Muscle, Part I

Scratching the surface of How + Why Having a Muscled Body Impacts our Emotional + Mental Health

What Muscle Actually Does for Us

Well, to start, muscle moves us + keeps us going. There are 3 types of muscle:

• skeletal muscle (connected to bones with tendons)

• cardiac (contracts to pump blood)

• smooth (involuntary movements, inside stomach, intestines, bladder and uterus)

Skeletal Muscle is the only organ you have voluntary control over. You can build it, strengthen it or protect it at any age. The earlier you start, the better. The strength we build today, is the investment for tomorrow and your long-term quality of life. It is a critical determinant of survival + longevity. The importance of regular physical activity to prevent and treat chronic and degenerative diseases is widely accepted. This does not only include metabolic diseases such as type 2 diabetes and morbid obesity but most if not all widespread and common diseases of the increasingly aging society worldwide. There is growing evidence that regularly performed exercise is a powerful therapy against the progression of cardiovascular diseases, cancer, neurodegenerative diseases, psychiatric disorders, and chronic pulmonary diseases (Pedersen and Saltin 2015).

Stimulating muscle growth with strength training creates a cascade of hormones that initiate mental, emotional — and then physical— gains.

Myokines are powerful hormones that get released when we contract skeletal muscle. When they travel through your body, they affect brain function, mood, balance inflammation and even support immunity. Think about how you feel when you begin a workout kinda glum/ho-hum but end up feeling great. That’s a small part of the hormonal cascade at-work. Now consider that can happen in just one workout. What happens when you do that, with consistency, for 6 months, 2 years, 5 years? It becomes exponential growth in all areas of your functioning, but where we see it manifest is in your conscious mindbody: You become a new person over and over again.

Movement gives you energy. Per research, core muscles in-particular, stimulate a powerful neuro-motor feedback loop between brain-body. When we work “the Core” it initiates an adrenaline release, which activates receptors on your vagus nerve (the longest cranial nerve in the body, which connects the gut-brain) which in turn excites brain areas that release norepinephrine. This hormone is typically responsible for alertness during stress-states or danger. When levels are too high, it can cause panic attacks/anxiety, but when we engage in this kind of neural feedback loop with ‘safety’, like strength training, it allows for: increased energy, mental alertness, improved memory and can lower blood pressure. I call this the ‘practice loop’. When we work this feedback loop with consistent training, we create stronger movement patterns in all areas: emotional, mental, physical.

A lot of very smart people call Muscle an endocrine organ…and while it hasn’t always been categorized this way, it most-definitely makes/facilitates optimal hormonal function.

WITH a muscled body (which is the biological design), we can begin to harness our body’s optimal hormonal health. With that, we get:

• Growth and development: regulates growth and development from conception to old age. 

• Metabolism: regulates metabolism and blood sugar levels. 

• Reproduction: regulates the reproductive system (and into our aging reproductive systems. hello, peri thru post menopause…) 

• Energy levels: regulates energy levels. 

• Response to stress: regulates the body's response to stress, injury, and mood. 

When we chase muscle growth, with laser-focus, we eventually create the body we want. We create the emotional + mental set points to stay disciplined + consistent, which gives us the increased positive feedback loops to initiate even more dedication to the process. Again, eventually we are a completely different person or version of ourselves over + over, forever.

When we lack muscle-mass, we create a condition of dis-ease.

We are hard-wired to move in our environment for survival, connection + stimulation. Though, we don’t move around like we used to. Our modern lives rob us of our need to move. Whether that be convenience items like chairs, phones, computers, cars, etc., we don’t have to move. Our communities are spread out and we often can’t walk to get our basic needs, so we have to drive. For a long time, and I’m afraid for many of us still, we’re trying not to move. We value our lives of ease and product culture sells us the convenience living we’ve grown accustomed to. Many aspects of our work lives are sedentary…and on + on.

So then, we find ourselves living within negative neural feedback loops. Isolation, disconnection, fatigue, high stress, unprocessed emotions that sit in our stagnant, disconnected bodies. This is the language (and pathology) of many of our modern Metabolic dis-eases:

• inflammation

• depression/anxiety

• tension/chronic pain

• headaches

• hypertension

• diabetes

• cancer

• Alzheimer’s/early-onset dimentia

The very act of creating muscle/strength is the recipe for creating emotional resilience + mental clarity. This state is one in-which we cause with regular effort. Once the feedback loops and hormonal cascade gets going, with regular frequency, it becomes the body chemistry of resilience + adaptation. We adapt quicker, we adjust to stress better, we literally make better connections within, which allows for better connections in our external world. We are acting in alignment of our biological design when we move. And when we do this, positive outcomes happen for our mental/emotional health.

Muscle, Part II describes the simple (I didn’t say ‘easy’) formula for building strength/muscle.