Physical Therapist Reveals HIS 6 Rules for HEALTH (at 56 Y.O.)

it's kind of hard to imagine but this last June was 30 years since I graduated from physical therapy school and I also turned 56 in July and so there are six Health rules that I try to follow to ensure that I'm as healthy as I can be now everyone's got their different set of Health rules that hopefully help guide them on a daily basis and I want to know what yours are so leave them down below in the comments these are just my six that I've kind of developed over time and hopefully they help hey everyone welcome to the channel this is your first video my name is Ed Deo physical therapist from integrated physical therapy in beautiful Bellingham Washington if you've been to the channel before welcome back so let's just jump right into my six rules for health the first one I try to follow is the one that deals with exercise especially strength training in the weight room now there's a lot of reasons why we all strength train flexibility mobility and of course strength but my number one rule when I'm trying to do an exercise in the weight room is to not get hurt that is the top priority for me because if I get hurt like I did the last week then what it does is is it sets me back sometimes for just days if I'm lucky weeks or sometimes even months so last week I was going to deadlift like I do every Wednesday and I usually do about a 30 minute warm up first on the treadmill and then I do a couple of warm-up sets and then I get into my working sets with the deadlift now trust me I don't lift that much but for me it's kind of a lot because you know I'm not the strongest guy that ever lived but what happened last week is that I didn't have the time to warm up I was running a little late overslept so I just did a quick 5 10 minute warmup on the elliptical and then I jumped right into my warm-up sets and then my working sets halfway through the middle of my second set I felt something kind of sharp and give in the right side of my low back instantaneously I knew I did something so I put the weights down and then luckily it was only sore for about 5 days but during those 5 days even walking was painful so I wasn't getting my steps in I definitely wasn't doing any weight training for 5 days so I kind of lost almost a week of exercise it's important to get out there and do some work every single day and so my number one priority in the weight room is is to first of all not get hurt my second rule that I live by is no days off now of course that doesn't always happen but in my mind I'm trying to tell myself that I take no days off obviously if you're sick that's a different story but otherwise I try to work out and do something every single day and what I try to do is at least try to walk 30 to 45 minutes every single day now ideally it's outside but what I'll do is I'll take it inside I'll get onto the the tread M the YMCA put up my incline and just do a steady state or intervals just based upon how I feel but my point is I try to hit at least 8,000 steps every single day I try to strength train three days a week Monday Wednesday Friday to make sure that I have enough time in between to recover before I come back I do a split routine workout we can talk about that in a different video there's basically an unlimited amount of weight training routines that you can do but the idea is to find something that you feel like is interesting to you that you'll actually do and most importantly that you're getting stronger with so I will literally write down every weight every rep because what I want to try to do is make sure that my weight training is Progressive which means if I'm doing 10 reps today maybe hopefully a week from now or two weeks from now I'm more like 12 or 15 reps or I've increased the weights a little bit now be honest after 50 it is a lot harder to build strength however it can be done we are not in the maintenance phase I tell my clients look if you're 80 sure we can be more so in a maintenance phase especially if you've been working out for long periods of time but otherwise we want to keep striving to get stronger and build as much muscle mess as we can especially as we get into those last few Decades of our life I learned the lesson about no days off in a hard way so as you know if you've the channel my parents live in India so I go back every year to go and see my parents and spend usually a few weeks there so last year Elizabeth and I went back and we spent about two weeks there and I came back and it took me a month to get back to the weights that I was using before I left and during those two weeks granted I didn't really do anything exercise-- wise I mean I did a little bit of walking but it was mainly visiting with my parents and family and friends but now it's a wakeup call for me because it was really pretty disheartening that it took took me a month to get back up to the weights that I was now remember I'm pretty skinny I don't have a lot of muscle mass anyway so whatever muscle mass I did have I lost a fair amount of it because it took me a full month to get back so the lesson that I've learned is that when I go back again next year is that at least twice a week I'm going to do something and the goal is is that when you're on vacation for even a week or two you're not going to necessarily build strength during that time but you don't want to lose that much so even twice a week where you're hitting your entire body should help to maintain the strength levels that you have so it might mean bringing a band with you it could mean just doing some push-ups some body weight squats maybe with a carry-on luggage in your hand if you need more weight but the goal is so that you don't lose the strength gains that you've worked so hard to get the third rule I have is I try to have my blood work done every 6 to 8 months now I do go see my doctor for my annual physical but I'll be honest it might be once every 2 years unless I'm sick of course but luckily I take care of myself and I feel pretty good but if there's a need I'll go but otherwise for my annual physical I kind of go every two years but I do want to know what's going on under the hood because I have heart disease in my family now unfortunately cardiovascular disease is the number one killer for both men and women and even though I don't have the obvious risk factors I'm not overweight I don't smoke my blood pressure is in the normal range there still could be some things going on and for me it's my LDL levels so what I try to do is I might make an exercise change or a dietary change and then I'm going to give it six to eight months to see if it moves the needle in the right direction because remember LDL levels are strongly correlated with cardiovascular risk so if you look at the American Heart Association they like your ldls levels to be about 100 or less however if you look at the literature there is a significant reduction in your risk of cardiovascular disease proportionately as to the lower your LDL levels get so for me I'm going still going to try to do everything I can from a lifestyle standpoint to get that LDL to come down but if I still can't get it down much further than a 100 I may talk to my doctor about possibly going on statins or some other medication just because of the family history that I have of cardiovascular disease another test that I'm going to be taking soon is called the CAC coronary artery calcification test and it's going to give me an idea of the amount of plaque buildup or calcium deposits in my coronary artery and so having a CAC test done and the appropriate score can also be another factor in figuring out whether or not you need to be on medications to lower St levels or it might be a wakeup call to look at your overall health and fitness routine I'll post another video after I do have the CAC and go over my results and I'll be pretty transparent and let you know what I'm going to do with those results the fourth thing I try to do is try to prioritize sleep now I'm sure you've read and heard about the importance of sleep and so I really try to dial in my sleep routine I kind of do well between 7 to 8 hours of sleep and what I try to do is have my room be as dark as possible but we do have ambient light that comes in so I'll wear wear an eye cover to make it as black as I can in the room and what I've been doing lately is taping my mouth shut to kind of force me to breathe in and out of my nose I feel like that gives me a better quality of sleep and there's a fair amount of research that supports that nasal breathing can improve the quality of your sleep the fifth rule I live by is I really try to not miss my strength training workout I talked a little bit about this earlier on but ideally we are all working out at least three times a week hitting all of our major muscle groups now I'll tell my clients look if you want to give me twice a week that's about the minimum but as we get older like we talked about it's harder to build muscle mass people know about osteopenia which is softening of the bone but we often times don't realize that our muscles are also getting a little bit softer and if you don't use it you lose it one of the biggest reasons why people end up in a nursing home or a nursing facility is because of a lack of balance and falling while they're at home and a big part of that is a loss of strength I've got some senior clients who are 70s 80s and they can't get themselves up off the floor they just don't have the strength to do it they have the mobility they just don't have the strength to do it and so strength training must be a priority at least two to three times per week with good intensity which means the last few repetitions of every set are a little bit challenging to get the last rule that I try to live by is prioritizing protein now protein is required for tissue repair muscle building and a lot of times we don't get the level of protein that we need so a place that I try to start with my clients and I try to do it myself is 7 gram per pound of body weight so I weigh approximately 175 180 so I try to get right around 125 to 130 g of protein a day ideally we're getting all of our protein from food but I know that I can't get 120 to 130 grams of protein through my food every day because I'm just not all that hungry so what I do is I take a protein shake every day I put two scoops of protein in there each scoop of protein is about 20 g of protein so that gives me 40 g of protein right there and then I try to make sure that every meal that I do eat prioritizes protein now I would like to know what your Ro rules for health are down below so please leave a comment uh maybe you've got some rules that I can learn from as well too my rules are subject to change as my life goes on and as I learn more but thank you for watching make sure you hit like And subscribe if you found the video helpful and I will see you at the next video take care