Hi friends,

It’s no secret that we all decline until we reach our death, but the rate of decline varies greatly from person to person.

Starting in our early 30s, muscle mass, muscle strength, cardiovascular endurance, and bone mineral density decline. The good news is that you have control over how steep that decline is.

Someone who is active, lifts weights, and performs cardiovascular training regularly will have a slower decline than someone who does not exercise or train at all.

The body adapts to the demands placed on them. This means that if you lift weights, your muscles and bones will respond by becoming more resilient and stronger.

On the other hand, it also means that if you don’t use your body’s muscles and bones regularly, your tissues will lose resilience and the physical decline will become more precipitous.

Here are a few tools you can use to slow down the body’s physical decline:

• Heavy-loading activities. This could be running, but even better would be weight lifting as you also load the upper body. Lifting weights 2-4 times per week is an excellent guideline for maintaining and improving muscle strength, muscle mass, and bone mineral density.

• Optimize nutrition. You can do all the strength training in the world, but if you don’t give your body the building blocks it needs to build and maintain muscle, your muscles won’t grow. 0.7 to 1.0 grams per pound of body weight of protein per day is a good guide to go by.

• Cardiovascular training. Heart disease is the number one cause of death. Endurance training like swimming, running, and cycling is crucial for maintaining cardiovascular health and staving off disease. Cardiovascular training also improves the efficiency and number of mitochondria in the body, which are responsible for producing the body’s energy currency—ATP.

• Stay on top of injuries. Letting chronic injuries linger without seeking help is a surefire way to hasten your physical decline. A sore knee turns into not wanting to exercise, which leads the body to respond by decreasing muscle mass and bone density. Next thing you know you can barely walk without assistance. This can take decades to manifest, but you get my point. Don’t wait and hope that an injury will go away. The quicker you see a physical therapist or medical doctor, the easier the injury is to remedy.

Although you can’t stop the decline of your physical health, there are numerous steps you can take to slow it down. Don’t wait until you start having issues to take the necessary steps. As JFK said, “The time to repair the roof is when the sun is shining.”

Until next week,

Kevin

✍️ Quote I’m reflecting upon

“Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.”

— Mark Twain

❤️ Things I’m enjoying

1. Book - Never Enough by Andrew Wilkinson. Everyone wants to be a billionaire, but not everyone knows the costs that come with it like unsolicited visitors to your house, weird financial dynamics with family and friends, and the headaches that from maintaining your wealth and assets. Andrew elucidates what exactly it’s like to be a billionaire in your 30s, and it may just help you appreciate what you have right now.

2. Piece of tech - Kindle Paperwhite. I finally got my hands on an e-reader and I actually like it. There’s nothing like a physical copy, but it’s been convenient to have my Kindle while waiting at appointments, eating lunch, or running errands. It’s drastically increased my total reading time strictly out of convenience and ease of use.

3. Speakers - Sonos 1 SL. We have a couple of Sonos in our apartment and they are a game-changer. The sound quality is next to none, and the app is surprisingly easy to navigate and sync the speakers.