Why muscle is your biggest ally for health?

Did you know that skeletal muscle accounts for more than 40% of our body and is recognized as the largest organ? And we lose 3–8% of muscle mass per decade after turning 30, with this rate accelerating after 50. Sadly, muscle health has often been overlooked.

For busy office professionals with sedentary lifestyle, the rate of muscle mass loss is even higher. 

In this episode you can learn about all aspects of muscle health and its connection to our wellbeing.

You'll learn about:

🏋️‍♀️ The pivotal role of skeletal muscle in our well-being

🍏 How skeletal muscle influences our metabolic health

💪 The connection between muscle and insulin resistance

🥗 Strategies to enhance muscle health through diet

🏋️‍♂️ The types of exercise that can safeguard and promote muscle mass

Our guest is Dr. Maribeth Orr, an Obesity Medicine specialist providing comprehensive care for obesity at Heartland Weight Loss in Kansas City Area. She has been practicing family medicine and obesity medicine for over 20 years. She helps optimize metabolic health for her patients. Among all the other things she is a 2024 CrossFit games quarterfinalist and an IRONMAN finisher. 

You can learn more about Dr. Orr at:

LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/maribeth-orr-d-o-dabfm-dabom-8271a0103/

TikTok - Dr. Maribeth Orr

IG - @MaribethOrr

Website - www.heartlandweightloss.com

#muscle #musclehealth #protein #musclepower #musclestrength #metabolichealth #obesitymedicine

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My passion is helping organizations create a culture of wellness, and I do this by setting up health programs that prioritize the most important asset they've got – their employees. Cheers to a healthier and happier journey ahead!

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Transcript

 Welcome to the nine to five wellness podcast,  a show about corporate wellness solutions with innovators and forward thinking leaders who are at the forefront of the workplace wellness movement.  I'm your host Ayesha Tahir. 

 Hello and welcome to 9 to 5 Wellness Show. Today on the show, we are going to talk about muscle. Why muscle? Well, of course, the first reason is that more muscle mass makes you look better. But I have to say something. Oftentimes we confuse . Muscle with, , fitness balls or bodybuilders for aesthetic reasons.

But skeletal muscle is so much more than that. Skeletal muscle accounts for more than 40 percent of our body. And it is the largest metabolic organ in our body. And we are going to talk about its connection to metabolism. metabolism today and how it's connected to our health. The reason I wanted to highlight muscle today was because first off, in my practice, this is something I preach  and  it's not an easy subject to talk about.

Second, it's such an important organ, but we start losing muscle mass sometimes as early as in our late twenties or as soon as you hit thirties. And what The data shows is that we start losing it at a rate of about 3 to 8 percent per decade. And this rate accelerates after the age of 50.  It's very, very important that we preserve our muscle mass and then we build our muscle mass.

 Sadly, we have been really overlooking muscle health for a very long time, which is leading to obesity and diabetes epidemic at this time.  I have a very special guest with me today who is going to nerd out  on muscle health with me, Dr. Meribeth Orr. She is obesity medicine specialist providing comprehensive care for obesity at Heartland Weight Loss in Kansas City area.

She has been practicing in family medicine and obesity medicine for over 20 years. And she helps optimize metabolic health for her patients.  Among all the other medical accolades, she is also 2024 CrossFit quarterfinalist , and an Ironman finisher. So welcome, welcome Dr. Orr. 

Thank you so much, Aisha.

I so much appreciate it. I'm really honored to be here with you today. I love your enthusiasm talking about health and wellness in general. And then the muscle side, like what muscle does for us and the, , all the benefits and things that we can get from exercise. And yes, Yeah, my personal history with exercise and what it's done for me personally.

I try to use that to help my patients  to find out, you know, everybody has their own journey in this health and wellness and what we can do. So yes, thank you so much. I just appreciate you having me on today. This is super fun. I love to nerd out. about anything metabolic health. And then especially if we want to talk about, you know, muscle and muscle cells and the nerdy stuff with that, like before over the past week, I've been really trying to up my scientific knowledge and like, Oh my gosh, there's so much that I still have to learn.

And. To go back and read about. It's like I learned something more and the research just keeps piling up about the importance of taking care of our musculoskeletal health and all of the implications down the road that it has. And really it affects every system of the body. Yeah, I was just listening to a podcast the other day about, you know, what can we do for neurodegenerative disease and Alzheimer's disease and.

Really, you know, look at, look around. We really have a lot of medications and drugs that are helping with that. And our best defense against Alzheimer's disease is having healthy bodies going into our later decades of life and making sure that we're well trained and prepared for that. that marginal decade of life.

You want your marginal decade, the last 10 years of your life to be, you know, you want to thrive as much as you can. So it's like you have to start training now. And like you had said earlier to, you know, we know that muscle and lean tissue starts to decline. Certainly. And I think it's age 35. We start to break it down as kind of a normal process of aging, but  it doesn't have to be So severe, like we see here, you know, among the world and especially in the United States.

There's so much to say,  there is, there is so much and thank you so much for making time for this in your busy schedule today. This is fun. I want to start with you. I want to, I'd love to learn about your health journey. How did you start competing as a triathlete?  How did you enter the CrossFit world? 

Tell me all about it. Oh, my goodness. Okay. So I could talk forever about that and try to share because I feel like sharing my personal journey to and what it did for me. I hope that that inspires others. My personal journey came with my four Children. So as we know, pregnancy, goodness gracious, it kind of puts you in a state of https: otter.

ai dysfunction somewhat. Your body's trying to grow a baby. So what we know about insulin resistance, it's kind of, I was facing that I didn't know at the time after my pregnancies and after my last child was born 15 years ago and I started gaining weight and struggling with, My mental health and just overall health.

And I was right on the border of that gestational diabetes and wondering what happened in that process of trying to be a good family physician and give good advice to my patients too. I found myself struggling with that excess weight and not being healthy. And I thought. Something needs to change.

Then the next move was my father, who was one of my best friends in my life. He got diagnosed with cancer that we knew at that time was going to eventually take his life. It was kind of a long, ugly battle. He was a smoker, unfortunately in his time. And. So everything kept piling up my own health, my dad being diagnosed with cancer.

I found myself in a state that I got to do something. I have these children that I want to raise to be healthy. I want to be a good role model. I want to be around for my children. So I met a personal trainer who started showing me fun things and what I could do, and he started helping me with my mental health on that and encouraging me.

Then I had a friend that said, Hey, you want to ride a bicycle? Like, okay, that sounds like fun. And then another friend said, you want to sign up for a 5k with me? Like, okay, that sounds like fun. And then I've always been a swimmer, love swimming throughout my lifetime. So then I had another friend come along that said, you know, there's this thing called a triathlon and you do all those things.

And I thought all of them in one day. Oh, that's kind of crazy. Why would you do that? I've heard of these  triathlete people, but I, you know, I've just known as professionals and they're, you know, these major athletes that, that do all these amazing things that I don't think I could possibly do well. Fast forward about a year later after I was introduced to that to that idea on my dad, the day of my dad's Memorial, there was an indoor triathlon in Kansas city at 68 indoor sports.

And I did an it, my very first. Indoor triathlon, a pool swim, a stationary bike, an indoor track run. And then went to my dad's memorial later that Sunday. And it was life changing. It's like that set the ball in motion for me. I felt so good. I felt like I had a connection with my father who I had just lost because he told me all along through his battle with cancer to take care of myself, take care of my family.

Don't worry about him. Things are going to be okay. So I started that and then started getting well and feeling better, improved my own glucose homeostasis, my blood tests improved, my cholesterol improved, I was sleeping better, my mental health improved. There's so many things that just kept wrapping around.

And then that initial personal trainer that I met, Several years before that said, well, there's this CrossFit thing. We should try some of that and started getting into that. And wow, that's a whole nother world. And it was  amazing. And what I found was doing the CrossFit and working on strength and muscle health.

On top of that, in addition to working on my endurance side, it made me a better triathlete. So I just kept going on. And then the next year I did a longer distance, an Olympic distance. And then the next year at half iron. And then the year after that, it was like, okay, we're going 140. 6 for a full iron.

And that was mind blowing.  So that's where it's just kind of snowballed. And then, so for this year, I signed up officially for the CrossFit Open, which I'd heard about it, but never participated. But I have another personal trainer who encouraged me, said, sign up. You got to try this. I think, let's see what happens.

We'll start training some of this stuff and learning some. gymnastics on a bar. And I, again, I thought, no, I'm not a gymnast.  I don't have those kinds of moves. I don't have those kinds of skills, but he started showing me some things and  oh my gosh, when I got a couple of them, I thought this is really fun. 

So we took off and signed up and lo and behold for my age group, women, 50 to 55, I made the quarterfinals and we had a blast training through all of it and all the  with it. So It sounds so much fun and I can relate with you on so many levels here. First, you know, just being a good role model for your kids.

I started running marathons when I had my youngest 12 years ago now. And then I've been doing CrossFit for only a year, but just like you said It has changed my running game. Yes. Like, yeah, the strength that comes with that program, it translates to your endurance sports for sure.

And overall, like body composition and health.  One other thing that I do want to highlight that you have mentioned is the mental health aspect of exercise.  

The 

more you move your body and the healthier your cells are, the healthier muscle mass you have more muscle mass you have, the better you're gonna feel.

Like, you know, your mindset changes. Just like you mentioned,  this was the first year you competed in the CrossFit Open.  And congratulations for doing that and making it to quarterfinals. But, you know, it's just the mindset changes. You're open, you're open to so many new experiences.

And you feel better, you feel good and other people. Then feel good hanging around.  If I didn't run today. Hey, don't come close to 

me. Yes Yeah, if I'm gonna be better and help my patients through their metabolic journeys and their health and wellness journeys I have to spend some of the time on myself there too so that I can be the best for them so it's it's it's a it's a It's a community.

It's a circle. And again, you know, speaking of community, that's what I love about CrossFit is that community atmosphere and learning new things. I mean, I like, I, for the first time in my life at the age of 50, I'm learning how to do a handstand pushup. What?  

Isn't that amazing? That is amazing. And I love my CrossFit family too.

You're right. It's their community.  Let's talk about muscle.  We know that altered muscle metabolism can have like a profound impact on the development and prevention of various pathologic conditions and chronic diseases. How would you define the specific role that skeletal muscle plays in our health and well being?

Yeah, there's a, oh boy, that's a loaded question. It is a loaded 

question. Yeah. I was just going to say that. 

Oh yeah. So I would start by saying that skeletal muscle is everything. And when we look at, you know, health and wellness in general, what I always like to think about, it's like, what, what are Americans dying of?

What are the things that people are getting sick from? What are we suffering with? And still, number one, it's heart disease in America. It's still the number one killer. And you wouldn't think, well, muscular muscle health. How does that really factor in there? Well, your muscle mass and lean the metabolic function of your muscle mass affects the metabolic function of your heart.

And we, we need to start thinking of, you know, muscle tissue also as being an organ system in and of itself because it's so metabolically active. And what do we know about heart disease? Well, it is a metabolic dysfunction and it's a problem with the endothelial cells and the way in our body. our circulation, our blood, our lipid levels,  our circulatory system, high blood pressure and all of these risk factors that go in their family history.

But these are all lifestyle problems to when we look at Heart disease, you know, the big kind of what we call the four horsemen. I always go back to looking at that to heart disease, cancer, neurodegenerative disease, type two diabetes. You know, when you have somebody with type two diabetes, you just automatically assume they have got somewhere coronary artery disease, at least.

in the working. So kind of what we call a coronary equivalent. So, you know, muscle is so metabolically biologically active with myokines. I learned the word exerkines recently, which I'm still trying to learn what's the difference between a myokine and an exerkine, but skeletal muscle produces all of these chemicals and muscle contractions.

And that's fits in. We get these wonderful chemicals that are produced with muscle contractions that go all over the body. Actually, I printed out a chart for our talk today and it's got listed, we've got a brain, we've got the heart, of course, we've got the liver, I've got the kidneys, the pancreas, bones, and I kind of did a list of all of the things that happen when we have muscle contractions and we, Keep our, our skeletal muscle happy and healthy and all the positive effects.

It's all downstream. So that's kind of how I like to look at it is, you know, what are people dying of? What are people suffering with in our country? And boy, it goes down to with obesity as well. You'd mentioned talking about obesity. We're so concerned about, okay, we got to lose fat mass. We're going to lose fat mass.

Well, in addition, we've got to start working on building up our muscle mass too, and protecting that and reducing those. age related declines and metabolic dysfunction related declines in skeletal muscle. So yeah, skeletal muscles are metabolic sink, so to say.  That's so true. 

 Let's dive a little bit deeper into the connection between Metabolic health and muscle mass and how muscle is a site for metabolic functionality.

I want to talk about insulin resistance and its connection to muscle mass. Yeah. Good one. Insulin resistance is probably the king daddy of muscle mass. The negative mean King Daddy, that's causing all of these problems. I'm certainly oversimplifying it, thinking of it this way, but it really captures what we're dealing with.

So heart disease is insulin resistance of the heart. PCOS is insulin resistance of the ovary. So erectile dysfunction, insulin resistance of, you know, our body. Private parts. So yeah, Alzheimer's disease, you know, the new name for Alzheimer's disease is type three diabetes. What do we know about type two diabetes, type three diabetes?

Now it all goes back to our bodies in efficiency and how we use insulin. Cancer also factors in there. You know if we're not using insulin efficiently and we have a disruption and dysregulated  use of the hormone insulin. That goes down the line too and can contribute to abnormal cell growth. That's one of the functions of what insulin does in addition to helping us with glucose homeostasis and regulating blood sugars.

Insulin's job is also growth, but if you have dysregulated insulin and you get a little bit of abnormal cell growth, that's where a cancer can start. step in. So that's why in particular, in particular, when we talk about obesity as a disease, there's well known, well documented 13 different types of cancers that are related to obesity and it all boils down to insulin resistance.

So that's how I would say.  Where does insulin resistance fit in? Well, it's at the core. That's where it fits in because everything else just seems to branch off because there's so much the human body has to depend on functional utilization of insulin. And that's where you mentioned. Most skeletal muscles, 40 percent of our body mass, that's where so important, you know, at the metabolic scene, skeletal muscle is the primary glucose utilizer.

It's the primary site for glucose utilization. And so if we're losing, you know, that, that functionality and skeletal muscle, that's where it puts you at high risk  and you're not using insulin. You get, you're less insulin sensitive, you're insulin inefficient. All of the downstream effects that affect every organ of the body and thus chronic diseases. 

So so much to learn still 

 your skeletal muscle is the  primary site for glucose usage. And if you're not insulin sensitive, or are getting to be insulin resistant or are insulin resistant, that means that your muscle is not able to use glucose effectively.

But what is all that floating glucose? gonna do in your body, it's gonna store as fat. So that is how it's connected.  Thanks for really tying it in with the muscle mass. And despite its importance, you know, for our health, just like you mentioned, Alzheimer's, cancer, heart disease The maintenance of adequate muscle mass and muscle strength and metabolic metabolic function has been underestimated , we've been so focused on just fat,  losing fat, losing fat, losing fat. 

Yeah. It's just still good. We are overnourished, but we're also under muscled. Yes. So, and that's a sarcopenic obesity. That's like, that's really the scary part is, you know, if we have excess fat mass, but low muscle mass and you have sarcopenia scary. 

Very 

scary. 

And I do want to highlight something over here.

A patient who comes in who is obese or overweight, and they end up losing fat mass without building muscle mass.  A lot of times, you know, when they go back to their routine life, if they're not on the diet anymore, or even On a weight loss medication if they get off of it, they're going to gain some weight back, right?

You lost some muscle along with the fat when you lost weight initially, and now the muscle that you lost, it's going to be replaced by fat. So now you're Almost sometimes in a in worse position if you did not  exercise and did not take care of nutrition and did not take care of your muscle health while you were losing weight.

So that's why. It's very important that when you are on your weight loss journey that you prioritize your muscle health. I want to talk about food because according to IHRSA, which is a big organization for health and recreation in U. S., they recently published a report and According to them, 25 percent of adults in US exercise regularly.

So only 25%. I wish it was higher, but we all eat food for you. Don't agree. You're right.  So I really want to talk about food, which we are all consuming.  What kind of dietary interventions can help us improve muscle health. 

Yes. Excellent. Those are all really good points you brought up. And so dietary wise, so, wow, there's, it's difficult to talk about nutrition for multiple reasons.

It's emotionally driven, you know, there's so many, yeah, so many emotions that are brought up through that. We have so many differences just, you know, Even within our culture, different cultures within our culture and so many things that have to be taken into account and each one of us has a different environment to, you know, what is your work environment?

What is your home environment? You know, mental health plays a role in there too. So boy, that's a whole nother talk. We should probably do another time. But yes, to what it boils down to. I know what we do at Heartland Weight Loss. Heartland Weight Loss. Our main focus for what we work with with our patients is we try to establish a good solid baseline of eating whole foods, meaning foods that actually exist in nature and have very little manipulation done to them.

So the ultra processed foods or the UPS, like I like to shorten up when I'm doing it. A progress note. Those are unfortunately a large part of the standard American diet with has as advanced in our dust in our industrialized world. So that's where we're trying to almost create a movement or a rebellion or an uprising.

This is what I tell my patients, like, it's okay to fight against what appears to be normal in dietary choices. And I want you to be. The quote unquote weirdo, you know, that says, can you hold the fries and I'll have a side of steamed vegetables, you know, that's okay to, to be like that. So that's the main focus that we have at Heartland weight loss is trying to establish a good, healthy baseline of  mainly whole foods, reducing ultra process, reducing refined carbohydrates education on added sugar.

big food companies are savvy. I think the last time I checked, you know, there's about 260 different names for sugar. We actually give our patients a handout that has, I think we have about 70 names listed on there, but I always warn them. I'm like, this is not all inclusive. There's more. So just be careful.

So being aware of those food labels and helping our patients read through them and understand them. It can be really shocking at times. Like, What you thought was advertised or marketed as very healthy and a lot, you know, they like to say, oh, it's got protein in it. It's great or no sugar. Usually we tell our patients if it makes a claim, the more claims a food makes on its box, probably the more dangerous it is.

If they say high protein, no sugar, you know we'll help heart disease. If they make, if they're making all these claims, I would be wary about it. What we need is our farmers to rise up and start, you know, doing the dance or buy halftime show at the super bowl, you know, get up there and do the, this is the green bean people,  kick the pepsi people out. 

 I so agree. If you clean up, and, and I say clean up very carefully over here, but yeah, if you eat whole foods and you're not eating as much processed food,  you have like more than 50 percent of your diet taken care of.  If we were to talk about a macronutrient out of the three macronutrients, 

which one would you  recommend,  prioritize for muscle health? 

Well, that's definitely going to be  lean protein. Yes. Lean whole protein. 

Yes. Awesome. Awesome.  And what do you recommend? Like, what is the window that you recommend to your patients who are trying to lose weight and gain muscle mass? Yeah. 

Yeah.

So, as far as an amount wise. We like to try to keep things simple here, too. You know, if you have people count calories, count macros, it can be very daunting and overwhelming. So we go back to let's talk about what did our ancestors do? Because really, that's what we're trying to deal with here is primitive DNA.

Our DNA goes back thousands and thousands of years ago, and they didn't have food scales. They weren't counting macros back then. They were hunter gatherers. They got up in the morning. They had a kill. They ate with their hands. So we like to try to keep it simple and say, well, about a palm size serving of protein, what fits in your hand is gonna fit your needs?

So at the bare minimum, we try to tell our patients, can you do four palm size servings every day, roughly? That should be around 20 to 30 grams, hopefully. closer to 30 grams per palm size. So you're hitting that bare minimum of 120 for most people. Really one gram per pound of ideal body weight is if you're physically active and if, especially if you're doing resistance training, bump it up a 2 grams would be good, but trying to keep it simple and doable for most people.

So it's not overwhelming and daunting and discouraging. We say. Fist size, a hand size. Go back to your caveman roots.  

 I always say to my patients, Hey, you're going to take your hand everywhere with you. So if you're at the restaurant  and you order a steak, you'll be able to see if it's the right size.

Yes. You don't have a food scale in your purse.  Excellent. That is so true. Hands are the best way to measure food. And you're right. Like you can. log in your food for a week or two weeks, which is a good starting point, but you, it becomes really cumbersome to start, keep on doing it forever.

And yeah, it's discouraging for a lot of people do really well with it though. I haven't, I haven't encountered patients that say I got to write it down. Like, okay, that works too. Absolutely. It just, it shows us how different.  

But I love , going back to the caveman era.

And what did our ancestors do? And of course, yeah, they're probably not measuring any of it. They were just very active too. Okay. Exercise, what kind of exercise should be prioritized for muscle health for building muscle?  

Well, yes. So the answer is yes.

Cardio versus resistance or weights. Yes. And yes, I love them both. You know, I don't want to just be a hundred percent. Oh, all resistance training. That's where it's at. If I had to pick one though, I probably would lean for resistance training and building muscular strength just because of all the research and the data that we have on muscular strength and reduction of chronic diseases, especially Alzheimer's disease.

Type two diabetes, everything are stronger people live longer and they live better longer. But you know, there's also that zone to training build those mitochondria. That's that skeletal muscle. It's another thing we didn't really talk about skeletal muscle. It has multiple mitochondria, which those are your metabolic engines.

That's where your body produces energy. And that's where a lot of dysfunction happens with insulin resistance is dysfunctional mitochondria. So that's where the cardio part comes in. And so yes and yes, but for overall muscle health strength resistance trainings where it's at lift the weights. 

 Start with resistance training and then start adding some zone 2 training to the equation  as you feel stronger and you get comfortable in the weight room. Then you start adding some cardio too. Great. I think we have so much to discuss here. We are going to start doing some bite sized lives soon on a weekly basis because yeah, I, I couldn't get through even everything, but and also the mitochondria, we have to talk about mitochondria soon.

Yeah, yeah. Because  , that's our energy house. Yes. And the cells. So yeah, we have to talk about it for sure. Where can our viewers and listeners learn more about you, Dr. Orr? 

Wonderful. Thank you. Well, I'm on LinkedIn just as my name, Marybeth Orr. And then I work at Heartland Weight Loss and we have a website www.

heartlandweightloss. com. I do some fun stuff on Facebook and Instagram too. Oh, I'm on TikTok too as Dr. Marybeth Orr. That's a new one. Of course my My 14 year old son is like, no mom, don't do TikTok.  But I'm there, buddy.  My 18 year old daughter, she was kind of, Oh, really grossed out by me being on TikTok, but I'm there too.

Yeah, I 

know they get embarrassed. When we go on Tik Tok, but they're on Tik Tok all day long.  

It's fun. That's a part of what keeps me young. That's that mental health pillar for me, the emotional health. It's fun. I try to limit my time on there cause it can be not fun too, but yeah. Going down the rabbit hole.

Social outlets and then the website. Thank you. 

That is awesome. Hey, we have to really get on Instagram for the lives to.  Thank you so much for squeezing in this interview and for all the knowledge that you shared with us. Really important information here and , just highlighting the importance of muscle.

Why it is important. We can prevent so many chronic diseases. If we took care of our muscle,  if we changed our body composition for the better. And it's not that hard. You just have to start, you know, just, I say to the patients all the time, , start somewhere. It's not as complicated as it looks.

As we have as a society, try to make it look, it's not just one, one small step. Maybe that is starting with your breakfast and adding a palm sized portion of protein to your breakfast, you know, start there. Then add, add it to lunch, then add it to dinner. Maybe add a couple of snacks there.

Thank you again. And I am looking forward to our lives soon , and to our audience, I'll keep you guys posted about the lives once we have the schedule up and see you guys soon. Bye guys. Thank you. Bye. 

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