How to Banish Five Life-Shortening Health Myths

In this episode, Dr. Rodney and Karen talk about five popular health myths that may be shortening your life.

Myth #1: You can make up for lack of exercise during the week by becoming a weekend warrior.

The tendency for your body is that when you don’t use something you lose it. Here is an average daily scenario for many who sit eight to ten hours per day at work with very few breaks, drive an hour, sit and watch TV before falling into bed. 

You have these muscles that cross joints that shorten from sitting too much. You put force on a tendon and activate that muscle while inhibiting the opposite side muscle group. A simple example is the hip flexor and the glutes where the glute gets weakened by sitting.

Myth #2:  No pain, no gain.

The problem with that tendency  is that the last part of that muscle then actually crosses the hip joint gets out of balance . And when you're in an exertion mode, not only are you working muscles that are already tight, but one side is tighter than the other, one side is weaker than the other. And that's a recipe for low back disaster, low back pain. If you're running, you can have injuries and other complications. 

The no pain - no gain may have started with coaching for those who didn't want to work hard enough to be sore the next day. 

The people that buy into this myth basically learn to ignore their body's warning signals such as scar tissue, restricted joints and lack of range of motion

Myth #3: More is better.

That's another health myth seen particularly with bodybuilders building muscles and models losing weight. Long distance runners get into it and don’t want to stop. More is better. We used to think that marathons were excessive. yet now with triathlons they run, cycle and swim.

Those doing ultramarathons or extreme bodybuilding are tapping into this oxidative stress that reaches  free radical toxicity. The end product is all of these things that are almost like saying body rust. 

“An extreme lifestyle will shorten your life.”

Health Myth #4: Don't waste your time with rest. Keep pushing.

You need to rest and get good sleep. That's why we do high intensity interval training, because we rest in between and we don't push past a certain point depending on our age. But we are the other part. We are consistent. It's important to do things every day with some rest days mixed in. So I contradicted myself right there. It's important to do it consistently and yet allow some rest days in between that's.

Health Myth #5: Supplements  can make up for an unhealthy lifestyle.

There's some magic potion for women who want to look young. They're willing to inject rat poison into their face by their forehead. They're willing to get fillers around their mouth. And so instead of living a healthy lifestyle, eating healthy, avoiding the foods and the things that would cause that aging, getting enough sleep, all the things that we say that are longevity pillars, instead of doing that, they want something magic, a pill they can take that's going to erase all of that.

 Live a Rejuvenation Lifestyle

• Exercise regularly and consistently build your strength
• Listen to your body when you feel pain and do something about it quickly
• Be satisfied with incremental progress
• Take time to rest
• Eat real food and take quality supplements for what is no longer in the soil 

Living a rejuvenation lifestyle is bringing all of the different factors into good balance.

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Transcript

[00:07] Announcer: Welcome to Stance for Health Podcast with Dr. Rodney and Karen Wirth. Where becoming healthy is not complicated, control your health by focusing on six areas of life that we teach you so you finally have the energy you have to do what you want instead of being a victim of your age. I have over 20 years experience working as a chiropractor, and Karen is an author, speaker, and longevity coach. We've seen how a tiny change in your habits today can open up your life to a powerful future. Start today and take your stance for health.

[00:50] Karen Wirth: Welcome to Stance for Health. My name is Karen Sebastian-Wirth, and I am here with Dr. Rodney Hi. Dr. Rodney.

[00:58] Dr. Rodney: Hi. It's good to be here.

[01:00] Karen Wirth: I'm glad we're going to talk today about something that might catch your attention. We hope so, because your life could depend on it. Here are five life-shortening health myths. So it's something that you can believe or you may be believing about practices that could lengthen your life expectancy that are actually shortening it. I'm going to start with those. Are you ready?

[01:32] Dr. Rodney: I'm absolutely ready.

[01:34] Karen Wirth: Myth #1: You can make up for lack of exercise during the week by becoming a weekend warrior. 

What is your opinion on that, Dr. Rodney?

[01:50] Dr. Rodney: Think about what your tendons are not.

[01:54] Karen Wirth: Your tendencies, your literal tendons.

[01:57] Dr. Rodney: Yes.

[01:57] Karen Wirth: Okay. What are tendons?

[02:00] Dr. Rodney: Tendons, you see well, they're actually not funny.

[02:05] Karen Wirth: You tell me sometimes, but I think it's just old dad jokes that I learned from my dad. Corny ones. Okay. Tell me about tendons. What is the purpose of tendons?

[02:14] Dr. Rodney: They are attaching muscles to bones.

[02:19] Karen Wirth: Oh, okay.

[02:20] Dr. Rodney: Yeah. And ligaments attach bone to bone.

[02:26] Karen Wirth: Got it.

[02:27] Dr. Rodney: The tendency for your body is that when you don’t use something you lose it.

[02:43] Karen Wirth: So you're talking about someone who's sitting eight to 10 hours per day with very few breaks, driving an hour, sometimes up to two.

[02:55] Dr. Rodney: Yes.

[02:56] Karen Wirth: Going home and watching TV, falling into bed, getting up, rinse, repeat.

[03:03] Dr. Rodney: Yeah. So you have these muscles that cross joints, and if they get really short from sitting so much, not only are you putting force on a tendon, you're actually activating that muscle and inhibiting the opposite side muscle group. So what I'm talking about, if you haven't been able to tell so far, is the hip flexor and the glutes. So the glute gets weakened by sitting.

[03:36] Karen Wirth: Got you.

[03:36] Dr. Rodney: So now your pelvis gets crooked because one side is always going to be tighter than the other, and it's usually the right side. So more often than not, you'll have that kind of tension that perpetual or consistent negative pressure on the disc, because that's actually where it attaches. That muscle attaches or starts and then crosses the bones of your low back bones of where the base of your spine attaches to the pelvis, crosses that sacral iliac joint, the sacred joint, the.

[04:14] Karen Wirth: One right there that so many people come to us, visiting us with that issue that ties right in to the next myth. 

Myth #2:  No pain, no gain.

[04:28] Dr. Rodney: Well, yeah. Then the problem with that tendency there it goes back to the tendency is that that last muscle, or the last part of that muscle then actually crosses the hip joint. And when you're in an exertion mode, not only are you working muscles that are already tight, but one side is tighter than the other, one side is weaker than the other. And that's a recipe for low back disaster, low back pain.

[05:02] Karen Wirth: And if you're running, you can have injuries, all kinds of things that come with that. But the no pain, no gain, I understand that that possibly could have started with people that didn't want to exert the effort to have muscle soreness. However, what it has become is, for example, I was reading a magazine about running, and there was a woman in an article who had broken her hip and still finished a marathon, and she literally was in traction for two months to repair that.

[05:48] Dr. Rodney: How many people applaud her effort to do that?

[05:52] Karen Wirth: Yeah, right.

[05:53] Dr. Rodney: As though her life depended on.

[05:55] Karen Wirth: And that's what the people that buy into the no pain, no gain basically learn to ignore the body's warning signals. What are some of the body's best warning signals, Dr.  Rodney?

[06:16] Dr. Rodney: When I think of the best warning signals, I think of the end stage of inflammation. I think of is scar tissue. And so you're going to have a restricted joint. You're going to lose some of that range of motion you don't want to lose. In other words, when you lose range of motion at joint, you actually lose that joint's ability to express itself neurologically to the brain. But you also lose some of that squeezing and releasing tendency. There's the tendency again. Wow. It seems to be a theme.

[06:52] Karen Wirth: We say it all the time, and we just highlighted it, talking about tendons.

[06:56] Dr. Rodney: So that whole notion of if you don't use it, you lose it, thing comes into play. And now you have not just pain, but painful range of motion. And that was one of the things I was encountering in long term cycling, cycling for long distances.

[07:18] Karen Wirth: Just so you know. Dr. Rodney participated in a hundred mile bicycle race, would you say? Yeah, at 100 degrees. Racing myself in the extreme heat here in Texas and redline to the point that he has had some long term issues with it. But here's what we've done. In order to win, you have to push past those wimps that listen to their body that's like it's what's required to be a champion.

[08:00] Dr. Rodney: Yes.

[08:02] Karen Wirth: And so I think that is a life shortening myth. And there's another side of this. Have you ever seen someone that, despite being shown research about people who run marathons or that do this marathon cycling, so to speak, in that way ignored it.

[08:33] Dr. Rodney: I could have, but it was too hard to ignore my left knee, my left hip, my right knee and my right hip, which incidentally, that is telltale signs that I've redlined. that have really.

[08:45] Karen Wirth: Overdone for too long.

[08:47] Dr. Rodney: Yeah. And I actually started seeing swelling in my left knee and I didn't want that anymore. And I actually talked to a friend of mine and he found trigger points in that muscle, which means that muscle has been too short for a long period of time, which means the same thing is happening with my hamstrings that was happening with my hip flexor and my glutes. So now I have two sets of muscles, namely the glutes and the hamstrings, that are now tight and longer than they should be. And tight means weak. So now you try to we're back to that same scenario again. I couldn't ignore that. I couldn't ignore the reality of that. And that whole concept is called reciprocal inhibition. Really fancy word for if you work one side of your body, you're going to inhibit the opposite. I'm talking about from front to back. Right. So I'm no longer of the opinion that more is better when it comes.

[09:51] Karen Wirth: To and that's our next one. Yeah, that's our next one. 

Myth #3: More is better. 

That's another health myth. I mean, we can see that in bodybuilders or we can see that in the leanness of models. It's like people get in this and long distance runners. Long distance runners, right. More is better.

[10:13] Dr. Rodney: Yes, and I'm talking about, again, we're really referring we used to think that marathons were excessive. Now that's not enough. There's ultra marathons.

[10:26] Karen Wirth: Yes. Or triathlons, where they just do the running, the cycling and the swimming.

[10:36] Dr. Rodney: I don't want to get too far off base here, but let's look at what a marathon actually is. It's designed by the Greeks. Right?

[10:45] Karen Wirth: Interesting.

[10:45] Dr. Rodney: Yeah, it's a Greek mindset. So the reality of all that is that you didn't know I was going to talk about this subject right here, but that's ultimately what we're tapping into the subject is oxidative stress.

[11:08] Karen Wirth: Wow.

[11:08] Dr. Rodney: Right. We're actually amplifying that with long distance running, long distance cycling in a lesser extent. Really? If you don't push it too hard. Right. Because the machine is doing some of the work for you. But these people that are doing ultramarathons or extreme bodybuilding, they're tapping into this oxidative stress, which is really you probably have heard that kind of encircles, kind of a buzzword is free radical toxicity. The end product is all of these things that are almost like saying body rust. If you don't want your hinges to rust or metal in your body to rust, then this is really what we're talking about. You don't want that product. That's the end stage of free radical toxicity, oxidative stress.

[12:05] Karen Wirth: And to talk on the other side of that, though, with someone who is in this lifestyle, whether that is bodybuilding or the cycling or the triathlons or just the marathons, it's not easy for them to get out of this mentality. Why do you think that is, Dr?

[12:28] Dr. Rodney: That is such a good question. Because looking back, I was addicted to the high, and I was addicted to the result because I could eat anything.

[12:41] Karen Wirth: Yeah. And in fact, you had to.

[12:43] Dr. Rodney: So many calories. Yeah.

[12:46] Karen Wirth: You could eat all the junk food you wanted and still not gain weight. Because we have made that the hallmark of health. If you're thin, if you're muscular, then you are in good shape. But are you?

[12:58] Dr. Rodney: Yeah. And so oxidative stress, if you want to take it to its extreme and you want to take it to its end product, when you do too much oxidative stress, it's happening all the time in the body. But what I noticed, not only was there was a common theme, it's just that some of the things that actually help short circuit oxidative stress are glutathione, vitamin E, vitamin C, and I'm sure there's a few others in there, but good fats and increased mitochondrial production. Right. In other words, keeping the mitochondria healthy. The end stage of that oxidative stress is thought to be involved. It's thought to be involved. That's kind of odd to say. Consider the source. Right. In the development of ADHD.

[13:49] Karen Wirth: Wow.

[13:50] Dr. Rodney: I had that.

[13:53] Karen Wirth: In other words okay, keep going.

[13:54] Dr. Rodney: Well, I'm just going to name them cancer, Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's, which is basically those two types of things we call those neurodegenerative or all cause dementia, atherosclerosis. In other words, your arteries are getting stressed and they're developing plaques, heart failure, myocardial infarction. Those are two different things affecting the same organ sickle cell disease, vitiligo, autism, chronic fatigue syndrome, and depression.

[14:32] Karen Wirth: Wow. So we're talking about a lifestyle that people adopt to be healthier. And it's reminding me of my dad's saying, if you can't see two extremes from where you're running, you are at one of them.

[14:50] Dr. Rodney: I'm so glad you said that. You've developed for me what I was about to say next is short term oxidative stress may be important in the prevention of aging. That's the right exercise. Yes. So induction is called by induction of a process named mitohormesis.

[15:14] Karen Wirth: Explain that in plain language.

[15:16] Dr. Rodney: Oh, I love it. Because when you short term stress something, you increase the rate of mitochondria, what they do, but then you don't continue it. You don't red line it. It's hormetic. In other words, not enough of something will kill you. Too much of something will kill you. It's right in the middle.

[15:38] Karen Wirth: So that brings us to our next or the mitochondria life shortening. Our next life shortening health myth is don't waste your time with rest. Keep pushing.

[15:52] Dr. Rodney: Oh, my goodness. Let's reference our other podcast about sleep.

[15:57] Karen Wirth: And just even resting. That's why we do high intensity interval training, is because we rest in between and we don't push past a certain point depending on age. But we are the other part. We are consistent. It's important to do things every day with some rest days mixed in. So I contradicted myself right there. It's important to do it consistently and yet allow some rest days in between that's.

[16:30] Dr. Rodney: The thing with redlining is that the heart rate stays at an exercise rate for far too long. It starts to damage the mitochondria.

[16:40] Karen Wirth: This is amazing. Our final one.

[16:42] Dr. Rodney: Yeah.

Myth #5: Supplements or drugs can make up for an unhealthy lifestyle.

We see so many (especially women) looking for  some magic potion to stay young. They're willing to inject rat poison into their face by their forehead. They're willing to get fillers around their mouth. And so instead of living a healthy lifestyle, eating healthy, avoiding the foods and the things that would cause that aging, getting enough sleep, all the things that we say that are longevity pillars, instead of doing that, they want something magic, a pill they can take that's going to erase all of that.

[17:55] Dr. Rodney: So I think what I hear you saying is that I can eat whatever I want as long as I take vitamin supplements and I can look good as long as I want to. If I have a fallback that recreates my facial youth or my body youth, I can look young on the outside, but I can have tons of oxidative stress on the inside.

Myth #5: Supplements can make up the difference for  bad diet and poor lifestyle
I had basal cell carcinoma removed from my eye.   I was taking tons of supplements, I thought, well, if I take these supplements, I can eat what I want, drink what I want. This was before we turned over a new leaf in our diet and the cancer actually grew faster in that time frame.

 A rejuvenation lifestyle means that you bring all of the different factors into a good balance. Keep running and riding your bicycle. Keep it within the parameters of a balanced lifestyle.

 You can stop ignoring that red light that's going take care of those issues. Come see your chiropractor more is not necessarily better. Be satisfied with small progress and take time off rest. And we're not against supplements. We take them, but let them supplement a healthy way of eating and living.