#158 Sarcopenia, Autophagy and mTOR Lecture Two by Siim Land

Siim Land (0:00)

Some researchers say it's good, some say it's bad. So I wouldn't rely solely on fasting for treating some serious diseases like cancer or tumors, because it can backfire.

So it's again more of a preventative tool for preventing yourself from getting sick in the first place.

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Do you want to know what it is?

Siim Land (0:21)

Body, mind, empowerment.

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Get stronger, faster, smarter, quicker, friendlier, more helpful, more driven.

Siim Land (0:28)

Everything the body needs.

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Control your mind.

Siim Land (0:34)

Welcome to the Body, Mind, Empowerment Podcast. I'm your host Siim Land. And in this episode, I'm going to play you one of the workshops that I had in my Biohacking Bootcamp with Lei Evin. So definitely check it out. It's an awesome episode. And if you want to learn more about the different topics that we discussed at the Biohacking Bootcamp, then you can become a Patreon of this podcast and my YouTube channel. And all the links are in the show notes. So yeah, we left off from the notion that autophagy isn't always good. And too much of it can be definitely harmful. So part of the reason why it can become damaging is that too much autophagy and too much fasting will lead to muscle loss eventually. It makes sense. Your fasting, you're going to lose muscle eventually if you overdo it.

And the trend is already indicating that as you get older, your muscle mass and strength are on the decline, that muscle mass tends to peak early in life and adulthood. And even after like your 30s and such, your muscle mass tends to start to drop.

Part of it has to do with like just being sedentary, not doing like anything that involves resistance training. But part of it also has to do with the hormones, so to say that all the anabolic hormones of muscle growth, they also become less significant as you get older. And even in your like very later life, you can be pretty much experiencing like a really low amounts of actual muscle mass. And that can have like quite a lot of negative side effects in terms of your metabolic flexibility and just general longevity.

So yeah, this is for example, that if you're like a 23 year old, then you don't experience like age related muscle loss. This phenomenon is called sarcopenia or age related muscle loss. And the older you get, the more sarcopenic your muscles tend to become, that the muscle tissue gets replaced with fat. So that you don't even lose like the fat, you retain the fat and just swap the muscle tissue with the fat. So it's like the worst of both worlds in this sense. So this is like the, what you would want to still maintain. The older you get to have like this functional muscle that enables you to metabolize calories, as well as just maintain like proper healthy functioning. Because fat tissue itself is not like bad, but you know, too much fat is definitely harmful in terms of spreading inflammation and such. So you don't really need excess fat beyond a certain point.

And as you age, you're losing your muscle tissue, which reduces your strength, as well as just functionality. You also begin to lose like your joint integrity, like your cartilage and tendons, these ligaments. Those also begin to deteriorate with age.

And that can just make it more easy for you to break your bones, break a hip, and that can just actually take you down this downward spiral of hospitalization and more sedentarism. So a lot of the times, like for instance, when old people do break a hip or something, then they go down this really rapid, they see this decline in their functionality, and such they become your bed, they're hospitalized, they're just staying in this a lot of time in bed, and they're not moving around. And that speeds up the process of aging, and that speeds up the process of getting diabetes, and speeds up the process of losing bone density and such. So if you stop moving, you kind of stop living as well. You start to die because there has to be a reason for your body to stay alive, and movement and staying in motion is like a really critical part of it. So that's why making sure that you maintain this integrity throughout your entire life is pretty important, especially the older you get. So it's important to do it while you're young, but especially more so when you're old.

And also, you start to lose your cognitive faculties as well, like neurodegeneration that can be also seen as a byproduct of sedentary living. So movement and muscle mass helps the brain to function better as well.