Dr Michael Mosley has been sharing health tips with the UK public since the 1980s. Now the TV doctor has revealed the one thing that we can all do at home that has a never ending list of benefits.
Do you want to live longer, reverse ageing, lose weight, boost your metabolism and brain function? The answer to all these things could lie in weight training. On his BBC Sounds podcast, Just One Thing, Dr Mosely shared that recent evidence suggests that doing muscle-strengthening exercises for only a few minutes a day can "confer some remarkable health benefits", including help you live longer.
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He said: "An American study found that muscle mass is one of the strongest predictors of longevity, even more than weight or body mass index. Researchers followed 3,600 men and women over the age of 50 for a decade they found that those who had more muscle mass were at a lower risk of death from all causes."
He said muscle training can also benefit your metabolism, waistline and reduce your blood sugar levels, and some evidence suggests it even reverses ageing. Dr Mosley added: "Strength training may even reverse ageing at a cellular level. In one small but fascinating study, scientists asked 14 older people to do strength training twice a week for six months and then compared their muscles to that of younger adults. They looked at the parts of the muscle cells that generate energy, the mitochondria. Normally these wane with age but the older adults who had been doing strength training boosted their mitochondria levels similar to those seen in younger men and women."
Speaking to one listener on the podcast, Dr Mosley advised her to do three simple exercises using household objects, doing three sets of ten every day of the week, as follows:
- a bicep curl using a large bottle of milk
- calf raises by pushing yourself onto your tipy toes using a counter top
- weighted squats by filling a backpack with books.
He spoke to one expert, Dr Teresa Liu-Ambrose at the University of British Columbia, who described how one study showed that weight training can improve your memory as well as your more complex cognitive abilities such as decision-making. Dr Mosley described it as having "remarkable health benefits."
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