Best Motivation for The New Vitamin D.

For most of my life, I have worked out. Folks ask me how I got this disciplined. To work out so regularly - Daily.

When I had a clinic in California, for example, I got up at 4 AM every morning to work out at 24-hr Fitness. Before commuting to reach 7 AM clinic meetings on time.

I have been like this since high school.

Why?

First, my mom was a state champion athlete in Illinois.

She could eat whatever she wanted since she was so robustly active. Our house was literally filled with jelly doughnuts, Hershey’s Kisses, and mega-large chocolate bars. She sucked it down daily, yet stayed wiry. While I blew up.

In grammar school, I was the fat nerd who was also head of the class. Unpopular. Constantly ridiculed.

When high school was finally about to commence, thankfully new zoning put me in a brand-new school away from almost all my old classmates. Away from those who labeled me “the blimp with dental floss legs”.

I plotted to use those summer months before high school classes began, to carve a different future. I had no idea what was what, but looking back those many years, I began to intuitively eat my own version of ketogenic.

Lived on hamburgers (without buns), celery sticks, pickles and black coffee. I held to this for the entire three months of summer.

By high school’s start, it was stunning what looked back at me in the mirror.

Instantly I was a “popular girl”. These new classmates had no idea what I looked like or endured all those 8 years in grammar school.

That was my first realization of the “power of food”.

It was clearly life transforming!

Thus, I will do whatever it takes to not be that ridiculed little girl again.

Exercise is part of that. So I just simply “do it”.

Second, as many of you know, I’m what’s called a DES daughter. This means I was exposed in the womb to the most powerful “estrogen disrupting chemical” ever invented (diethylstilbestrol).

Peer review papers have been written demonstrating that DES daughters tend to be phenotypically heavier. In-utero exposure to DES caused epigenetic changes to fat cells, making them nastier, larger, and harder to shed. (Adversely affecting many other systems, but that’s beside the point, here).

DES was the first “obesogenic” chemical. A compound that makes losing weight harder than ever, no matter how hard you try.

The term “obesogen” - environmental chemicals that make fat cells nastier acting - was coined by Dr. Bruce Blumberg. I interviewed Dr. Blumberg for Hormone Deception as well as on my radio show on why it’s much harder to lose weight in 2022 than in 1982.

This in-utero obesogenic exposure was another reason I could eat very little, or even fast, yet shed hardly any pounds.

Rather than getting frustrated at “what is” - I rolled up the ole’ proverbial shirtsleeves and decided to do whatever it takes to not be that fat petunia in the onion patch.

Ever again.

To try to not live out my epigenetically altered genes takes

• Exercise,

• Eating less,

• Moving more.

I just “do it”.

Thirdly, I heard a lecture on “You Are What You Eat” when I was 17, by Scott Nearing Ph.D. Scott is credited with starting the organic gardening movement. Eliot Coleman and I lived on his land. He and his wife Helen wrote the intro to my first book “The Foot Book”.

But, I digress.

At that talk at a Theosophical Society meeting in northern California, Dr. Nearing said that we are what we eat. This was a brand-new statement way back then.

Dr. Nearing said,

“Polluting our bodies pollutes our life potential.”

Dr. Nearing recommended viewing your body as the vehicle you moved through life. Good food, exercise, being outside, hands in the dirt, and developing discipline, all added to a better life.

In fact, Scott and Helen’s first book (he wrote 55 books) was called “Living the Good Life”. About these very principles.

Since Scott’s talk, I have eaten mostly organic food. For many years, while a student, I raised my own food and herbs along with goats. When I first tried to milk a goat, I squeezed so hard, blood got in and turned that milk disgustingly pink.

But, I digress again...

Putting all that together, I have to work hard to stay lean and healthy.

And I do so, by regularly moving. Was a yoga teacher. Lived in India. Lived with Swami Satchitananda at Yogaville East. Worked out in a gym almost daily since 31 years old. Dancing. Canoeing. And oh yes, let’s add at least some aerobic sessions of oxytocin-producing hugging, ha.

Never do I want to feel what it felt like in my youth. To be so uncomfortable inside myself.

The power of food and exercise have been life-long mantras.

Still, it’s not easy to get patients to do more than stroll or walk their dogs. Not that those aren’t good or better than form-fitting into a recliner most of the day.

But, when muscles are “recruited” or “stressed”, by moderately hard workouts such as resistance training, weights, bands, etc., muscles do so many things for our health.

Knowing what recruited muscles do, I think, is one of the best motivators to build yourself some of the other vitamin D = discipline.

Motivating muscle news!

This good news comes from one of my favorite places, the St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.

Some of their scientists were studying how “recruited skeletal muscle” - like when you lift weights - sends healthy anti-aging signals to the brain. And eyes.

The team discovered that when muscles are called upon to be “recruited” or used in a manner beyond typical daily activities, which we call ‘to exercise’ (in this study they called it “stressing the muscle”) these muscles send signals, to the brain, and the retina.

They do this via an enzyme called "Amyrel amylase". And, its product, disaccharide maltose.

Muscle signals via Amyrel amylase go to both the brain and the eyes. They seek out unhealthy proteins. Sweeping them away.

This protects the brain and retina from aging.

In this way, signals from stimulated muscles act like robotic vacuums that clean up what ages you.

These “muscle-generated signals” work by preventing the buildup of misfolded protein aggregates. Like tau proteins (those implicated in Alzheimer’s disease). But also many others.

These researchers found that “stressed or exercised muscle” sends signals that promote ‘protein quality control’ in distant tissues like the brain and retina. (And probably other tissues, too, probably the tip of the “exercise benefit iceberg”).

One way to refer to exercises that boost this muscle signaling anti-aging mechanism is “resistant exercise”.

Resistance training (also called strength training or weight training) is the use of resistance to muscular contraction to build strength, anaerobic endurance, and size of skeletal muscles.

Resistant exercise doesn’t just house-clean brains and eyes. There’s more.

Resistant exercise boosts healthier sleep.

A year-long resistance exercise program was found to statistically improve sleep quality, duration, and other indicators of a good night's sleep. And it did so much more than aerobic exercise, combined aerobic and resistance exercise, or no exercise.

Thus, resistance exercises may be a way to improve sleep and, in turn, protect heart health.

Walking is good. Just not good enough. Put some weights on your ankles or hold some in your hands at the same time.

Pick up those weights, and bands, or just push yourself against a wall in time to your favorite music.

Resistance is exceptional. When I paddle on the river and put the oar through the water, that's resistant exercising, too.

Resistant exercise:

• Is anti-aging for brain and eye health.

• House-cleans tissues of unhealthy proteins, and probably other tissues, too.

• Is a “sleep enhancer”. Which improves many things from weight loss to heart health and sanity.

• Keeps you feeling better inside your “body suit”.

• Keeps ridiculers at bay.

• Helps you get that other vitamin D on board with your life = Discipline.

The Dalai Lama was often asked what promotes happiness. He answers without hesitation, discipline.

Freedom isn’t free. It requires discipline.

I call discipline the “other vitamin D”.

If you know resistance exercise helps keep your wits, vision, waistline and sleep healthier, why wouldn’t you make it a non-negotiable: like brushing your teeth?

Dr. B.

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References:

J Dev Orig Health Dis. 2015 Jun;6(3):201-7. doi: 10.1017/S2040174415000033. Epub 2015 Feb 20. Prenatal diethylstilbestrol exposure and risk of obesity in adult women.

Proteasome stress in skeletal muscle mounts a long-range protective response that delays retinal and brain aging. Cell Metabolism, 2021; DOI: 10.1016/j.cmet.2021.03.005Resistant Exercise & Sleep

Resistance exercise may be superior to aerobic exercise for getting better ZZZs. ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 3 March 2022.