In this episode, I share my full DEXA scan results, including a visceral fat score of 0.38 pounds, which I’m determined to drop to “0.0 fricking zero” through sprinting—shown in research to preferentially burn visceral fat.
My body fat is 21 pounds (12.5%), and I break down the fat and lean mass distribution throughout my body, including minor asymmetries. I was advised to gain 2–3 pounds of muscle for longevity, though my sprinting and high jump goals favor staying lean. I discuss why chronic endurance training can increase visceral fat due to cortisol overproduction, while short, explosive workouts like sprints or strength training create a healthy stress response.
You’ll also learn why bone density suffers in cyclists and astronauts, what makes muscles a glucose sink, why Dr. Ron Sinha and Dr. Gabrielle Lyon emphasize maintaining muscle as the key to long-term health and metabolic flexibility, and I end the show with a plug for muscle-centric medicine—focusing on building and maintaining muscle as the key to longevity and leanness.
TIMESTAMPS:
There are three types of body fat. Brown fat is what cold therapy tends to activate. [01:07]
The viseral fat collects in and around the abdominal organs and is extremely health destructive. [03:05]
Testosterone replacement therapy is popular however one can also choose to focus on lifestyle optimization before you consider it. [04:20]
The accumulaition of viseral fat is a sign that the body’s fat storage systems have become overwhelmed. [10:34]
Subcutaneous fat is soft and squishy. [12:38]
The DEXA scan can examine the inside of your body. Sixty-eight percent of Americans are classified as overweight or obese. [13:31]
If you have competitive goals, your body is going to respond to the training stimulus and create the body that is optimal for what you are doing to it. [22:40]
For endurance training for a marathon or Ironman Triathlon, you to store visceral fat. [26:47]
Our hectic stressful life causes a chronic overproduction of stress hormones. [28:41]
More summary of the DEXA scan shows bone density, the weight of the skeleton, and how the viseral fat surrounds your organs. [30:01]
The Tour de France cyclists lose bone density because they are sitting on their bikes instead of doing weight bearing exercise. [31:54]
One can check out you viseral fat score by measuring your waistline. People have experimented with changing their body weight in a single day. [35:48]
Focus on muscle mass. [39:02]
LINKS:
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TRANSCRIPT:
Brad (00:00):
Welcome to the B.rad podcast, where we explore ways to pursue peak performance with passion throughout life. I’m Brad Kearns, New York Times bestselling author, world number one ranked masters, age 60 high jumper and former number three, world ranked professional triathlete. You’ll learn how to stay fit, strong and powerful as you age, transform your diet to lose body fat and increase energy sort through hype and misinformation to make simple, sustainable lifestyle changes and broaden your perspective beyond a fit body to experience healthy relationships, nonstop personal growth, and ultimately a happy, healthy long life. Let’s explore beyond shortcuts, hacks, and crushing the competition to laugh. Have fun, appreciate the journey, and not take ourselves too seriously. It’s time to B.rad.
Brad (00:51):
Oh boy, body score A plus. If you’re looking on the screen, they gimme a nice grade here. Big deal is what I say. Just like when I talk about my testosterone levels being in the 95th percentile for one second, I can pat myself on the back. And then,
Brad (01:07):
So I did my first DEXA scan. You’ve probably heard of this extremely efficient and accurate way to figure out what’s going on inside your body, especially your body fat the distribution of your muscle, your bone density, all this fun stuff. And it’s really great that this technology is out there easily accessible for most people, especially in urban areas across America and hopefully other countries that are listening. The cost has now become pretty affordable. I think I paid 120 bucks for my DEXA scan at DEXA Fit in Sacramento. So if you’re watching on video, I was gonna go through some of the results and discuss the meaning, the significance, and maybe inspire you to go and get your own scan and see what’s going on inside there.
Brad (02:00):
I think one reason to gather such data is to get you motivated, focused, and accountable. If you want to improve your results, you go back in after working hard for three or six months, and it’s nice to track these things. We’ll pay particular attention to probably the most important metric to track on the DEXA scan, which is the accumulation of visceral fat as opposed to your total body fat measurement. So we know that there’s, well, there’s three types of body fat. You’ve probably heard of brown fat, which has been coming into prominence because, cold therapy helps to activate brown fat, BAT brown adipose tissue largely collecting in the back of the upper neck. And that is, uh, believed to have a positive effect when brown fat is activated, is believed to have a positive effect on your efforts to lose normal subcutaneous body fat, which is collected or stored, uh, in all those favorite areas underneath the skin.
Brad (03:05):
So it could be your thighs, your butt, your abdomen, all that. Now, uh, there’s a special kind of fat called visceral fat, visceral adipose tissue belly fat. And this is the type of fat that collects in and around the abdominal organs. And this is extremely health destructive. I’ve talked about it on the show quite often, but when you accumulate visceral fat, it tends to dysregulate important hormones, especially the production and distribution of testosterone throughout the body. So when you have a significant amount of visceral fat, this fat is classified as a separate organ because it has the ability to secrete substances into the bloodstream. And visceral fat secretes these so-called inflammatory cytokines, which have an adverse impact on hormone balance, specifically what they are known to do is to aromatize testosterone into estrogen. And when you start converting testosterone into estrogen, you tend to accumulate more visceral fat and not maintain lean muscle mass.
Brad (04:20):
Obviously, testosterone directly correlated with your fitness, your energy, your focus, and your ability to build and maintain lean muscle tissue. But when your hormones are dysregulated, thanks to the presence of visceral fat, secreting these inflammatory cytokines into the bloodstream and you convert testosterone into estrogen, that can be a really bad deal. This is particularly relevant to the many males in the upper age groups who have chosen to engage in hormone replacement therapy, TRT testosterone replacement therapy. And you see the anti-aging clinics and the billboards and the internet ads. It’s a very, very popular strategy to combat the aging process. I have all kinds of mixed feelings and opinions about it, and I stand strongly for the major effort and focus to be on doing everything you possibly can with lifestyle optimization before you even consider chemical or medical intervention.
Brad (05:22):
Now, I know many people that are big fans of hormone replacement therapy. The overall philosophy of considering that, hey, we’re not supposed to live this long anyway, and when we have this hormone decline, it represents the essence of aging. So if there’s anything we can do to arrest that or overcome it, boy, it’s certainly worth having an open mind and considering the opportunities out there. But I would only consider such things as hormone replacement therapy. If you’re doing absolutely everything you can do every single day in daily life and still complaining, struggling, feeling frustrated that you’re not at your best, uh, once you decide on hormone replacement therapy, it’s often described as a point of no return. In other words, it’s very difficult to get off to testosterone replacement therapy and get back to natural because the treatments will definitely shrink your balls and cause you to stop or greatly minimize your own natural production.
Brad (06:30):
The brain realizes that you’re getting plenty of testosterone from your regular injections or rubbing substances onto your skin or putting pellets in, or whatever the different, uh, treatment modalities are. And so you kind of, uh, relax and become basically dependent on outside intervention for what might be the rest of your life. And that’s kind of scary, but it’s also okay because we are in the age of modern medical intervention and people are doing all kinds of stuff and having great results. So you can’t argue with great results. I’ve talked about this with my favorite podcast guests like Mark Sisson and Mark Bell, both huge fans of hormone replacement therapy. Uh, Mark Bell was some of his great quips like, Hey, man, I’m on steroids, and steroids are awesome. Oh, how refreshing compared to lying and deceiving the public that you’re not taking anything when you really are.
Brad (07:26):
So anyway, back to the focus of the show here is on my DEXA scan, but I really want to highlight the ability to measure, measure visceral fat independent of your total body fat. And the major, major goal, especially for men, but also for females, is to ward off the accumulation of visceral fat for as long as possible forever, right? Because then you will optimize your natural hormone production and be less likely to accumulate visceral fat if you don’t start getting any in the first place. Now, what’s funny about this is that in modern life here, it has become the norm for the beer belly and the waist to grow over the years and decades. It’s so much norm. Everywhere we look around that what we’re seeing is essentially accelerated aging and demise due to adverse lifestyle practices rather than the actual and natural effects of chronological aging.
Brad (08:32):
So those of us who are aging chronologically, raising your, raise your hand if you have a birthday every year, uh, we can aspire to get that, uh, get that visceral fat off the body or keep it off the body for as long as possible, and thereby build on that success rather than succumb to the cumulative effects of things like aromatization, where you’re going to have your testosterone drop be more likely to pack on more and more spare tire. The reason I said, uh, men more so than women, but still women relevance, is that women are much better at men at storing excess body fat in those favorite areas throughout the body. So essentially, when you are gaining fat over the years and decades, it’s really your body protecting you from the adverse effects of too much, uh, fatty acids circulating in the bloodstream. That’s called high triglycerides.
Brad (09:32):
So if you have the genetics, some people have those skinny genes and they’re not likely to put on excess body fat as much as someone else who’s got the, they call it a a bigger frame. But I’m gonna tell you a little bit about that. How much of a misnomer that is. It’s really, um, there are strong genetic predispositions to how much fat you store and of course, where you store it. But, the female being better at storing fat and being able to store a higher percentage of total body weight as fat is protecting, protecting you all from the extremely adverse health consequences of adding the visceral fat as opposed to subcutaneous fat. When it comes to subcutaneous fat, obviously it’s not a great health attribute, but surprisingly it’s not a huge deal in terms of your life expectancy or the effect on your overall body, health, vitality, energy to carry some excess subcutaneous fat.
Brad (10:34):
Dr. Deepak Chopra has talked about this for many years, and, um, he’s not a, a six pack kind of guy, and he says, Hey, look, I’m, um, I’m doing fine. It’s not a big deal, but the accumulation of visceral fat is a big deal. So why does visceral fat kick in? In any case? This is a sign that the body’s fat storage systems have become overwhelmed. It starts with your liver. You start to get what’s called fatty liver, or they call it N-F-N-A-F-L-D, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. The accumulation of fat in the liver, which was previous to recent times, only seen in alcoholics who destroyed their liver with excessive drinking and then would see fat deposits on the liver. Now, it’s a very common condition. It’s kinda like type two diabetes. They used to call it adult onset diabetes. It’s very prevalent, but it wasn’t really in existence until the driving factor of, uh, modern dietary habits overwhelming the insulin production system.
Brad (11:39):
We used to only have type one diabetics who had those genetics at birth that they, their, the pancreas didn’t make insulin. Okay? So non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, or the condition of fat accumulation in the liver is a sign of, uh, adverse health. And then what happens is it starts to drift into other organs and pack in around the abdominal organs and even around the heart. I saw a great presentation from Dr. Sean O’Mara at the Primal BOD Conference in Dallas earlier this year, and he was showing slides, imagery of hearts of patients that he’s been treating that have fat deposits, fat accumulation around the layer of fascia tissue around the heart. And so you put the slide up on the, on the big screen, and it’s like is the heart supposed to look marbled and streaked and white like that? No, it’s supposed to be red and beating without any fat around it.
Brad (12:38):
So visceral fat, extremely health destructive, messes with your hormones, messes with the ability of your organs to function optimally, and we don’t want that. Now, just to summarize, so the female’s less likely to get that spare tire and look that fat hard beer belly look that you see mostly in males where it looks like a bowling ball. It’s that firm. And indeed, visceral fat is really firm because again, it’s packing around the organs rather than by contrast, subcutaneous fat is kind of soft and squishy. So if you look at an abdomen that has a lot of visceral fat, it’s gonna be one that you can you know, bounce a quarter off where someone who maybe collects, uh, subcutaneous fat in the abdomen. You wanna be soft and squishy rather than firm and rock hard when it comes to fat on your abdomen.
Brad (13:31):
Okay, now let’s get into the DEXA scan, which is gonna check out the inside of Brad here and report back. Oh boy, body score A plus if you’re looking on the screen they gimme a nice grade here. And, big deal is what I say, just like when I talk about my testosterone levels being in the 95th percentile. For one second, I can pat myself on the back and then realize that the comparison group that they’re giving me an a plus against is like me going back to second grade and acing the spelling bee and blowing all the kids out of the water at the big competition <laugh> at the end of the year. Right? Who cares? Because we’re talking about the fattest and sickest population in the history of humanity. When we’re talking about United States of America here in 2025, the new stats are showing that 68% of Americans are classified as overweight or obese.
Brad (14:28):
So they’re outside of the healthy body composition zone. Dr. Phil Maffetone and his great book, The Over Fat Pandemic contends that 91% of the world’s population can be classified as over fat. And the reason his number is so big is that people can be of normal body weight, especially people who have those skinny genes, but still show an accumulation of visceral fat that is extremely health destructive, such that they are designated as over fat because of that visceral fat, even if they have skinny legs and not a lot of fat accumulation around the body. So interesting, because a lot of people feel blessed genetically that they are from a family where people are long and, and slender and lean. However, we really have to go in, get the DEXA scan and assess and determine whether the distribution of the fat is optimal or suboptimal.
Brad (15:27):
You can also determine by looking and feeling the abdomen, right? If it’s that kind of skinny legs, chicken legs and then a firm tummy, that’s a sign of a problem, even though you’re not walking around at a large body weight. So on the screen that I’m sharing, you can see all the things that they are measuring. First of all, my total body weight, which is weird because all I did was lie down on a table and they determined that I was 170 pounds with clothing on. I think that was pretty accurate. And then my body fat percentage is 12.5%. The breakdown comes later, and I was like, wait, 12.5, that’s not what I hear with cool quips on Instagram and on the internet of the, uh, the cool dudes with the six pack saying that they’re 4% fat or 6% fat, and the guy said, wait a second here.
Brad (16:21):
All that stuff you hear out there in the world is highly questionable. And the measurement techniques besides dexascan are notoriously inaccurate. So if you are using like pinching calibers or stepping on one of those scales that have the bio impedance, they’re decent, but they’re not deadly accurate like this DEXA scan. So he said, look, you know, 12.5 is good, you can be satisfied with that. And the lowest guy he’s ever seen in there was a veined out super ripped bodybuilder preparing for a contest. So coming in there at his absolute lowest with muscles bulging and veins popping all over his body, and he delivered a 7% score. So the most extreme freak you’re gonna see on the planet, those bodybuilders preparing for competition are still gonna have 7% body fat. And the notion that you would want or have the ability to carry less than 7% fat is ridiculous.
Brad (17:22):
Then you’re talking about you know, illness and hospitalization, right? As we see with, uh, anorexia patients where they get dangerously low body fat. For males that’s around seven. And, uh, females, you might hear some different stats reported, but, uh, they definitely have another, a few points higher for their absolute low threshold. So maybe a female at 12.5 would be at the absolute bottom of health and sustainability with body fat percentage. So with the total weight of 170, that means 12% body fat is lean mass of 147 pounds, and the rest being body fat 23 pounds, right? Okay, here’s the big one, visceral fat. And boy was I disappointed to learn that I had 0.38 pounds of visceral fat, and I am on a mission to get that off my body. So this thing kind of woke me up while the practitioner was congratulating me and saying, that’s as that’s one of the lowest I’ve seen, you can really strive for a goal of zero there, and I absolutely am gonna make that happen next time.
Brad (18:33):
I’ve already been on a discipline and devoted quest to drop a few pounds of body weight, uh, expecting that to be visceral fat first and foremost. And isn’t that an interesting tidbit? Visceral fat, like I said, remember it secretes inflammatory cytokines. It is metabolically active, unlike subcutaneous fat, which is not very metabolically active. What that means is, the bad news is that in it secretes the cytokines. The good news is because this fat is metabolically active, it is easier to shed than subcutaneous fat. Subcutaneous fat. You have a lot of genetics working against you. You have that metabolic set point theory, which contends that if you do do some hard work and discipline dieting and increased exercising, that you will lose body fat and lose body weight temporarily. But we have these strong genetic factors that help us drift back to our set point, which has a lot of genetic influence, but the visceral fat, metabolically active, you can burn it off.
Brad (19:42):
And there’s great research that sprinting in particular, preferentially burns visceral fat. So I can’t wait to come back and see that 0.0 fricking zero. On we go, on, we go. Next screen. Like I said, the body fat is 21 pounds, or I was close guessing in my head, 12.5%. And here’s a fun one where they actually determine the distribution of fat in areas throughout your body. So my arms contain 2.8 pounds, and that’s, uh, 13.2% of the total in the trunk. I have nine pounds, and in the legs I have seven pounds. And they also compare and contrast, I’m not sure if you can see the small letters if you’re watching on the screen, but I’m gonna talk you through it. The distribution of left and right. So, my left arm has 1.3 pounds of fat, right arm 1.4, trunk has 4.4 on the left, 4.7 on the right, the legs 3.7, 3.5.
Brad (20:43):
So there’s always gonna be some asymmetry. But my practitioner said, Hey, you know that, that’s close enough. That’s cool. If there’s a weird asymmetry, I guess maybe you’re gonna strive to get back in the gym and do more balanced exercises, especially if you’re like a hardcore tennis player or someone who’s using one side of their body extremely in athletic endeavors. Now, over to the other side, they’re showing the lean mass, probably more important than the distribution of fat to look for symmetry there. So left arm 8.8, right arm 8.7. Interesting because I’m a righty, in the trunk, you can notice that the lean mass on the left side is 37 pounds, right side 33. That’s because I’m like, Hey, what’s up with that? He goes, well, the left is where there’s more organs, so there’s more weight there. And then the legs, 22.6 and 23.
Brad (21:35):
So, fun stuff to think about the big, the big ticket items are the visceral fat score, the total body fat score. And in fact, one area where I had a need to improve recommendation was my overall muscle mass that I’m carrying on my body. And because this is such a strong predictor of longevity, the recommendation that spit out from their algorithm or what have you was that I should gain two or three pounds of muscle. They weren’t telling me to lose that 0.38 pounds of visceral fat. But I definitely told myself, and of course, my total body fat score was in the optimal range at 12.5%, but I’m also pursuing these devoted athletic competition goals doing high jumping and 400 meter. So I do not need extra muscle mass to excel in those, and I’d probably be fine dropping one or two pounds as a consequence of the specific training that I’m doing.
Brad (22:40):
But I really think this is a good place to talk about this. If you do have those lofty competitive goals, I believe that your body’s going to respond to the training stimulus and create the body that, uh, is optimal for what you’re doing to it. Okay, that’s interesting because as we detail and Born to Walk, if you’re an endurance athlete and you’re training for extreme endurance events, your body’s going to respond by shedding lean muscle mass, which is directly opposed to longevity, and it’s also gonna respond with genetic signaling to preserve body fat. So it’s very difficult to drop excess body fat when you’re training for extreme endurance events because that is the fuel that you need to use for the long distance events. So you’re teaching your body to go and go and go, maybe you’re taking some energy gels and some fuel along the way, but you’re mostly training day after day to burn body fat, so it’s not going to leave your body.
Brad (23:39):
In contrast to, for example, training for sprinting and high jumping, there is a severe penalty for carrying unnecessary extra body mass that includes muscle, and it also includes excess body fat. So in the a hundred meters, the penalty for carrying excess lean body mass is pretty much zero. But there is a point where imagine like a bodybuilder lining up against an Olympic sprinter. The Olympic sprinter is gonna smoke them because they’re carrying too much muscle down the track. But you can see some super ripped jacked 100 meter runners, and interestingly, they have a tendency to build more muscle mass because of their genetics, because their training patterns. But there’s a point where your vertical force production, which is the essence of running fast, your vertical vertical force production is not improved by adding more muscle mass. And that’s where every sprinter has figured out their optimal body weight and lean muscle mass for competing in a hundred meters, 200 meters, 400 meters, depends on the athlete.
Brad (24:49):
Okay? So understand, like you see, Ferdinand Omanyala from Kenya out there in the starting box, and he is, you know, borderline bodybuilder, physique super ripped, and then there’s really slender guys like Trayvon Brummell, I think is five nine and 150 or 155 pounds, one of the top sprinters of all time. He’s on the all time list. And one of the top Americans in recent years, he’s had some injuries and stuff, but you actually see different physiques in the starting box due to that strong, those strong genetic forces that are influencing what happens to their body as a consequence of their sport specific training. Uh, in my case, when I’m focusing on the 400 meters in the high jump, go look at the high jumpers in the Olympics, guess what? They are very tall, very skinny. There is no extra body fat on any of these explosive athletes.
Brad (25:42):
And there’s also not that much muscle mass because they don’t need that much muscle mass to sky high into the air. Yeah, it’s pretty cool. And speaking of excess body fat, when you’re doing a power, an explosive sport and a gravity weightbearing sport like sprinting, like high jumping, the penalty for carrying even the slightest amount of excess body fat is extreme. It’s vastly more penal as a hundred meter sprinter or a 400 meter sprinter or a high jumper to carry excess body fat than it is for, let’s say a marathoner who is actually putting that fat to use. And the other thing about extreme endurance training is that it stimulates appetite because you’re burning so many calories and you’re out there for so long, and there’s research that we detail in Born to Walk that extreme endurance training, especially when it becomes a little bit too stressful and exhausting, we call it chronic cardio, will also stimulate the storage of visceral fat on the body.
Brad (26:47):
So endurance training, training for a marathon, training for an Ironman triathlon will prompt you to store visceral fat in particular, and excess body fat in general, not just to have trouble keeping it off, but actually build a spare tire as a consequence of your endurance training. And that is fricking scary. I sure hope it is. When you’re listening to this, why the heck does that happen? It’s due to the chronic overproduction of cortisol with these extremely difficult and stressful workout patterns. So if you’re running at medium to difficult pace, you’re exceeding that fat max heart rate that we talk about so much on the show and in the book, and into that in-between zone where you’re pushing yourself, whether the run’s 45 minutes, an hour, hour and a half, two hours, whatever’s going on out there. Same with the triathletes pounding the bicycle pedals, or, you know, running, getting off the bike and running all that stuff.
Brad (27:42):
You got cortisol coursing through your bloodstream for a long time because the workout lasts so long. Now, of course, all fitness sessions, workouts are going to spike, cortisol, desirably, so, and all the other stress hormones, the adrenaline and endorphin chemicals that will respond because you’re asking a lot from your body. But the trick and the key with the high intensity exercise is the workout ends in due time. The spiking of the stress hormones in your bloodstream are stopped, and you quickly recalibrate back to homeostasis. So if you really push yourself with a hard session in the gym going through the weight machines, or you go to the track and you do a proper sprint workout or on the bicycle, and you do something that’s short in duration, but powerful, explosive, short reps pushing to near maximum, of course you’re gonna be blowing up with stress hormones, but then they go back to normal.
Brad (28:41):
You get out of the gym, you go home, you start recovering, you’re resting, you’re recalibrating, and that’s why it is a desirable stress response rather than the undesirable. And of course, I’m sure you’ve heard of the commentary about hectic, high stress, modern life, also causing a chronic overproduction of stress hormones. This is the artificial light and the digital stimulation after dark. This is the frustrating traffic jam that’s gonna cause you to maybe miss your flight. This is the mean as boss that keeps criticizing you in front of your coworkers, all this chronic overproduction of stress hormones. And then you go out to blow off some steam by doing a six mile run, and you’re spiking cortisol again, that is directly associated with the accumulation of visceral fat on the body. Visceral fat happens to people who are overly stressed, okay? So that’s the huge plug for sprinting and high intensity strength training with workouts that are brief in duration.
Brad (29:42):
Big difference from putting in the miles and putting in the hours. I’m still showing the DEXA fit screen, and they have these calculations where they want you to be in the happy zone when it’s the, uh, portion of, uh, lean mass and fat-free mass.
Brad (30:01):
Back to the summary of the ratio of regular subcutaneous fat to visceral fat. The guy’s smiling at me with that 0.38, but I’m frowning back at him, and I guess, guess what, dude, you’re going down to zero. There’s a nice description of visceral fat, how it’s packed around your stomach, liver, intestines, kidneys, and they didn’t mention heart, but that’s a really scary notion of the heart. I also have the weight of my skeleton at 6.6 pounds and the calculation of how my bone density compares to average healthy young adults of your sex. That could be a challenge. Even if you’re super fit, you might see a poor bone density score. The most favorable exercises to do for bone density are high impact things like sprinting on flat ground, much more so than jogging because the bones are put under tremendous load when you’re doing things like jumping or sprinting and not so much when you’re shuffling down the road, jogging at a slow pace.
Brad (31:54):
It does have a certain minor favorable impact on bone density to be a jogger, almost zero or perhaps a negative impact when you’re cycling a lot. They’ve had amazing studies with Tour de France cyclists. As you probably know, the Tour de France lasts for three weeks, and these guys are racing their brains out every day for many hours. But they’re sitting on their bike pedaling, and when they stop racing, they are immediately ushered into major, major recovery mode because it is so exhausting to race day after day for usually 23, 24, 25 days is the Tour de France. So these guys get off their bikes, they immediately go into the team bus and relax and recline and drive to their hotel where they are resting in bed, getting a massage, eating a meal, going back and hanging around and literally just cruising around and laying in bed until the start of the stage the next day.
Brad (32:52):
And they show in three weeks time a stunning reduction in bone density just from racing the Tour de France, even when they’re standing on the pedals going up the climb. That’s not a load impact on the bone like it would be if you were, uh, running or doing something else. You’re probably also familiar with the extreme problem with, uh, astronauts going into space and all of a sudden because they’re done with gravity, uh, during their stint in the space station or in the moon capsule, that they have a really, uh, disturbing loss of bone density in a very, very short time. And they’ve tried to figure out protocols to help put the bones under load when the astronauts into space because of the extremely health destructive effects in a short time. So my skeleton weighing 6.6 pound. Remember that discussion?
Brad (33:45):
I said, where some people think they’re large framed and big boned. My practitioner told me that even the biggest guy, uh, he tested a former NFL professional football player who played at like, I believe, he was six eight and three 40 or 360 a lineman came into the clinic and his skeleton was only something like 10 pounds instead of 6.6 pounds for this little relatively small sprinter and high jumper, right? And, and also many inches taller than me. So the variation in weight of the skeleton is not what we think you might think a giant NFL player who weighs 360. So that’s more than double my total body weight would have a skeleton that was at least double mine, maybe more, but it’s not true. So, so much for that excuse of being big boned. Then they just, like they did with fat and muscle, they discussed bone mineral density at areas throughout the body.
Brad (34:51):
So I have a score for the total body, 1.28, the head, of course, my thick head <laugh> goes up to 2.11. Now I know why people call me thickheaded my whole life. The arms 1.0, the legs 1.4, the ribs, 0.7 pelvis, 1.1 spine, 1.2, trunk 1.0. So, I think I would guess that the spine would be one of the most important areas and the thick skull probably a good thing, right? And then the final page, is that the final page? Yeah, it gives me a summary or a recap. Total body mass, 170 lean mass, 143 body fat, 12.5, visceral fat, 0.38, and a good bone density score. Hopefully this will inspire you to go look up a place where you can get a DEXA scan. Again, I paid 120 bucks, I believe, and hopefully you’ll get around that price range and get this valuable information, especially checking on that visceral fat score.
Brad (35:48):
If you aren’t gonna go into the clinic anytime soon, you can also check out your waistline. And tight fitting clothes are a great way to track the changes in your waistline measurement as the single best thing to measure, vastly superior to let’s say, uh, stepping on the scale every day and weighing yourself because we know from extreme dieting and even extreme training, you can gain or lose several pounds in a very short time, but it largely represents glycogen storage, inflammation, water retention in the cells. And so kind of doing a seven day cleanse, you might lose five, seven or 10 pounds, but you can also gain it back with a couple trips to an awesome buffet in Las Vegas. So don’t get too caught up in the day-to-day changes in your weight on the scale.
Brad (36:48):
I’ve also seen the ability to change body weight seven, eight or 10 pounds in a single day, just from really hot weather exercise and being sweating a lot and being depleted, and then stepping on the scale for fun and then going and replenishing with big meals and stepping on the scale the next day and being 10 pounds heavier. Nick Simmons on his great YouTube channel did this very challenge. He tried to see if he could drop 10 pounds on the scale in 24 hours, and he did as, the spoiler alert, but it was pretty cool to watch him go through this crazy endeavor just to prove, uh, what was possible. And it also helped us, you know, recalibrate and reframe the variation that you see on the scale. So in general, just going through day-to-day life, you can vary 3, 4, 5 pounds a day just on your water retention, cellular inflammation, and glycogen storage especially females in the different areas of their cycle will have different levels of water retention, cellular inflammation.
Brad (38:00):
And so don’t pay no mind to that. Of course, it’s okay to stand on the scale often and establish baselines or established baseline ranges so that, you know, you weigh between 125 and o130 usually. I had Dr. Ron Sinha on the show a long time ago, authored the South Asian Health Solution, and he made an excellent point in counter to people who say, don’t step on the scale, get rid of the scales because it’ll freak you out and disappoint you and you don’t want to, uh, think about it. And he said, well, you know, it’s probably a good idea to keep yourself honest by weighing yourself regularly and, you know, keeping things in check rather than letting them creep up. You’ve seen those stats where the average American gains 1.5 pounds of body fat per year and loses one half pound of muscle per year between the ages of 25 to 55.
Brad (39:02):
Once we get over 55, especially with people in that accelerated aging category who are not fit, then you start to be concerned about, not concerned about gaining body weight, but actually keeping body weight on, because that losing half a pound of muscle per year is a disaster when it comes to longevity. So all seniors listening, I would encourage you to try to keep the numbers on the scale rather than see if you can lose five pounds here or there. If you have excess body fat, of course that’s gonna be a concern. However, as Dr. Gabrielle Lyon puts really beautifully in a lot of her content, just focus on muscle. It’s called muscle centric medicine. So focus on gaining and or maintaining your lean muscle mass throughout your life, especially as a senior when we have much more difficulty synthesizing amino acids, that means making the protein that you consume, uh, go to work and build or maintain lean muscle mass.
Brad (40:01):
So seniors really need to focus on protein intake as well as resistance exercise, putting their muscles under load in order to maintain muscle mass throughout life as the number one priority over and above keeping the body fat off because guess what happens to a senior or to someone of any age when they are able to build and or maintain lean muscle mass? That’s right. The fat typically takes care of itself. So that stat that Americans are gaining one and a half pounds of fat and losing a half pound of muscle, it goes hand in hand. That loss of muscle is making you less functional, less powerful, more tired, weaker, less fit, and therefore causing adverse consequences of the food that you eat to get packed on as excess body fat. Muscles, you might have heard this, are a glucose sink. So it helps with your metabolic health, your metabolic flexibility to work those muscles drain out that muscle glycogen and replenish with good nutritious foods.
Brad (41:15):
But a glucose sink meaning that it takes the glucose out of your bloodstream and puts it back in the muscle. ’cause muscles will preferentially restock glycogen. They’re ravenous after you do a workout. And so instead of just eating big meals and having a huge insulin response and feeling tired and having that, that those calories get ushered into fat storage, you are going to consume nutritious meals and then replenish muscle glycogen. The muscles are a glucose sink, taking the glucose out of your bloodstream, putting it back into the muscles and keeping you at a healthy blood glucose level as well as a healthy insulin production pattern. In contrast, someone who is unfit and sits down to buffet breakfast at the hotel and has a couple muffins and has some orange juice and some oatmeal and some bacon and eggs and toast and whatever they’re eating they’re gonna chow down all that stuff.
Brad (42:15):
Their muscles are already full of glycogen because they don’t exercise. Therefore, the body is overwhelmed day after day and meal after meal has to pump out a bunch of insulin to take that glucose outta the bloodstream and put it into fat storage. So when you work your muscles on a regular basis and do that high intensity exercise that challenges those muscles, depletes them of their energy, source of muscle glycogen, and then you go and restock, that’s when you become metabolically healthy. It’s a huge deal. So think of that muscle centric medicine instead of obsessing on your total body weight and the accumulation of body fat, go after the muscles first, building the muscles first, and that will get you into that metabolically healthy category. I hope that made sense. Hope you enjoyed the Dexa Fit Review and all the other color commentary I provided. I’d love to hear from you. Maybe if you’ve had a DEXA scan, gimme some information about that, how the experience was, maybe it motivated you. If you’ve gone back over and over to retest cool stuff podcast@bradventures.com of course, to email. And thank you for listening, watching.
Brad (43:29):
Thank you so much for listening to the B.rad Podcast. We appreciate all feedback and suggestions. Email podcast@bradventures.com and visit brad kearns.com to download five free eBooks and learn some great long cuts to a longer life. How to optimize testosterone naturally, become a dark chocolate connoisseur and transition to a barefoot and minimalist shoe lifestyle.
