How Strong Bones Rejuvenate the Mind and Body!

 

Scientists have discovered a hormone that helps your muscles stay stronger, your brain more alert and nimble, keeps your blood sugar under control, and makes your bones stronger.      

This hormone is called osteocalcin, and it is somewhat of a fountain of youth for your mind and body.  Bones create osteocalcin, and you can take steps to secrete more of it!

Osteocalcin tends to decrease as we age with the decline beginning in the thirties for woman and in the fifties for mean.   Scientists believe this decline is one of the main reasons older people lose mental and physical function.

Researchers at Columbia University Medical Center did animal tests and showed that injections of osteocalcin into older animals and showed that it resulted in dramatic improvements in muscle function to the level of younger animals.   The injections also improved animal brain functions like recall and learning to levels that rivaled younger animals.

Research from Europe and Australia showed that woman in their 70’s with the highest levels of osteocalcin had better mental skills that allow processing of information and decision making.

How to Increase Osteocalcin

The most important step to increasing osteocalcin in exercise!  Research from the Medical College of Georgia showed that running or walking twenty minutes per day increase osteocalcin.

But aerobic exercise is not the only way to increase osteocalcin levels – resistance training can also increase osteocalcin particularly if it is coupled with adequate intake of key minerals such as calcium.

Choline - The Most Important Nutrient You Never Hear About!

 

Choline has recently been added to the list of essential nutrients for several reasons.  In a 2020 review, the Dietary Advisory Committee found that most Americans are deficient in Choline.

Studies show higher choline intake is linked to decreased heart disease risk and well as a 24% drop in breast cancer risk.  Choline supports optimal health at all stages of life and plays a critical role in healthy fetal development, helps maintain cognition and memory, boosts energy, and helps regulate muscle control.

Choline has several key functions:

Helps the body produce key cellular messaging compounds

Is critical for proper cell structure and cell membrane composition

Is necessary for fat transport and metabolism

Is required for DNA synthesis

Choline and Brain Function

Choline Is key for nervous system health because choline is required for the synthesis of acetylcholine (ACH) which is a neurotransmitter used throughout the brain and body.

ACH decreases with age and decreased ACH levels directly reduce cognitive function.   ACH supports alertness, attention, and learning.  ACH levels are critical for memory, and in Alzheimer's patients ACH levels are lowered.   

ACH levels are lowered by many common over the counter antihistamines taken for allergies and sleep such as Benadryl.  These drugs are directly linked to increased dementia risk for this reason.

 How Much Choline?

 Your body produces some choline, but you still require a substantial amount of dietary choline.

The newly established daily value for choline is 500 mg per day. You can get it from choline supplements or foods including eggs (113 mg of choline per egg), beef liver (290 mg of choline per 2.4 ounces), chicken liver (222 mg of choline per 2.4 ounces), cod (249 mg per 85 grams), and more.

Adequate dietary choline intake is particularly challenging for vegetarians and even more so vegans because the best dietary sources of choline are from animal products.   It is very difficult to get the 550 mg RDA of choline from purely plant sources.   For this reason, it is worth aging Vegetarians or Vegans consider taking a highly bioavailable choline supplement like Alpha GPC.

Too Much Choline

Although many people do not get enough choline – too much can cause a fishy body odor, vomiting, heavy sweating and salivation, low blood pressure, and liver damage

Groups at High Risk for Choline Deficiency

Pregnant woman - According to a study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, there is an increased risk of neural tube birth defects in babies of women who consume less than 300 mg of choline per day when compared to pregnant women who get at least 500 mg daily.

Because choline will be pulled from the mother's blood to supply adequate amounts to the fetus, pregnant and lactating women have higher choline needs, yet only 5% get enough, according to one study.

Endurance athletes — Endurance exercises, like marathons and triathlons, can deplete choline levels. Studies show that supplementing with choline before these types of stressful exercises can help keep the levels of choline in the blood from getting too low.

People who drink a lot of alcohol — Excess alcohol consumption can increase your need for more choline while simultaneously increasing your risk of deficiency.

Postmenopausal women — Postmenopausal women have lower estrogen concentrations, which can increase the risk of organ dysfunction in response to a low-choline diet.

The Cable-Pull Through - the Best Exercise You are Not Doing!

 

Cable Pull-Throughs may be the best exercise you aren’t doing!   They share a lot in common with the Kettlebell Swing, but they are much easier to learn and can really help to groove the hip hinge pattern.   The pull-through is fantastic for building posterior chain strength and directly carries over to the field of play by teaching you how to use your glutes and hamstrings to produce hip extension for running and jumping.   Specifically, it teaches you to separate your low back from your hips during the hip hinge pattern.    

Many people use their low back to produce movement which sets them up for injury!   The pull-through also provides full-range loading with no dead spots in the movement which teaches you to maintain full-body tension throughout the entire range of motion for hip extension and flexion.

The pull-through is also an excellent choice for people with low back issues because it places much less load on the spine yet provides the benefits of a deadlift or other hip hinge movements like the kettlebell swing.  Last but not least the pull-through can help as a corrective exercise for people who consistently fall into the pattern of being hamstring dominant in classic glute exercise like supine bridges. 

When doing bridges aka hip lifts many people will have hamstring cramps because they are not effectively activating their glutes so consequently compensate by overusing their hamstrings.    For these folks cable pull throughs can often completely fix the problem by teaching them to use their glutes more and hamstrings less for hip extension!

How to do a Cable Pull-Through

 Set an adjustable cable in a low position – not necessarily the lowest position because you want the line of pull to be more horizontal than vertical which is one of the big advantages of using a cable over a free weight! Keep in mind standing hip extension is more of a horizontal movement than a vertical one.

1. Attached a tricep rope to the end of the cable so you can grasp both ends of the rope.
2. For this movement you will face away from the cable with a slightly wide stance and think about pushing the knees out from the center. You are going to reach down and back through your legs and grasp both ends of the rope.
3. This is NOT a squat movement – so sit back like you are trying to touch a wall behind you with your butt. Keep pushing back until your hands are past your knees.
4. Keep your spine straight the whole time! This means maintaining the natural arch of the low back and not allowing your upper back to round – you will really feel the stretch in the hamstrings if you are doing it correctly!
5. Your head should follow the hip hinge with chin-tucked slightly throughout – you do NOT want to hyper-extend the neck!
6. At the top of the movement concentrate on squeezing the glutes at the top without locking the knees.
7. A good starting point is 3 – 4 sets of 8 – 15 reps and this is NOT about moving as much weight as you can or trying to rack the stack! Be mindful during the movement and make sure the back stays flat, neck does not hyper-extend, and you feel those glutes firing!

For a great visual watch this video teaching the movement by Tony Gentilcore:  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xZFRe50WzpM 

New Vitamin D/Covid Study

 

IMPORTANT NEW VITAMIN D FOR COVID STUDY. There have been several studies showing a relationship between Vitamin D intake and Covid - long story short - having your levels correct makes an ENORMOUS difference in risk and outcome should you contract Covid-19. This body of evidence has been strengthened even more but a full randomized controlled clinical trial - the gold standard in research and WOW.

The first randomized controlled trial (RCT) of vitamin D in COVID-19 has just been published (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960076020302764?via%3Dihub) The results are astounding: vitamin D nearly abolished the odds of requiring treatment in ICU. Although the number of deaths was too small to say for sure, vitamin D may actually abolish the risk of death from COVID-19..

You should ALWAYS take Vitamin D with vitamin K2 which is the fat-soluble version of K. K works synergistically with D to make sure calcium goes where it is supposed to - into your bones - not your tissues or arteries.

Ideally get your levels checked and then supplement - you can get a blood test or a finger stick test and neither require a prescription. You want your blood levels between 40 - 80 ideally. The only way to KNOW this is testing. For most Caucasians who do not get much sunlight you will need to take 5,000iu per day of Vitamin D3 to get into this range, but it can vary considerably based on genetics. I require 10,000iu per day in winter months to stay there. People of color require even more. Sunlight can and does create D in most people very well, but you have to be careful of getting burned.

Now is the time to be getting your levels optimized as we head into fall and winter - do not let those levels drop! There are many other benefits to optimizing D levels including cardiovascular health, bone health, muscle mass in aging adults, etc. This list is long and impressive - single most important supplement to get right! 

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27Sarah Troutman, Amanda Maurer and 25 others

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