Your 1% Boost: Do This To Stop Premature Ageing!: Daniel E. Lieberman

Daniel E. Lieberman (0:03)

The more I study the importance of resistance training, and the more I study the importance of doing weights, especially as you age, the more I started kicking myself for being lazy about that. So now I try to do good two strength workouts out of every week, at least, and take it more seriously. Because especially as you age, loss of muscle mass can be really debilitating. The technical term for that is sarcopenia. Sarco is the Greek word for muscle, and penia is loss, so muscle loss. So as people get older, they tend to lose muscle. And when you do that, you become frail and you lose functional capacity. And then that starts off a vicious cycle, right? Once that happens, then you'll be less likely to be physically active. And then, of course, when you're less physically active, your muscles begin to waste away more. And it's very debilitating. And so I think as we get older, and I'm getting older, it's more and more important to kind of incorporate that. So I think that's the one thing that I've taken to heart.

Steven Bartlett (1:04)

From what you said there, it sounds like not doing resistance training, not lifting weights as you age almost accelerates aging in any sort of superficial sense, but also in a physiological sense, you're increasing the speed of aging.

Daniel E. Lieberman (1:19)

Yeah, I'm not sure if I'd think about it that way, but I think I'd kind of reverse it slightly, which is that aging is just the clock ticking on, right? There's nothing we can do about age, but senescence is the way our bodies degrade as we get older. What physical activity does, maybe the most important thing about physical activity, is that it slows senescence, especially for certain organs and systems. There are different kinds of physical activities. So there's endurance physical activities, like running, walking, etc, swimming, and then strength or resistance physical activities. And they have different kinds of ways in which they slow various properties of senescence, which we colloquially call aging. And all of them are important. And I think one of the things that's really interesting about humans, in fact, I think it may be the most important thing about this book, and you asked about myths earlier. The most important myth, I think, by far is this idea that as you get older, it's normal to be less active. And that is just not true. We evolved to be grandparents. We evolved to live. One of the things that's most interesting about humans, maybe, is that we evolved to live about 20 years or so after we stopped reproducing. No other animal does that except orcas, maybe killer whales. But with the exception of killer whales, humans have this really weird life history.

We evolved to be grandparents. But grandparents in the old days weren't retiring to Florida, or I don't know what they do in England or whatever, go to Mallorca or whatever, and kick up their heels and play golf or whatever with carts. Grandparents in the olden days, right, or in many cultures still today, are working, right? They're working in the fields. They're hunting. They're gathering. They're getting food for their children and their grandchildren. They're helping with child care. And that physical activity is, you know, that's what their job is to be physically active. But in turn, that physical activity turns on an amazing suite of physiological processes that counter aging. Turns on repair and maintenance processes that not only keep our muscles strong, but also keep our DNA from accruing mutations, keep our mitochondria numbers high, keep the cells in our brain from accumulating gunk so that it prevents Alzheimer's and other forms of dementia. I mean, for every system of the body, physical activity has benefits that slow the aging process. And so when you stop doing it, you accelerate, and that's the way in which you perceive it as accelerating aging. But really, it's the absence of physical activity which lets aging run amok.

Steven Bartlett (3:46)

In your first book in 2013, the story of the human body, in chapter 12, you said, use this phrase, use it or lose it, basically. We evolved to use or lose our bodies. And I was sat with someone recently, and I was trying to figure out why it appears that when people retire, or the other instance I've seen is when their elderly partner passes away, it appears as if they don't live much longer. It's kind of like folklore or something that once you retire, your days are kind of numbered.

Daniel E. Lieberman (4:17)

Yeah. Yeah.

Steven Bartlett (4:18)

And I was trying to figure out the evolutionary reason for that, but it sounds like it's kind of what you've explained there.