
anyone could tell you that having more muscle is going to make you stronger make you less frail maybe make you burn some more fat but I want to get into the bioenergetics and the true metabolism piece of this what does having muscle do for our longevity outside of just helping us with glucose or helping us uh prevent Frailty or handling a fall like how does it actually help us become stronger internally human beings that can live longer let's go ahead and break it down number one is the increase in mitochondrial density when we resistance strain now hear me out on this when you get bigger muscles that's one thing that's going to create some more mitochondria simply because the muscle bigger but what people don't realize is that muscle has an energy Demand right if you're carrying around more muscle that muscle is going to require energy that energy requirement is going to trigger an adaptation for more mitochondria simply to function so now you have more mitochondrial density that's going to compound the bigger a muscle gets the more the energetic demand the more mitochondrial density you have to have so what is mitochondrial density mitochondrial density is the amount of mitochondria in a given cross-sectional area so more density does not mean dense mitochondria it means a denser cluster of mitochondria there's a study that was published in the journal American College of Cardiology it took people with chronic heart failure and it had them do simple leg extension exercises and had people that did not have chronic heart failure do simple leg extension exercises both of them saw an increase in mitochondrial density but those with chronic heart failure saw a 25% increase in mitochondrial density why does that matter well because when you have some kind of metabolic condition or heart condition mitochondrial Effectiveness or efficiency and density is going to go down so what this demonstrated is that to prevent or recover from any kind of metabolic condition resistance training is hugely important possibly more more important than cardio which is what's interesting next up we have mitochondrial biogenesis so number two is you have more biogenesis what does that mean and why does this matter mitochondrial biogenesis is the birthing or the creating of new mitochondria okay and the more exercise that you do the more biogenesis you have so you can see again it compounds more and then you get more so then you're stronger and you produce more and you produce more it really almost seems as though it's infinite until myostatin kicks in you can't build muscle anymore there's a study published in the clinical Journal of the American Society of nephrology that took subjects that had chronic kidney disease okay and in this case had them do 12 weeks of resistance training or a control okay what they found is that those that ended up doing the resistance training had a significant increase in mitochondrial biogenesis and an increase in what's called pgc1a which is what stimulates mitochondrial biogenesis what does this mean for you it means that you are equipping yourselves with the systems to restore and build new mitochondria this doesn't sound important until you have a problem until you are at a point when you get sick and you need the extra energy right we don't realize that the mitochondria produces energy not just for life and for walking around and lifting weights but for everything for fighting off things for protecting us when we're sick or run down like it is our energy Factory so having more mitochondrial biogenesis potentially protects us and gives us sort of a little bit of an insurance policy number three is the actual ual production of ATP the ATP production capacity so essentially your mitochondrial efficiency how much energy can you produce per milligram of muscle that you carry so it's one thing to have 10 pounds of muscle on you it's another thing to have 10 pounds of muscle that can produce a lot of energy so with this we look at a study published in the Journal of Applied physiology and it found that those that resistance trained ended up producing more ATP per milligram of muscle than those that didn't and those that did more resistance training had even more than those that didn't do a whole lot so the point is that the more resistance training you do the more efficient your mitochondria gets at producing the actual energy itself what this means is there's something called the respiratory control ratio that is how much oxygen it actually takes to turn ADP into ATP and produce energy what they found with this is that the respiratory control ratio improved so less oxygen was required to produce energy it's kind of interesting how it's like a an opposite inverse reaction it's like the more mitochondria you get the more efficient they actually get so you resistance train you build muscle and you become ruthlessly efficient at creating energy this is going to protect you in so many different ways in addition to of course putting muscle on you and keeping you lean the next one is one of the most important ones and it is the electron transport chain efficiency so when you eat food you have electrons these electrons go through What's called the transport chain they go through complex one so basically an electron like almost drops down these multiple stories in a mitochondria but the most important phase of this is between what is called complex one and complex 2 and when an electron drops between complex one and complex 2 it creates like a big energy explosion sort of thing right now a lot of times that energy ends up kind of expanding out and causing problems with reactive oxygen species or oxidative stress so the sheer converting of food and energy into actual usable energy creates exhaust so there's a study that was published in the journal medicine and Science and sports and exercise that had people do 12 weeks of resistance training and it did a muscle biopsy before and after and they found that afterwards there's increased protein abundance in complex one and two meaning that there was more stability it was a safer place to be able to produce energy with less risk of It kind of evacuating this means that there were more proteins available for NAD production so NAD you've probably heard in the the longevity space before it is absolutely required for enzymes to function and required for survival the long story short of this is that this leads to more NAD which leads to more energy which leads to more efficient energy manufacturing which leads to less oxidative stress which leads to potentially less disease and less fatigue and ultimately even more fat burning through weird mechanisms that aren't really talked about that often so essentially you have more NAD available that means you're going to have more NAD actually convert white fat into Brown fat or rather liberate white fat to be burned by Brown fat what does that mean it means the more available energy you have from NAD the more energy you have to Kickstart the fat burning process at a cellular level next up is mitophagy there was a 2024 study that found that resistance training flat out increased the autophagy that is specific to the mitochondria meaning if you have dysfunctional mitochondria it's creating dysfunctional patterns and creating dysfunctional DNA leakage essentially and not producing energy imagine if you could take that mitochondria recycle it and feed it to itself to make it stronger that's what mitophagy is it's a cellular recycling that's happening specifically at the mitochondrial level so when you are training and resistance training your body is actually eating some of the unused components of the mitochondria and turning it into stronger mitochondria basically trying to make the process more efficient by getting rid of decrepit mitochondria that doesn't have a place now I also put a link down below for an interesting compound called euroian a from a company called timeline that's a 10% off discount link urolithin a is one of the only compounds that has been researched and published in multiple peer- review journals and clinical trials to induce mitophagy in a similar way to resistance training so resistance training building muscle on top of using something like urethan a could really improve mitophagy this is real stuff this is not made up like I don't if you know Dr Gabrielle lion she's very well respected in the longevity industry and the longevity Community she's a huge fan of UR lithan a and timeline in the first place so that link down below is for urethan a capsules or a powder usually derived from pomegranates but what's interesting is that most humans don't have the ability to convert the compounds in pomegranates into what is called a postbiotic form of UR lithan a so in interestingly enough the patented mitop pure technology with timeline allows urethan a to be available to everyone that takes it which is cool because there's a huge metabolic benefit so that link is down below again 10% off using that code and that link in the top line of the description next up is the myocin okay maybe you've heard of cyto kindes before or cyto keines potato potato cyto kindes are produced by the immune system right like cyto kindes are inflammatory markers well myocin are even some of the same markers it's just when they're secreted by the muscle they have a different action than if they're secreted by the immune system so for example interlan 6 when secreted by the immune system triggers an inflammatory response that is not necessarily good or it's necessary but it's not always good and it goes in tandem with what's called tnf Alpha and it goes in tandem with what's called interlukin One beta generally when il6 is secreted by a muscle in response to resistance training it actually has beneficial effects because it is in response to an energy stressor rather than an actual pathogenic stressor or a food food stressor so huge huge difference so myocin being secreted when we actually resistance train has one of the most profound effects on our body that basically marinates our cells and our tissues in things that are training our body to become stronger also increases in what is called interlukin 10 which is an anti-inflammatory cyto kind or in this case aoine and then a really wild one aoine called il15 secreted by muscle when we exercise resistance training literally helps convert white fat into Brown fat so unusable storage form fat into metabolically active fat and increases anabolism so increases muscle growth so we know that you know resistance training increases muscle growth but we didn't realize that simply by training our quadriceps we could marinate our entire body in il15 that could trigger anabolism throughout the whole body pretty fascinating stuff next there's a study published in applied physiology nutrition it was rodent model but they electronically stimulated the muscles of rodents to see how it would impact the mitochondria within the muscles they were mainly looking at the effect of mitochondrial fusion and fision which basically is in this case we're looking more so at like how does the structural integrity and the actual quality of the mitochondria improve they found is that the quality of the mitochondria didn't really improve much after what one weight training session but after four weeks there were increases in the proteins associated with mitochondrial fusion with mitochondrial Fusion it means you're basically getting strong higher quality mitochondria so what this tells us is that it's a long-term effect with resistance training why does this matter like why do you care because once again now we don't just have more mitochondria we don't just have more efficient mitochondria we literally have structurally stronger mitochondria that can withstand the tests of time and all kinds of tribulation next is a thermogenesis piece this one is fascinating because it was published in scientific reports again it was rodent model but is interesting what they found is that when they gave mice a high-fat diet to try to induce obesity they either had them do resistance training or no resistance training what they found is that the resistance training decreased the expression of lipogenic enzymes so independent of the whole calorie thing the mice were less likely to store fat because they had less of the actual lipogenic enzymes that would store fat in the first place so independent of calories they also had an increase in those Browning related genes that we've talked about the Browning related genes are the genes that turn white fat into Brown fat why does that matter because eventually Brown fat becomes metabolically active and actually burns calories as heat this is very very important because the more Brown fat that we have the more energy we just burn at rest and the last thing that I'll mention here is the simple hormetic stress piece when you expose yourself to resistance training it is one of the most intense hormetic stressors that you could create for yourself sitting in a cold plunge is great but that's a Central Nervous System Shock too resistance training is a massive hormetic stressor across the body that triggers all kinds of different hormonal biochemical mitochondrial Cascades that we are just now starting to scratch the surface of exposing ourselves to stress does increase resilience there's a big difference between resistance training stress and aerobic stress aerobic stress is great for us but resistance training stress does something different that is more longterm and allows our cells to again I use that word marinate in myocin exines and these things that actually change our cell biology so as always keep it locked in here on my channel I'll see you tomorrow