TMGP Ep 16 with Orthopedic Surgeon and Researcher Dr Vonda Wright

oo another white boy with a podcast pronouns Jim brro another white boy with a podcast you want to see the video it went viral hi Gaines gurus and welcome to tmgp the muscle growth podcast episode 16 I am your host Rosco and today we are welcoming Dr Vite onto the show Dr Vite is a double boarded Fellowship trained orthopedic surgeon and internationally recog I Authority on active aging and Mobility Dr W's practice focuses on minimally invasive surgery for hip preservation shoulder and knee reconstruction cartilage restoration orthobiologics and the latest in injury prevention and performance optimization Dr Wright is the founding director of the performance and research Initiative for Master's athletes Prima and her p ering research in mobility and muscular skeletal aging is changing the way we View and treat the aging process in today's episode we can look forward to insights from Dr Wright related to muscular skeletal Health how we can age better life expectancy vers Health expectancy Vitality in older age groups the importance of lifting heavy weights and how to flatten the glucose curve and eliminate sugar spikes hey gains gurus before we dive into today's episode we have a special shout out to our sponsor heart and mind sa if you're looking for a delicious way to boost your workouts their creatine gummies are the perfect fit they're not just effective but also a tasty treat you can look forward to every day so fuel your gains with heart and mind sa say where your heart mind and muscles come together now let's get back to building muscle with science welcome Dr vonder right to the muscle growth podcast where we explore subjects related to muscle science and hypertrophy I'm thrilled to have you join us for today's conversation let's Jump Right In and dig into some exciting topics together sure can you briefly introduce yourself and your journey into the world of orthopedic surgery as well as muscle longevity so um I am a board certified Orthopedic sport surgeon meaning that after my uh Orthopedic residency I did an extra year at the hospital for special surgery in New York in sports and shoulder so that by and large means that my surgery is arthroscopic through tiny tiny apertures we do very big surgery in fact you're a tech guy it may interest you to know that now when I do many surgeries on the knee I don't make incisions at all because we're doing it through needles imagine doing big procedur through needles so it's called nanotechnology it's very exciting and the other thing I do from an innovation standpoint is use a lot of what we call orthobiologics which is harnessing the power of your own body and growth factors to heal itself so um I still practice I see patients I do surgery every week but as an academic surgeon which I was for 20 25 years at the University of Pittsburgh my research has always been in musculoskeletal aging and even uh in a stem cell lab where we looked at what are now called satellite cells which are all the rage but historically were called muscle derived stem cells really looking at how how we can make them behave but also rejuvenate them wow and you you've just listed so many Fantastic topics I I don't know where to start let's let's start on like you said stem cells are are quite theave right now how do you what's your process for rejuvenating them so I'm going to tell you about a study that we did so many years ago which is uh kind of funny to Envision so muscle deres there are stem cells all over our body so for those of you not in stem cell science stem cell just m basically means that a cell retains the capacity to become multiple other functioning adult cells there's four four destinations of cells in your body they're the stem cells which can become anything those stem cells are stimulated in their micro environment to become adult cells that do a job like a muscle or your bones or your brain that those are the differentiated adult cells those adult cells do their functions they're churning out proteins when they're done those adult cells then program themselves to die it's called apotosis those are the three normal Destin of cells there's an abnormal destination of cells called sence or zombie cells they're neither living nor dead they're just circulating secreting all kinds of harmful cyto kindes so going back to stem cells in the lab where I was at University of Pittsburgh our particular stem cell line came from muscle and in working with it we found that we could stimulate those muscle deriv stem cells to become bones and cartilage to become nerve we could really push it in any direction but as we were studying them we wanted to see could we modify their behavior because what we know happens as stem cells age with aging of the organism they become less able to be plastic so this experiment we did first in mice and then in people is we took these little old lady mice little old lady mice are 2 years old imagine they're so old they're sitting around in their cages just waiting for us to drop more Mouse food um and we took them and we biopsied their little thigh muscles and we pulled out their their satellite cells their muscle stem cells and we saw what was going on well number one instead of being round and plump like a grape they were all spindly and shriveled up like a raisin number two they were no longer producing growth factors and number three they actually programm themselves to death then we took these little old lady mice and we put them on Mouse treadmills because yes there actually are treadmills for mice and mice don't want to run on a treadmill any more than people want to run on a treadmill so we encouraged them and twice a day for two weeks they ran on these treadmills and then we resampled their stem cells and do you know what we found we found that the cells were once again plump they were once again pouring out growth factor and they had turned off the pathways to death showing that something as simple as skeletal muscle contraction can rejuvenate stem cells so it's a very hopeful message and so that was replicated in humans and and we've used that information in a variety of ways but what's interesting you know that led to questions about well why Why by simple exercise can we rejuvenate stem cells well we know a few things we know that we know that a simple bout of exercise a different study not this the same study stimulates the transduction of 9800 genes so it's not you're just not getting a sweat up you're actually changing your very genetic expression so you know the Fountain of Youth is literally activity and Mobility um the second thing we know and as we are asking why um we can rejuvenate stem cells why we can positively impact aging and Longevity we started looking at this protein called clo clo has been around for 30 years it was first described in the journal Nature and it is described as the longevity protein meaning that almost every organ system has receptors for clo and if an organism like a mouse cannot produce CL though they die old very young so maybe they're a few months old but they die old because they don't have the longevity protein clo while we started measuring levels of clo and different uh kinds of people and what we found is that chronic exercisers meaning people who were Contracting their skeletal muscle every single day had higher levels of longevity protein than say s AR people who are much younger so I think the whole message of this long tie raid that I've just got on to your simple question about stem cells is that we really can change the trajectory of our health and Life by the activity we do every day we're designed like this and so what's abnormal is sitting around mobility and activity is the norm that we're designed for I mean think about it when you're in the gym doing your hypertrophy workouts where are the biggest muscle in our body body they're below our belly button if we were meant to be sedentary if sedentary was the norm we'd be sessile like a mushroom with a big broad base right but we're not our biggest muscles are below our waists so it just you know if in nature form follows function we're designed to move there's no question I love that um designed to move I think that's fantastic and I hope that everyone listening gets moving every single day what you mentioned about um the simple question in stem cells I'm not sure if there's such a thing as a simple question about stem cells since it's such a complicated topic as you as you've demonstrated now um so is CL though that um protein the same one in humans as in mice yes it's the same protein uhhuh okay and you know it's really exciting that you can just contract biceps curls is giving you longevity Protein that's fantastic that's all the more reason to work out right that's right with regard to those growth factors is that uh please I don't have any background in biology so please excuse that is that igf1 growth factor and human growth hormone or these completely different growth factors you mean clo no no no no the um growth factors that you mentioned or is that the Clow yeah a wide variety muscles secrete a wide variety of myocin if you will uh they're very they're almost an endocrine organ so there's multiple ones that they is is that does that include igf-1 or is that something completely different uh I I don't know that answer for sure it's not growth hormone growth hormone brain okay but that's also something quite related to longevity am I right growth hormone yeah or not really I don't know I don't know okay yeah okay so stem cells are the ones that we want to to keep going it's very interesting do you is it the same in uh people if they don't have the cloth um protein that they will also Die Young or die of old age young you know in people there's a disease called preferia I'm probably mispronouncing it but I don't think it's the same mechanism we genetically engineer these mice to not be able to produce cloo so I don't think we've done that in people okay hope hopefully not yet yeah so in terms of the stem cell treatment was that just is is there any like injecting stem cells or is that just treatment through exercise well there there are stem cell treatments but what I was talking about a way to rejuvenate your stem cells is purely through exercise in our studies but uh but in my clinical practice it we are capable of injecting mesenchimal derived stem cells which are stem cells that come out of the all of our blood is made in our pelvic bones and long bones and we get mesenchimal stem cells from that Source we can also get stem cells a high level of quality stem cells from our fat tissue believe it or not so we know there have been great studies that show that using adapost tissue stem cells and mesenchimal stem cells we can actually treat arthritis so that's something that is getting more and more uh clinical applicability that's very exciting that we're coming up with um things to treat arthritis and such yeah very cool and used to mention that we could stimulate the stem cells and push them in in certain directions is that in terms of pushing them to become muscle tissue or or bone or other things and then also you mentioned that we can modify the behavior of stem cells is that is that the same thing with the pushing them in the direction or is that modifying them after they've been pushed in a direction to be something completely different well yes and yes so in the body we have a reserve of stem cells that are capable of becoming anything and and so what pushes them into a certain direction is their micro environment where they're living what what uh proteins they're seeing um from their environment in a laboratory we add those proteins to their micro environment for instance if I took muscle Drive stem cells my my particular work was pushing them into bone seeing if I could augment bone healing by adding stem cells and something called uh uh bmp4 bone bone morphogenic protein 4 and we could push these muscle stem cells into becoming bone but in the laboratory is very different than our bodies our bodies are very fine-tuned it knows what it's doing so we're not currently in body stem cells pushing it to become other things was that in um mice and rat uh studies obviously not in humans yeah in the laboratory it was in in Mouse studies okay yeah okay cool just while while we're on the topic of the stem cells I just want to get a not a nice topic uh out of the way um the sedentary lifestyle can how well correlated or linked is that to cancer oh there was a recent study being sedentary or said oppositely being active there are many studies that draw correlation between uh sedentary living in cancer development but it's not directly related to oh like I just said you contract your skeletal muscle you produce clo blah blah blah the cancer risk is thought to be related to adapost tissue load so if we sit around because fat is a noxious metabolic organ it's just not hanging off in inconvenient locations it's an organ it's and it causes huge levels of inflammation one of the primary drivers of cancer is inflammation and so that's the correlation between exercise and cancer but if the next question I just was asked this question if the next question is so how much exercise do you have to do to prevent cancer we don't have dose response curves like that we have observations that people with sedentary Lifestyles higher fat concentrations have higher level of cancers even things like breast cancer in women I mean you know one of the most talked about cancers or colon canc cancer also but the the question I just had a little while ago was there are eight more cancers that are thought to decrease with increased activity levels the only cancer that is thought to increase with increased activity you know positive correlation is melanoma because we most of us exercise outside right so but I wouldn't use that as an excuse for stopping exercise that that makes a lot of sense I guess or just go to a gy that's in side or where your sun block that kind of thing I guess e easy to prevent or don't go during the the um High Sun hours of the day exactly yes exactly um there was something else I wanted to mention oh in terms of the uh you mentioned the inflammation is that chronic inflammation that causes cancer not so much localized uh inflammation like from a workout for example really really good question right because inflammation is normal it's our bod's amazing design to heal itself and it's you know it's characterized by hot swelling soreness sometimes if you do too much decrease function but as the body increases acute inflammation and releases all the cyto kindes the chemicals that are used to start the healing process it's then supposed to decline pretty rapidly right chronic inflammation is when you continually secrete all the noxious cyto kindes that are meant to heal ourselves and it becomes chronic overload that kind of inflammation is what leads to disease so good distinction acute is designed we're amazingly designed to have inflammation it's when it can perpetuates for long periods brilliant thank you for clarifying that let's chat about uh Prima or the performance and research institute for mature athletes is that your Institute yes so in uh 2004 I collaborated with scientists and exercise physiologists at the University of Pittsburgh to put Prima together and for the purpose of really changing the way we age in this country and frankly around the world really disputing the myth I know you don't believe this but many people believe that aging is just this inevitable decline from the Vitality of Youth like you right down some slippery slope to Frailty and that there's nothing we can do about it and I've never believed that so I I knew the fitness people knew that this myth was false but the general public did not so I was out to do the studies that proved that we could be healthy vital active joyful long into the foreseeable future so we started studying Master's athletes because part of where we get the idea that aging is an inevitable decline is from doing population studies so we take a population of people we do something to them experimentally or we just watch what happens over 10 years and we make conclusions well when we do population studies what do we know about the population well I don't know the stats in South Africa but the stats in the United States are that 70% of people do no form of exercise any day of the week so if we do population studies we are learning what happens to us when we sit around right I've never believed that that was our destiny so I started studying Master's athletes who take sedentary living out of the equation so that we can truly see what happens when we age actively and so we did a lot of studies but in summary we found that we do not significantly slow down until our mid 70s so stop with all the over the- hill birthday cards when you turn 50 it's not true you haven't gotten any yet but that's what happens your friends will start sending you these rest in peace birthday cards because clearly I know so stupid so we do not significantly slow down until we're in our mid-70s number one the first study we put out there number two can we retain our lean muscle mass well this study my friend has become iconic all the fitness people have downloaded the picture from the internet of the three slices of of quads right I'm sure you've seen it The 40-Year-Old triathlete the sedentary person the 74y oldold tri aete that study proved that with daily exercise and those my my people are mostly Runners and triathletes that you can retain your muscle mass so we can retain our our performance we can retain our muscle mass two studies then went on to show that we can retain our bone density another study which took us five years to do showed that we can retain executive function in our brain and then the final study in the group that we did was looking at this protein cloo so those are some of the primary studies that our research group uh Prima uh put out to dispel the myth that aging is an inevitable decline the other thing we did that really changed people's lives was we did these programs called start so we took people off the couch they hadn't exercised in years they had 51% body fat and we I know I know it's pretty common and then we put them through just recreational exercise doing circuit training and at the end of three months we all did a race together a race walk walk 3.2 miles and not only did it get them in better shape sometimes it decreased their chronic disease load but most importantly it gave them hope for the future that they didn't have to die this inevitable decline it was beautiful that is beautiful and I love I love to hear about ini like that and I hope that we can uh translate some of those initiatives to South Africa I think it's definitely necessary and needed um if we can get our government uh expenditure correct which is that's another far-fetched idea but anyway that's really cool and I'm so glad to hear about those kind of initiatives and that kind of research it's it's phenomenal you know what Rosco the thing is uh people paid for those classes they were so interested in heing they weren't government funded at all it just takes clever like you no it takes clever people like you to that's why I was asking you do you do you intersect your computer brain with Fitness I mean this would be a great application for anyway I've got that brain I've got that kind of brain that's always coming up with ideas so exactly you know I do try and and optimize things and use algorithms that I've learned to try and make it more optimal I guess always chasing obviously knowing it's never going to be optimal but just trying to make it slightly better than last time I guess yeah how about that in terms of your finding for the reversal of uh like increasing bone density that's really really cool and I actually had uh the world's oldest Ninja Warrior on the show Jenny mcll and I believe I I don't want to get it wrong but I believe she's in her 70s now W yeah and she's still doing um Ninja Warrior which is which is crazy exactly and um what what I was thinking for when those people your your friends send you the those cards I think you should send them the picture of you doing the obstacle course oh yes by the way exactly show them see I'm out here you're the one and then send it back and say to you I climbed over a 30 foot wall well the funny thing about that obstacle course comment cuz you heard that comment in this talk that I gave right yes the Boulder talk on YouTu very good GE check it out guys oh you know what I thought was so funny is that he he phrased not that I did a obstacle course race because I thought nothing of it but he phrased it as and at the rip old age of 56 and as I was walking on stage I was thinking instead of talk thinking about what I was going to talk about I was thinking about what does he mean old age because I I don't really view my age as old you know I view it as I I feel young than I have in years I think so it's just funny the perspective on obstacle course race it doesn't seem to put you off your your speech was I thoroughly enjoyed it thank you pleasure so I loved what you said about life expectancy vers Health expectancy and I've honestly never heard of that before which is sad but um yeah so what are your what are your thoughts on on that I really thought it was a new topic that I've never seen before which is really interesting yeah so you know in the 1900s the the average life expectancy in the United States and and likely around the world uh was about 40 for men and around 1900 and we don't have data for women because nobody kept date on women but you know whatever let's just say it shock love shocking through modern medicine through occupational safety through vaccines the life EXP expectancy now on average in industrialized countries is about 79 Japan's 81 Japan's always a little ahead of the rest of us so we're living on average about that long that is our life expectancy that is not our health expectancy research shows that our health expectancy our health span which means those years where we're not ravaged by chronic disease is only 64 so even if you've had a diagnosis in your 50s or early earlier 60s it doesn't start sending you to the doctor three times a week or you aren't slowed down until about 64 but then look at the difference here what are we doing for the last 15 to 20 years between Health span and lifespan well I can tell you what I see in people's lives as they start coming to me and saying I spend three days a week in the doctor's office nobody wants to live like that but the fact is that many of the diseases we die from many of the diseases of sedentary death syndrome can be prevented but what's interesting you may not know anybody like this because you're so into fitness and you are in a hypertrophy gym all the time but the fact is many young people don't even want to talk about prevention or how are they're going to live live better than their parents lived and I and I think the problem with that is something that the finance people called temporal disconnect which means where you are now and time whether you're whe whether you're young like you are or whether in your 50s like I am we cannot Envision what 20 years or 30 years into the future looks like I don't know what bond is going to be like then I don't care about that person we're not actually very good friends to our future selves most of the time right so temporal disconnect is is that sense that now is the most important thing and so we're not that interested in prevention we're interested in the now well I lift heavy weights and I do Zone 2 training and I eat an anti-inflammatory diet because it makes me feel amazing now and I've totally bought into prevention but it's also the reason why people sit around now or they eat bon bons or fill their fill their lives with with packaged food that's terrible for us is because it feels good now we're not preventing chronic disease does that make sense that makes a lot of sense I I totally follow you and I hope the listeners follow you too I'm sure they will so me too why I do this exactly so how can we age better and how can we achieve Vitality in older age groups well I think that just it's not rocket science right it is it's investing Health Science it's Health Science it's yeah it's you know how when people want to do Self Health self self-care behaviors many times what that means is they go get a massage or they go on a retreat or they whatever they take a nap and all that's fine and good fine do that but what you know what really self health is self-care is it's getting in the gym and lifting some heavy three or four days a week right that's going to give give muscle which G it's going to make you I'm swearing on your I'm a surgeon I swear it's explicit now don't worry don't worry about it uh you have to lift heavy you that's going to make you feel like a badass in your body and in your brain it's not that hard you just got to show up right so that's number one number two you do not need to kill yourself with high-intensity interval training every day that is a Sure Fire way to end up in an orthopedic surgeon's office hurt Elite athletes Elite endurance athletes do something called Bas training 80% of the time it's a much lower heart rate way to build up an amazing aerobic base that's what I teach my people to do then we Sprint on top of that twice a week and then we do one V2 Max a week and then number three we eat an anti-inflammatory lifestyle which means a focus on green leafy vegetables and fiber a focus on one gram of protein per pound minimum if you're trying to be a bodybuilder you need much more than that but but uh most of us need at least one gram per ideal pound and most of us get half of that but if you want to build muscle you have to feed that and then here's the kicker that most everybody around the world that I talk to hates you got to stop eating simple sugar you've got to stop with adding all this white cane or white beet sugar because that adds to inflammation for you so those are the three simple steps on in addition to protecting your sleep forming great social relationships so you're not isolated those are all key ways of eing well I think you've ABS since this is your job you've absolutely nailed it of course um and I think I can't think of anything major that you've missed I think those are some M really good pillars of Health that you that you've mentioned um you mentioned the base training the the eating the gym um the one thing that you mentioned in the uh in the talk was the plier the jump the jumping and the that kind of thing yeah so in addition to I do my Pio which is literally jumping on top of a 24-in box or jumping down uh or even things like jump roping I do that on my squat days so in between my squat sets I'll go over and jump up on a playo box Pio is really good for um for stimulating bone it's great for stimulating uh um stem cell Rejuvenation the impact of pio the explosiveness because uh for people in midlife you have to examine what you're lifting for what what are you out there exercising for I am lifting heavy for longevity and power I will build muscle and become hypertrophied but my primary goal is not bigness my primary goal is power because with power is how I'm going to not fall down it's how I'm not that's how I'm going to be able to get up off the floor have I built muscle absolutely is it noticeable hypertrophy absolutely but it's hypertrophy becomes my secondary goal power is my first goal and that's a fantastic goal to have and I'm glad that you you've got it I hope our listeners can can find a goal that works for them and something that gets them motivated to hit the gym hit the track do just be active in any way in shape or form is better than nothing for sure depending and as long as it's not those guys that are um uh doing heavy weights on a skate board on a b b or BOS sorry I'm not sure what they call those guys I wouldn't recommend it but if you want to yeah and do what you want are you sitting in a gaming chair I am yes yes I am well listen to this you'll love this because I think uh about now it's been almost seven or eight years ago I designed some of the first in the Country Sports Medicine training programs for gamers recognizing that the elite gamers in the world um had short lifespans at at the the top of their field like three to five years because you know most people game sitting in those fancy chairs so we started treating Elite Gamers like Elite athletes and getting them a gym lifting weights I I was once working with 90 uh paladins players including the world champions and what they were being fed was a wall of sugar so we started treating them like real athletes and and and feeding them great food and getting them exercise all towards trying to extend their life expectancy as an elite player and we ran into the minmax principle meaning we want to do the minimum to get the maximum but that's that's not unlike what we do for M mortal people not not even Elite Gamers we people want to get the maximum out of the minimum and so that's why I've adopted this powerlifting and the zone 2 training and you don't have to destroy yourself to be in really good shape absolutely and and I agree with you you don't have to do three hours in the gym every day you can do what works for you obviously don't be lazy uh or do again not telling you what to do but suggesting I am telling you what to do oh yes you are you're the doctor listen to the doctor arone you have to this is this is good advice you mentioned uh sugar spikes how can uh and I think I saw something about a flat glucose curve um can you just quickly talk about that yes so for sustained energy and to decrease inflammation we want to avoid the high sugar spikes that come when we eat just raw sugar or carbs or or you know I mean frankly chocolate ice cream which everybody loves what we want during the day is a stabilized blood sugar or if we do have an increase that it goes up not to 600 but just maybe less than 200 and then immediately comes back down so how we do that is we eat protein at every meal at breakfast snack dinner snack um and that will stabilize our blood sugar so that our body doesn't have to scramble and pump out so much insulin that we come become insulin resistant and then stores the extra sugar in our fat cells right so I'll give you an example people like but how do we get enough protein how do I get one gram per pound so I'm a really muscly person and so the weight I tried to maintain is about 130 so I need 130 grams of protein so that means at breakfast I have protein for breakfast I a cup of egg whites for instance has 25 grams of protein which is not a lot of volume but it's a lot of protein and then I supplement around 10:00 in the morning with a protein powder now it's not supposed to be a luxurious meal I just dump a scoop of I use Mind Body greens into a bottle of water shake it up and carry it around my office and that's another 25 grams and then for every ounce of animal protein no matter what the source it's six grams of protein so a chicken breast the size of my hand is about 40 gram and then protein in the afternoon maybe a cup of beans maybe half an avocado and then dinner that is protein every meal that keeps your blood sugar stabilized so that your energy is stabilized it keeps your inflammation stabilized and gives you enough fuel to lift heavy in hypertrophy so eat your protein must eat your protein now that's not athletes need carbs I'm not anti- carbs I'm anti- sugar but not carbs we need carbs absolutely and just on that note glycation is that something that you're familiar with uh is it real like for example um eating first your uh your leafy greens and then your protein then your uh Dani your carbs is that a is that a real thing that can um get that glucose curve better yeah so you know what that that ordering your food concept was popularized by the glucose goddess in her book I can't even remember her name but so what I do when books like that come out is I go back to the source document so when I read that book about G ation and and um and ordering your food I went back to the source documents and lo and behold it is I mean there is science behind it so the thought is if you eat your green leafy vegetables first because they're so hard to digest it forms a net in the bottom of your stomach I mean cows for instance cows have four stomachs because it takes so long to digest green leafy things then on top of that you put your protein and fat and then finally your complex carbs so that by the time the complex carbs get to your small intestine it's a slow release instead of a big spike so by ordering your food in that order you can really control a lot of inflammation and the and stabilize your glucose curve and thereby aging slower theoretically that's right not cooking from the inside and turning all barbecued yes wow that's so cool and thank you for confirming that cuz I've been trying to do that but I wasn't sure if it was actually it real or not okay brilliant well that brings us to a close so what advice or parting words of wisdom do you have for our listeners who are looking to embark on their own journey of muscle growth and health you know what sometimes it can seem overwhelming and there's so much information out there that you're like what do I do first what do I do first if you're absolutely starting at nothing first start with a brisk walk every day and when you've committed to yourself every day then you walk into the gym and found someone like you to teach you how to lift if you've never lifted before invest in some lessons just like you would any new skill because it's totally worth it and you are worth the daily investment in your health absolutely I love that thank you so much thank you Dr Vite thanks Rosco goodbye gains gurus thank you for listening and see you on the next episode of tmgp