thinking. So I mean, within a couple of hours afterwards, it’s great just to replenish the glycogen stores from the muscle and to deliver some crucial protein, yeah, to that, to those muscles, to lay down more tissue, right, and support the growth. Okay,

Dr. Mindy  

great, that that’s helpful. That gives me a little bit of a leeway. Okay, so those four things, if I’m I really like that. I like steps and checklists, so my brain goes okay after 40. Don’t get injured, resistance training, more protein and more recovery. Like very clear. Now, let me offer up some other challenges that I see in my 54 year old body. One has been posture, and now, you know, I’ve been writing books, it’s very hard to like I find whenever I write a book, I actually start to get a lot of numbness in my hand because I’m at the computer all the time. My head’s forward. But I do worry as I’m aging, it’s I feel like it’s harder for me to stand upright. I look at pictures of myself, I’m like, Oh, wow, I’m already seeing some posture changes. What can we do to keep our posture really strong as we start to age?

Will Harlow  

This is a major problem in the Western world, particularly so we have desks and chairs, which, if you think about it, I know you talk about evolution and how we’ve changed or not changed over time. From, you know, the very early days, I was trying to pin a date on when the first chair came into existence. Oh, that would be really interesting. And I think the earliest chairs you can find are Mesopotamian, which is about 8000 Okay, years ago. I might be wrong on this, but evolution happens in millions of years, not 1000s of years, okay? So what I’m trying to say here is we haven’t really evolved to spend as much time in chairs as we do today. Yeah? So our ancestors would have squatted, they would have sat on the floor, and they would have been upright. Yeah, they wouldn’t have been on chairs like we are today. And I don’t know about you Mindy, but I probably spend seven, eight hours a day at my desk in a chat. So we’re kind of doing things now every day that don’t really match the way we evolved, okay? And one of the core the one of the effects of that is this change in posture. So yes, some postural changes do happen with age, but I would argue that most of them are down to lifestyle and the way we the positions we put our bodies in, yeah, time. Now we’ve got sitting which is one of the major drivers of that, right? And then, if you imagine how you sleep at night as well, most people are side sleepers, right? And again, the knees are tucked up, almost sitting position at night as well. So now we’ve got eight hours at night, eight hours in the day. Suddenly we’re 16 hours where we’re in this funny position. Okay, so it’s no wonder that certain areas get short. So typically it’s the hip flexors, yeah, become shortened, okay, at the front of the hip, and that can lead to a lot of back pain. Okay? And then up here, you were talking about your neck. Back in your hand, we have the chest muscles get tight because we’re like this, yep, okay, yep. And at the back, the muscles that keep us into this good posture become lengthened and weak. So we call this double cross syndrome, because we have weakness on one side and tightness on the other, okay, and it pulls us forward like this. And that can be one of the drivers of that kind of humpback appearance that many, especially women, write to me about, yeah. What do I do about this? Because I’ve just seen myself walking past the shop window. I spotted this. Yeah, I’d never realized it was there, yep. And the truth is, it happened slowly over time. Yeah, it is more common in women. We do think there’s some hormonal link there to that? Specifically, that has to be the loss of collagen. I agree. I think some of that will lead to that, too. But the muscles at the back, and I see this with my patients, I asked them to engage them and to do a certain exercise, and they’re like, I can’t, I can’t do the movement. Wow, not because they’re in pain, not because they’re stiff. They just don’t know how they just can’t tap into those muscles anymore, right? It’s because they’ve spent so long with them lengthened and deactivated. It’s like the brain can’t connect anymore, right? Makes sense. We have these things in our body called neural networks, and it’s essentially the way that the brain connects to a muscle, okay? And we can strengthen the muscle, but we can also strengthen a neural network, right? You can think of your neural networks like roads, right, freeways, motorways, and the signals are like the cars, right? And if we don’t send many cars down those roads, eventually it’s like the roads become dilapidated. And, yeah, exactly. So we can’t send the cars down anymore, okay? Whereas, if you have a muscle, you can connect to easily, that’s almost like the freeway. So there’s loads of cars on there, and you can catch it. You can switch your bicep on, really easy, because we use it all the time. But when it comes to your rhomboids at the back, which spend most of their time switched off, that’s much harder to connect to, and those are some of the muscles that keep you in good posture.

Dr. Mindy  

So is there something I can do every day, because what you just said makes perfect sense. Like I I try to, like, remind myself to squeeze my shoulder blades together. I try to just periodically, just stand up and I’ll go in a door and try to stretch my my chest. But is there any I know you have some amazing YouTube videos on this, and we will leave links for all that. But should I be working every single day to loosen my chest and strengthen the back if

Will Harlow  

you’re sitting at a desk every day, the answer is probably yes, I need to do something to counteract it. Okay, it’s not just going to happen automatically, right? But it doesn’t need to be difficult, and it doesn’t need to be you don’t need to go to a gym to do it, right? Things you can do at your desk to help you. Okay, so there’s two things that spring to mind that would be really good for this. Okay, the first thing is just an easy postural tweak that you can make, which fixes a lot of these problems in the neck and the shoulders. Okay, okay, and I call it the 25% chin tuck, super easy. So let’s imagine most of the time we’re sat like this. Okay, yeah, I’m guilty of this as well, but when you’re concentrating on a screen, the head tends to drift forward, yeah, so if you look at me from the side, you can see my head is in front of my shoulders, right? My shoulders are rounded, yeah, so what I want to do is essentially get my head on top of my shoulders, and the muscles that do that live under here, okay, underneath the chin, the deep neck, okay, yeah, yeah, amongst others. But these are really important, yeah. So what we’re going to do is we’re going to imagine that we’re not making a full double chin. We’re just going to go 25% Oh, 25 25% so people won’t even be able to see you doing something that looks abnormal, but you’re going from here to here. What that does is bring you up, right? Yeah. And then the other part of it is to just pull back and down, yeah, with the shoulders, okay, so having that posture when you’re

Dr. Mindy  

at your desk, and then you’re straight now, and then you’re just, you’re strengthening those muscles, strengthening them. So it’s funny, because that’s what I’ve been innately doing, reminding myself to like. Because what’s so interesting is I feel like posture is so subtle, you don’t realize when you fall into the most comfortable position, because you’re like, oh, this just feels comfortable Exactly.

Will Harlow  

It’s the most subtle thing. And the changes are very subtle as well. It happens slowly, yep, and we don’t notice, and we’re concentrating, yeah. And then we sometimes it takes a picture someone to take a picture of you, and you’re like, What the heck is that? How I look? That

Dr. Mindy  

happened to me recently, and I was like, whoa, okay. I could see my ears were in front. I was like, wow. So I, what I’ve been doing is, like, when I, you know, I think, if you, like, make it a routine, like, every time you’re in line at a grocery store, or anytime you’re in line doing anything, or anytime you’re at a stoplight, yeah, like, just keep pulling yourself back and reminding yourself it’s like a check in, or it makes a huge difference, yeah? So little little spouts

Will Harlow  

like that. And the other thing to remember here is, for the first 10 or 12 weeks of doing this, it’s going to be annoying, because you’re like, Oh yeah, doing it, yeah. But it becomes a habit, okay? And sometimes now, when I’m at my desk, I’ll just notice that I automatically just. Do that, and I haven’t thought about it, it just happened. So it will become almost like a stronger neural network. Your body will get used to doing that right, and then it will happen without easier, amazing. Yeah, so it’s not going to be as annoying as it is when you first start right? The other thing you can do, which is just as important, is to explicitly get those muscles working. Okay? So a nice exercise that I’ve got in my book, which I tell people about on my channel as well, is a band pull apart so resistance band holding it like this, and then you just pull it tight across your chest. It just engages the rhomboids, gets them almost warm and switched on 510, repetitions of that, you know, once or twice a day. That is enough to get you connected with them again, so they start to switch on automatically when you’re sat. Amazing. It doesn’t have to be hard. Amazing.

Dr. Mindy  

I love that. Okay, last topic that affects a lot of women as they go through menopause is osteoporosis, yeah, so my strategy, I’m not obviously concerned about that yet. But of course, I’m always thinking about my 7089, year old self. So my strategy is, muscle. What are some like if I’m 40 and 50, I want to make sure I don’t end up with osteoporosis. Is what are some good tips?

Will Harlow  

Osteoporosis is a tricky one because it creeps up on us, yes, and we don’t notice it happening, yeah, so it’s interesting hearing you talk about it then Mindy saying that, you know you’re worried about it in your 70s and 80s, but Peri and postmenopausal, we get a dramatic loss of bone density. It then levels off when you get to about 6060, and then it happens at a slower rate, and then it accelerates again at about 70 and 80. Okay, so I would argue that right now is the time when you should be most focused.

Dr. Mindy  

Oh, yeah, yeah, great. I love this.

Will Harlow  

So the research is showing that between your in your Peri and post menopausal years, five, the five years, we’re getting 1.5% of total bone loss per year, wow, which is fast. That is fast. In your 60s, it’s about not point six a year, okay, in your 70s, it’s 1.1% a year. In your 80s, on average, it’s 2.10 wow. It goes very fast. Then, yes, okay. Now that’s the bad news, yeah. The good news is that even though osteoporosis is somewhat determined by genetics. It can be slowed down and possibly even reversed in some people. So it’s definitely worth the effort. And the other part of good news for this is that the things that improve your muscle mass, okay, tend to also improve your bone mass. Okay, great. It comes to the

Dr. Mindy  

one, one activity, resistance training,

Will Harlow  

it comes back to it every single time. Yeah, it’s it’s actually one of the only ways to regain lost bone tissue and to prevent loss. So from the studies I’ve seen, it shows that two groups, the resistance training group, and the control group. Okay, there is resistance training group did three workouts per week for a year, okay, they increased their bone mass, yep, by about one to 3% okay, which doesn’t sound like that much, right? The control group lost one to 4% of their bone mass in that same time. Okay, so it wasn’t just a one to 3% gain. It might have been as high as a 7% swing, right? Wow. So it’s really, really important. Wow. Okay, unfortunately, the gains in bone mass take longer than gains in muscle mass, so you have to stick at it for longer to see the benefits. Yeah, and from all of the reading I’ve done, there is just no easy way to do it, yeah. There is also the fact that the heavier weights you lift, the more effects that’s going to have on your bone.

Dr. Mindy  

Oh, so heavier, heavier weights, more bone health is

Will Harlow  

is better, yeah, however, we have to balance that with the risk of injury. Yeah. And when I’m lifting weights, I would say that a weight I can lift for five repetitions is heavy, okay? Now for an older person, so someone, especially in their 70s and up, I would say that a weight you can lift from 10 to 15 is heavy, okay, so I would categorize it differently depending on age. Right for Peri and postmenopausal women, I go somewhere in the middle. So we’re doing sets of eights plus, okay, I wouldn’t go down to fives and six. Okay, it’s good for you, but the injury risk is just is higher, right? What do you think

Dr. Mindy  

of vibration plates? I’ve also seen some research that standing on vibration plates. We had that in my clinic. We actually would have people stand on vape vibration plates every time they came in. Yeah, for bone strength,

Will Harlow  

I think it’s really promising, yeah. So I’ve seen some studies that say that it does improve bone mineral density, yeah. And I’ve seen some studies that say that it doesn’t, yeah. However, all of the studies show that it improves strength and balance and mobility, right? So you’re certainly going to be getting a benefit, right? It might not be the bone mineral density. See, we want, right? We’re not sure yet. There’s, there’s some discrepancy in the studies, but you it’s definitely not time wasted. Yeah. Have you ever tried one, by the way? Oh,

Dr. Mindy  

yeah. And you know what’s what I what I need to remind myself to do now that I’m having this conversation with you, is pick up some heavy weights. Yeah, get on one of them. Yeah, and do like, squats and things like that. Now you’re carrying two birds with 100%

Will Harlow  

yeah, I’ve never seen a study where they’ve done that, but I think that would be really interesting to look at both muscle and bone development

Dr. Mindy  

from that. Yeah, because my mom has osteoporosis, so I know it’s in our genetics, so definitely something that I that I think about a lot. So okay, that that was super and, you know, the other thing would, of course, be vitamin D, sure. But you know, vitamin D levels are not as simple as just take a vitamin D. So this is why, you know, I but I do want to bring that up. Everybody should be looking at their vitamin

Will Harlow  

100% and calcium as well. But equally, of calcium, it’s not, you shouldn’t go out and just get a calcium supplement, yeah? Because it actually does carry some risks, yeah, and I see the risks in my clinic. If someone overloads on calcium, you might end up with the calcific tendon, right, which is a horrible injury, and they take ages to get better in their agony. So we need to be very careful about just, you know, recommending everyone go and get a vitamin D, or everyone get on calcium. That’s not the case. Yeah. It needs a more nuanced approach. Amazing.

Dr. Mindy  

Anything else you would tell I mean, this was a really good thorough thank you for that thorough sort of approach to what I would consider the not just the musculoskeletal system for aging women, but also just, you know, keeping our spirits up, because aging doesn’t feel great when you say, see a picture of yourself and you’re starting to hunch like your brain goes, Oh, my God, I’m like an old lady. Now, anything else you would add that we haven’t talked about that you think people should

Will Harlow  

know I have one really big one? Yes, one of the reasons I started my practice was because I saw people over 50, which is where I specialize, coming into the NHS, when I was working there at the time, and saying all of these aches and pains are just due to my age, my doctor says there’s nothing that can be done. And I feel really strongly about this, and I’ve seen it in my practice so many times. Someone who’s been told that nothing can be done, yeah, you can completely transform it and even get it completely better. So the message I really want to share is that if you’ve got an ache or a pain and you’ve been told it’s just due to your age and nothing can be done, don’t just take that at face value. Many problems are not just because of your age, they’re because of mechanical issues. So a muscle is maybe too weak or too tight, or a joint has got stiff, and guess what? If we fix those three things, the acorn, the pain goes away, right? And we have people coming in, and they’re like, I’ve suffered with this for 10 years, and I just did, you know, three easy exercises and a bit of treatment, and it’s gone, yes, and they’re angry because they had accepted it for 10 years, and it was a they could fix it, that’s right. So as we get older, your body’s not broken, yeah, okay, you’re not rotting away. It’s still working. It’s a brilliant body, right? It is. Sometimes things go wrong, yeah, and they just need a helping hand to be fixed. And I mean, that’s why I do what I do on YouTube. That’s why I produce the content, because I hope people can use it and discover for themselves that actually you’re not doomed. And just because you’ve got a niggle in your knee doesn’t mean it’s going to turn into terrible arthritis. It might just need a dressing. And, you know, many of these problems can be solved.

Dr. Mindy  

You know, it’s funny, I was thinking, because your approach to YouTube is very much like my approach to YouTube, which is I took what I was teaching in my practice, and I was like, Okay, everybody should know this, and then I just literally put in the early days. I just put a camera up, and I was like, Hey, this is something you all need to know. And that, to me, in those little, small video educational chunks is the is the true blessing of YouTube. 100% agree, right? And so I’m thinking about you, and your videos, and your YouTube channel is phenomenal, but thank you. Like, as a fellow creator, I was very impressed, and I and I’m a little picky, like, I’m sure you’ve had the same issue where so many people have asked me to, like, teach them how to build a YouTube channel, yeah, and my heart always is like, you have to be consistent, and you have to give 100% and just educate. You have to be there to educate with nothing in return. And that’s what I see in your youtubes. When

Will Harlow  

I started the YouTube as well, the intention was pure, like, I didn’t start it to grow this big channel. Yeah, I started it because this was stuff that people needed to know, and I just used to share the videos on my email list with my current patient, yeah. And that, for me, was enough, yeah, and then it just happened to take off, yeah, and it’s like that, that’s cool, but the goals never changed. Like this, information is so important, and it empowers people to to. Go and make a change themselves, and the goal is the same as when it was, when I was just sending it to 50 people. Amazing,

Dr. Mindy  

amazing. What? I know you have a giveaway for us, a video giveaway, because video is your superpower. Can you talk a little bit about it, and we’ll leave a link for the giveaway.

Will Harlow  

Thanks. Mindy. So I put something together just for your audience. So I know you’ve predominantly women, and that’s the same as my audience. I think it’s because women are more proactive.

Dr. Mindy  

We’re the superior sex.

Will Harlow  

Your words, not mine, but I’ve put together a video to help women over the age of 40 to build and maintain their muscle mass. So it’s a simplified guide. It’s none of the wacky stuff, and I’ve just tried to simplify all the stuff we’ve spoken about today to give you some easy, actionable steps to maintain that precious muscle and stave off sarcopenia. So it’s super actionable. It’s a short video, but it’s not posted anywhere else, and it’s for your audience, so you can find that at will, harlow.com/mindy, and that’ll be available for anyone who wants it, right?

Dr. Mindy  

So we will leave the links to but thank you for that so and then you have another book coming out. Yeah. Can you talk a little bit about

Will Harlow  

that? Yeah? I mean that the book is, is an interesting one, because I published a book in 2020 again, just for my local patients and and it went on to do really well when the when the YouTube channel took off. What’s it called? It’s called thriving beyond 50, okay? And essentially, it’s a collection of all of the strategies I use in my practice to keep people active, independent and mobile and free from painkillers. It’s amazing. Now I know we share a publisher, Hay House reached out to me about six months ago, and they said, Would you be interested in republishing thriving beyond 50? And I said, this is a this is a coincidence, because I’d been working on a new and improved version. So the new version is coming out on the first of October. It’s almost twice as long. It’s got twice as many strategies. I’ve rewritten the whole thing. Obviously, since 2020 there’s been new research that’s come come out. I’ve tried to include as much of that as I can. It’s honestly the strongest piece of work I could possibly produce. Yeah and yeah. Looking forward to the launch of the first of October. So thriving beyond 50. That’s the title. Well,

Dr. Mindy  

thank you for everything that you’re that you do the we have a tradition on this podcast. The last question I always ask, because I think it’s a really interesting one, because it’s different for all of us. Yeah, what’s your definition of health? And how do you decide when you’re healthy?

Will Harlow  

My definition of health, I would say, is peace of body and mind, and I know I’m healthy when I wake up in the morning and I’m excited to do what I want to do. I’m sleeping well at night, and I feel I’m making progress towards some kind of physical pursuit, yeah, because if I’m not healthy, I can’t make progress. If I’m not healthy, I can’t sleep. If I’m not healthy, I just feel awful in the morning. So that’s my kind of gage as to where I’m going. Yeah, probably 10 years ago, I would have said, if I look in the mirror and I’m Yeah, right, it changes. It changes. Yeah, and that’s not my definition anymore. So it’s how I feel more that’s more why I exercise now is because of the way it makes me feel, yeah, not because of the way it makes me look,

Dr. Mindy  

yeah? And that’s, I think we all hit that spot with, especially as you age, it’s like in your younger years, it’s about a number on the scale, or what you look like in the mirror, and that those are all nice, yeah. But I think as we get older, we’d really redefine what the our target. So agree, yeah, this was amazing. So much. I appreciate you coming all the way

Unknown Speaker  

in, and wasn’t far. You come further than me

Dr. Mindy  

still. And thank you for just making this happen. And we’ll send all the links.

Will Harlow  

And thank you for everything you do as well. I’ve gained so much from your stuff. Yeah, thank you really helped at home, honestly, yeah. And I did was like, Are you gonna say it? And I was, I’m definitely

Dr. Mindy  

no, it’s it’s really important when men speak out about what they learn about hormones, because it creates a better bond with the women in their lives. So

Unknown Speaker  

amazing. Yeah,

Dr. Mindy  

thank you. Thank you. Appreciate you.

Unknown Speaker  

Yeah, chance you too.

Dr. Mindy  

Thank you so much for joining me in today’s episode. I love bringing thoughtful discussions about all things health to you. If you enjoyed it, we’d love to know about it, so please leave us a review. Share it with your friends and let me know what your biggest takeaway is. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai