Hello, health enthusiasts, and welcome to Rev Up Health, your go-to podcast for all things wellness. I'm Dr. Mark Hechler, and I'm Tandi Hechler. Together we're here to fuel your health journey with the best of functional medicine and holistic well-being. Each episode, we'll dive deep into topics that matter to your health, bringing you the latest insights, research, and inspiring stories. Whether you're on a quest for vibrant health or just looking for daily health tips, we've got you covered. So let's embark on this journey together and transform the way you live. So, Tandi, what's on our wellness radar for today?
Hello, and welcome to today's podcast. Today we're going to be talking about what we wish we'd started doing earlier — what we wish we could have done a little bit differently, knowing now what we know about the way things progress.
All this to say: in this kind of conversation, sometimes people can feel a little down on themselves for what they didn't do. The truth is, everyone has their own journey, and so many of the things we do and how we get to where we are, we were meant to do that way for our process. So this isn't to talk about it in a light of regret or anything like that — just knowing now the things we do, what do we wish we would have taken a little action on sooner?
Everybody has something to look forward to or look back on. Nobody's perfect. Every adult, kid, or young adult out there knows there are things they maybe shouldn't have done, or a habit they should have had. So that's certainly where we're going today, and I think everybody can partake in this in some way.
The Backdrop: The Natural Progression of Aging
Let's start from the beginning. There are several little pillars we came up with — "this is something I maybe didn't do well enough, or didn't put much emphasis on." A lot of this is geared toward the natural progression of aging, which starts around 25 to 30 years old and slowly declines. So what can we do to offset that decline, or slow the decline — maybe that's a better way of saying it.
Exercise: Build Muscle Early
Top of the list is exercise. What would you have done differently when you were younger, knowing that now "I can't go up a flight of steps very well," or "I get winded going up an incline or walking up a hill," or "I can't keep up with others in my social group"? It's never too late. My first thing that I wish I had done differently with exercise in mind is that I wish I would have focused on building muscle mass. It's easier to do then, and even though it's a little harder now at age 46, it's not impossible — it's just going to take a little more effort.
I wish I would have worked more on muscle, especially — I think it's more important for females. It's certainly important for men, but women are quite a bit more disadvantaged if they don't put forth a lot more effort than a man does for building muscle. Males have higher testosterone levels; physiologically, it's just easier for a man to be stronger. And that gets to be important for females, especially when we get to be older, because we're having sarcopenia, which is a lowering of our muscle tone — muscle wasting. Now females are going to be weaker when they go out for a walk or go downstairs, and if you've got a situation where you have problems with osteopenia or osteoporosis — thinning of the bone — now you're going to have trouble with fractures, hips, shoulders, and things of that nature.
It's important to know that sarcopenia affects both men and women. You're going to see anywhere between a 1 and 3% decline per year of muscle, and whatever you can do to build up your bank of muscle leading into older age will help offset the disabilities and weakness that come into play. If I could go back and tell my 25-year-old self, I would say: build muscle. You've got to build muscle, you've got to do the resistance training — there are ways to do it. And there's also the nutrition that goes along with building muscle, obviously protein and amino acids, which we cover on other podcasts. This is more of a broad overview today.
So what would you do differently, or what information would you take, for exercise? I was always pretty active and enjoyed running. I think it's also a little easier for men to be more of that competitive nature, to an extent — I realize that's being very sexist, but all the little boys like to run around and chase the girls, of course, and be competitive. And yes, I'm from a different age group than now, so it has changed from when I was a little kiddo.
In a nutshell, what I would have done differently personally: I would have been more attuned to cardiovascular improvements. Going through life, I knew my family history of heart disease — I knew my parents had heart disease, so when they started having problems, I knew, "Okay, genetically speaking, I'm probably going to be looking at some of that too." So I tried to be more cardiovascular-conscious. It made me a little more aware, but I didn't start it early enough. How old were you when your parents started having issues with heart disease? I was probably around 40 when that started to happen. And I didn't run my first marathon until I was probably 45 or something like that. But at least I started getting more active, and started learning: "Oh, I've got to be running more, I've got to do something to improve cardiovascular health" — VO2 max, as we talk about nowadays.
Muscle strength is certainly something I wish I would have been more attuned to as well. People think about muscle strength as more of a hypertrophy, cosmetic aesthetics thing — "do I need to have big biceps, big pecs?" — whereas it really needs to be more toward muscles for stability, strength, and prevention of trauma and falls. Those big muscle groups are important to try to make as big as you can going into adulthood, knowing that you're going to lose them.
Nutrition: Fuel, Not Diet
Okay, so that ties off exercise. Next thing is nutrition. I'll start that one, because you just said the word — diet. I know, diet is not nutrition. Diets don't exist; nutrition is a better way — lifestyle nutrition. A better lifestyle, based around what nutrition you can do to help fuel your body. And Skittles, Hot Tamales, Mountain Dew, and Coke is not the thing. Yes, when I first started running marathons, my go-to after a marathon was a Cherry Coke. I have no idea why, but I think it just kind of replenished what my body needed, which was sodium and sugar, which I'd just gotten through burning a lot of. It's just not necessary, and it's not really what you should be doing. So I would have stayed away from the alcohol, the sodas, the candies, and even the highly overprocessed, devoid-of-nutrition ultra-processed foods that are out there.
As far as nutrition goes, I feel like I was kidding myself a little bit. I've known bits and pieces of good nutrition for a long time — that's always been on my mind. In fact, I can remember when I had little kids, my family would make fun of me because I would buy organic or natural. Now granted, most of those things may have been organic or natural, but they were still ultra-processed, or whatever. What I wish I would have known early is to start to instill that in my kids when they were young, so they wouldn't have to fight the habit of grabbing the bag of Cheetos on the way out, or having a snack that's nutritionally not necessary.
As a parent, you think, "Oh, it's a treat, it's not the end of the world, they're young, it doesn't matter." Now, looking back, I can say it probably really did matter. The good thing is that our body is always in a process, so even though we were doing those things, we have an opportunity to become new every turn — to turn it around. I've obviously been guilty of the convenience of processed foods and snacks, eating the wrong things for breakfast, or eating too late at night, eating the wrong stuff at night. It's something you just need to be aware of — what you fuel your body with is what performance you're going to get out of it.
Once you start getting in tune with your body again — because I think this is a big issue we face today, we kind of discount that intuition and aren't listening to our bodies like we really should — your body tells you when you do those things, almost immediately, or the next morning you're like, "Yeah, I don't feel good," and it probably has to do with how I fueled my body yesterday.
Sleep: A Vital, Underrated Pillar
One thing to think about takes me into the next topic, which is sleep. At nighttime, you have that glass of wine at dinner, or that cocktail — but you have to think about it: do I want to sleep, or do I want to drink? It's a trade-off; you can't do both. Your sleep is going to suffer when you drink alcohol, and sleep is a big thing.
I know myself, back in undergrad, medical school, and even the first couple of years in practice and residency — it's all there, the lack of sleep and trying to perform the next day is not something that's going to happen very well. Sleep is a vital, important part of your body trying to heal and repair and take care of the things you did bad for it the day before.
So how has your sleep changed now, and is there a time you noticed that sleep was as important as it is? I didn't realize how important it really was. I would always get sleepy after dinner, sitting on the couch, maybe even take a 15- or 30-minute nap, and boom, wake up ready to go again. And then what would I do? I'd go out and get something done, and have to forcibly make myself go to bed at 11 or 12 at night and be ready to go the next morning. It just doesn't happen that well, and you can feel it — the fatigue the next day, sleepy, sluggish. Now I try to make it a point to get to bed and get some sleep, knowing the next day is going to come.
I can tell when I've had several days of not sleeping well, and traveling is a key time that really disrupts sleep — changing time zones, boy, does that mess up your circadian rhythm. When we first traveled together a lot, we would power through — leave as soon as we could and come back as late as we could, just to get in bed and then wake up and go to work the next day. Slowly, we transitioned to having a day of rest when we got back, because it was so taxing. You have to be really mindful of that and recognize that working into this travel is some downtime and recovery — you need recovery from travel.
You've got to work that into a schedule, and that goes for all the things you pack into a trip, which is hard, because you're going on vacation, taking time away, experiencing a new place, and trying to cram all of these things into a short amount of time. Not to mention you're already under stress, your sleep is disrupted, and now your nutrition is upset too — it all gets disrupted, a trickle-down effect. It's interesting, though — we just traveled to the West Coast, in Washington, and we went to bed between 7 and 8 both nights we were there, because that was our bedtime; we had to get a certain amount of sleep, because we had to get up at 3:00 a.m. to either catch a flight or get to the race. I feel way better once I've gotten sleep the night before a race, but it isn't that long ago that we would have powered through and stayed up to do more activities to experience a new place.
Screens and Their Ripple Effects
Moving on to another topic — how much of a difference has screen exposure, with cell phones and internet, made for today's population? Me growing up without cell phones and internet was different than it is today. Screen time has changed kids' physical activity to an extent — we're not as physically active; you're not out playing until the streetlights come on and then coming home. I can't imagine growing up with a cell phone in my pocket nowadays as a child.
That is a big topic of discussion, and I don't know that I have the answers — but everybody's got an opinion. I was just talking with my youngest daughter the other day; she babysits a lot, so she gets to experience how different parents parent their kids around screen time. Some parents have a very strict "this is the amount of screen time you get, and that's it," and other parents don't, and the reasoning behind not restricting it is, "If I don't restrict it, then maybe they don't want it as much." It is becoming increasingly difficult. They're on their phones, so they're not getting sleep, and then they're also having problems with social interaction — maybe they've got some mood changes, they're a little snappy the next day. It's a trickle-down thing.
It's kind of a running joke in the family that I used to watch a lot of TV. I would get so sucked in, and the girls would try to talk to me and I'm just completely gone, sucked into this TV show. So I don't watch much TV anymore for that reason, because it still happens — if I sit down and get into something, I can just be gone. And having a TV in the bedroom for years, watching TV before you go to bed as a way to slow down — it's just not a good idea, especially if you get into a good show, then it's all over. I will say too, I struggle with social media and my phone — that's something I can get sucked into pretty easily.
The other thing about screens and being always available or "on" — I've trained my kids to expect an answer from me pretty quickly, and if they don't get it, then there's frustration and they move on to others to find me. That moves into the next topic of social interaction. Screens lead into social issues. In the old days, you had a better social environment; maybe now it's more, "I can just sit over in the corner and work on my phone, and I don't really have to interact." So there are interaction differences, whether it be going out for job interviews or waiting in line at a restaurant, and that all leads into some mental frustration for people. We actually just ran into someone at the airport who was organizing a social dance — those are things they used to do all the time to get people together, having fun and interacting.
Keeping all this in mind, what would I have done differently? I grew up in a different time than we do now, but I try to limit my social screen time — it's a "do not disturb" at certain times, and that's it. I'm not going to stay awake at nighttime waiting for the next Instagram update or somebody to text me. So I would be different in that respect.
The Financial Piece
As we go through these things — exercise, diet — it leads to: what do we want to do? We all want to live longer, live healthier, and have a better health span to be more functional later in life. Then there's the financial part of that. If you're living healthy longer, you're going to need more money saved for that. Savings, and more financial education — unfortunately, a lot of folks don't get that. In medical school, you don't get any business information; you learn all health-related stuff. But these days, if you're going to live longer, you're going to have to have more funds available, so we're going to have to be a little smarter.
What would I have done? I would have saved more money, more consistently. The problem is that a lot of folks live check to check, or think, "I really want this thing, so I'm going to work here extra so I can pay for that," and then when that gets bought, there's always something to replace it. It's hard to live within your means — you live at the speed of money, so to speak.
Mark and I have different experiences from our previous lives before each other, but I was a stay-at-home mom for a lot of years, so I didn't even start until my late 20s working at a place that had a 401(k) to start putting money away. We tried to instill in our kids that saving a certain percentage — you can come up with whatever percentage you want, but when you make this amount of money, some percentage is going into savings. That's not easy — sometimes you have to draw out of that savings, but hey, at least you had the savings to draw on if some type of emergency comes up.
It is very easy to go backwards — if you get a raise, don't take the whole raise, just take half the raise for yourself. It's a lot easier to just pretend like you still don't have that money and keep putting it away.
Preparing the Next Generation
What we can do for our own children — maybe this is something we should have done a little better job at. Now that we know all these items — the importance of exercise and muscle synthesis, improvement in nutrition and eating the right stuff, and getting sleep — we kind of have to prepare our own children for these future problems they may see when they get older.
Looking back, we're modeling behavior now, and it's a lot different than the behavior there was 10 years ago. The earlier you can model those things for your kids, the better. And maybe you don't have kids — maybe you model them for your spouse, significant other, partner, or your parents. I hope that just creates a little curiosity and folks get a little more interested in "what can I do, what have I done differently, and what can I have my children, parents, or friends know?" It's okay to share information.
It's Never Too Late
Ultimately, it comes down to this: it's never too late. So just get started — get started at any age. Some of us start later than others, and that's okay.
We hope you all enjoyed our Rev Up Health podcast for the day. We hope everybody got a little information out of what we brought to you, and that it stirs a little interest and creates your own conversations — think about what you can do differently, and what you've done differently. We hope you all have a healthy day.
Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Rev Up Health. We hope you're leaving with some valuable insights to supercharge your health journey. Don't forget to follow or subscribe to Rev Up Health wherever you listen to your podcasts, and if you enjoyed today's episode, please leave us a rating and review. Have a topic you want us to explore? Reach out to us on our social media channels — we love hearing from our wellness community. Until next time, keep thriving, and remember: your journey to health is a journey to a better you. Stay well, and we'll connect with you again soon. This is Tandi, and this is Dr. Mark, signing off from Rev Up Health. Take care.
The information provided in this podcast is for educational purposes only and is not intended as medical advice. The content is designed to support, not replace, the relationship that exists between a patient and their healthcare provider. Always consult with a qualified healthcare professional before making any changes to your healthcare regimen, including diet, exercise, or treatment plans. The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are those of the hosts and guests and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Revelation Health and Wellbeing.