🛠️5. Hormetic Stress: Small Challenges, Big Gains
Now, let’s explore an idea that might sound a bit strange: the idea that a little bit of the right kind of stress can make you stronger and more resilient. This is the concept of hormesis.
What kind of challenges are we talking about?
- Temperature changes: Brief exposures to cold, like a quick cold shower at the end of a warm one, or walking outside with light clothing on a cool day. Or the opposite: heat exposure, like a few minutes in a sauna or a hot bath. These sudden temperature changes activate survival mechanisms in your cells, making them more resilient, and your muscles too.
- Short periods without eating: I’m not talking about starving yourself, but giving your digestive system a break. For example, eating dinner early and not eating again until breakfast, creating a 12 to 14-hour window without food. Or doing a gentle intermittent fast by skipping breakfast one day a week. This digestive break activates cell cleaning processes like autophagy, where cells get rid of old or damaged parts and renew themselves. This also helps your muscles.
- Very intense, but very brief, muscle contractions: Like pushing against a wall with all your might for 10 seconds, or squeezing your fists as hard as possible. These maximum efforts, though short, send a powerful signal to your muscles. They tell them they need to be ready for big efforts.
The key here is the dose. The stress should be brief, manageable, and shouldn’t exhaust or harm you. And afterward, you need good recovery: rest and nutrition. If the stress is too much, too long, or you don’t recover well, the effect is negative.
Think of Elena. She’s 75 and always felt cold, but she read about the benefits of cold. She decided to try it. At the end of her warm shower, she turns the cold water on for 30 seconds. The first few days are a shock, but she keeps at it. After a month, she notices something curious: she has more energy in the mornings, and her muscle aches seem to have lessened. People who live long lives and stay exceptionally strong often, without knowing it, use these hormetic stressors. They’re like small doses of challenge that keep their systems alert and their muscles in good shape. These hormetic stressors are powerful tools; they activate your natural defenses and strengthen your cells, including muscle cells. But you don’t need to do all of them. Pick one or two that seem manageable. Start slowly and listen to your body. It could be the extra push your muscles need to stay young and strong.
🌱4. Food Preparation: More Than Just What You Eat
Now, there’s another factor that many people overlook, and it can cancel out the benefits of even the best foods. It’s an unexpected twist in the nutrition story. It’s not enough to just choose healthy foods; how you prepare them or how you combine them can change everything.
Think about this: you buy fresh vegetables, full of vitamins and minerals. You think you’re doing the best for your muscles. But you get home and boil them for half an hour until they’re soft and colorless. What happened? A lot of those vitamins went out with the water or were destroyed by too much heat. That magnesium, vital for muscle contraction, that Vitamin C, needed for the collagen that supports your muscles, are lost.
So, here’s the first key point: cooking method. High, prolonged temperatures or frying can damage sensitive nutrients and create compounds that inflame your body. On the other hand, gentle methods like steaming or quick stir-frying preserve nutritional treasures better. For example, steaming broccoli for just 5 minutes keeps its sulforaphane, a compound that helps your muscles protect themselves from damage. Boiling it for too long destroys almost all of it.
Then there’s food combination. Nutrients don’t work alone; they interact with each other. Some help each other, others get in the way. For example, the iron in lentils or spinach is vital for carrying oxygen to your muscles, but your body absorbs it better if you combine it with Vitamin C. Adding red pepper or a squeeze of lemon to your lentil dish makes a big difference. On the other hand, taking a calcium supplement with that iron-rich meal can block the absorption of both minerals. So, knowing these interactions is key. You eat the same food, but your body gets much more out of it.
Think of Arturo, 70 years old. He eats very healthy: vegetables, legumes, fruits, but he still feels weak. His tests don’t show any major deficiencies. One day, he talks to a nutritionist. They review not just what he eats, but how he prepares it. Arturo was boiling vegetables too much and combining some foods poorly. They make small adjustments: steamed vegetables, lentils with lemon. In two months, Arturo notices a difference in his energy. His muscles respond better. He ate healthy before, but now his body is really using those nutrients. The point is, small changes in the kitchen can lead to big changes in your strength. Lightly toasting seeds before adding them to a salad, soaking legumes before cooking them, or adding black pepper to turmeric. These are small details, but they multiply the power of your food. It’s not just what you eat, it’s how you eat it. And this attention to detail leads us to another hidden factor, one that connects your mind to your strength.
🧠3. The Mind-Muscle Connection
Even if you eat well, you might feel like something’s missing, that your strength isn’t improving as you hoped, or that you’re struggling to coordinate movements. Here, a hidden factor might be at play, a challenge few talk about: the connection between your nerves and your muscles.
Imagine a new, powerful light bulb (your muscle) and an efficient electrical grid (your blood vessels carrying nutrients). But the switch or the wire connecting the grid to the bulb is old, worn out. Since the signal isn’t getting through well, the bulb glows dimly or flickers. No matter how good the bulb is, something similar happens in your body. The neuromuscular junction is that point of contact where the nerve tells the muscle to contract. As you age, this connection can get worse. The signal becomes slower, less precise, less powerful. And this sometimes happens before you even lose muscle mass. It’s one of the first causes of age-related weakness.
How do you notice this? You might feel like you’re losing grip strength, that it’s hard to button clothes, that your reactions are slower, that you lose your balance more easily. It’s not just the muscle; it’s the communication that’s failing. But the good news is you can take care of this connection; you can keep it active.
How?
- Exercises that challenge your coordination: Not just brute strength, but movements that require precision, balance, complex patterns. Dancing, practicing tai chi, carefully walking backward, trying to write in the air with your less dominant foot. These exercises force your nerves and muscles to communicate better, to fine-tune that connection. You can try walking on an imaginary line on the floor, heel-to-toe, 10 steps forward, 10 back, and do it for a few minutes every day.
- Specific nutrients for nerves: Your brain and nerves need good fats like omega-3s. They also need B vitamins, especially B12, and choline, a nutrient that helps make acetylcholine, the key chemical messenger at the neuromuscular junction. Sunflower lecithin is a good source of choline. You can add a tablespoon to your smoothies or plant-based yogurts.
- Taking care of your general nervous system: Chronic stress affects nerve communication. Deep, slow breathing techniques can help. Before physical effort, inhale slowly through your nose, counting to four. Exhale slowly through your mouth, counting to six. Repeat for 5 minutes. This calms the nervous system and improves the quality of the nerve signal.
- Keeping your mind active: As we saw before, challenging your brain with learning, reading, and mental games also helps keep nerve pathways healthy in general. Everything is connected. Taking care of this nerve connection is key. It’s making sure the command arrives clear and strong, so your muscles can respond with their full capacity.
🎉2. Micronutrients: The Small but Mighty Helpers
So, we’ve talked about the big pillars: protein, Vitamin D, exercise. But for your muscles to work like a well-tuned orchestra, they also need smaller instruments. These are the micronutrients, specific vitamins and minerals that are involved in every contraction, every repair, every bit of muscle you build.
- Magnesium: An often-forgotten mineral, but it’s involved in hundreds of reactions in your body, many related to muscle energy, contraction, and relaxation. The problem? Magnesium deficiency is very common, especially in older people. It can cause cramps, weakness, and fatigue. So, make sure to include magnesium sources in your diet: pumpkin seeds, almonds, cashews, spinach, legumes. If you consider a supplement, look for forms that absorb well, like magnesium glycinate or citrate, which taken at night can help relax muscles and improve sleep.
- Creatine: Many people think it’s only for young athletes, and that’s a mistake. Creatine is one of the most studied supplements and has shown clear benefits in older adults. It helps recycle fast energy in your muscles (ATP). This means more strength, more power, better performance in short bursts of exercise, and it helps gain muscle mass if you combine it with strength training. Plus, the recommended dose is small: 3 to 5 grams of creatine monohydrate per day. It’s safe, affordable, and you can easily mix it with water or a shake.
- Other helpers: Zinc, Selenium, and Chromium. Zinc is involved in creating new muscle proteins. Selenium is an antioxidant that protects muscle cells from damage. Chromium helps insulin work better. Insulin is the key that allows sugar (energy) to enter your muscles. Good sources are pumpkin seeds and lentils for zinc, Brazil nuts for selenium (be careful, only one or two a day, no more, because too much selenium is toxic), and broccoli and nutritional yeast for chromium.
Ideally, you should try to meet these needs with your diet, but sometimes with age or certain conditions, a supplement might be necessary. If you suspect a deficiency, talk to your doctor. A blood test can reveal if you’re missing any of these key micronutrients. Correcting a deficiency is sometimes the fastest and easiest way to improve your strength and energy. These micronutrients are like the oil and spark plugs of your muscle engine. They’re the spark that ignites your strength.
🔥1. Controlling Inflammation: The Silent Muscle Thief
And for that strength to last, we must turn off the last silent muscle thief. A thief that works in the shadows, stealing your strength day by day without you realizing it. I’m talking about low-grade chronic inflammation. This inflammation does two bad things for your muscles. First, it speeds up their destruction; it activates processes that break down muscle proteins. Second, it blocks growth signals. Your body tries to repair or build muscle, but inflammation interferes. It’s like trying to talk on the phone with a lot of background noise; the message doesn’t get through well.
Where does this inflammation come from? Many sources: a diet high in sugars and processed foods, chronic stress, lack of sleep, an unbalanced gut, even too much exercise without proper recovery. But the good news is you can control this inflammation, manage it day by day with simple habits.
- Sleep: Getting good sleep is essential. During sleep, your body repairs itself and reduces inflammation. If you sleep poorly, inflammation goes up, and your muscles don’t recover well. So, prioritize 7 or 8 hours of quality sleep. Create a relaxing routine before bed. Keep your room dark and cool. Avoid phone, tablet, or TV screens at least an hour before bed.
- Gut health: A healthy gut means less inflammation throughout your body. How to take care of it? With lots of varied fiber from vegetables, fruits, and legumes. Whole grains. Fiber feeds the good bacteria in your gut, and these bacteria produce anti-inflammatory substances. Also include fermented foods like sauerkraut, kimchi, water kefir, or natural plant-based yogurt. They provide more beneficial bacteria.
- Anti-inflammatory foods: Nature gives us powerful weapons against inflammation. Healthy fats are key. You find them in avocado, olive oil, coconut oil, chia seeds, flax seeds, and walnuts. Spices like turmeric (always with a pinch of black pepper to absorb it) and ginger are powerful anti-inflammatories. And polyphenols, colorful compounds found in red berries, green tea, extra virgin olive oil, or pure cocoa. You can fill your plate with colors from natural antioxidants and anti-inflammatories.
If you want to know your inflammation level, you can ask your doctor for a blood test. C-reactive protein is a good marker. But above all, controlling this silent inflammation is protecting your muscles from within; it’s putting out that slow fire, allowing your muscles to repair themselves and support you with vitality for many years.
✅Key Takeaways
The Path to Lasting Strength
- Vitamin D is crucial: Get your levels checked and supplement if needed, ensuring you also get enough magnesium and K2.
- Prioritize protein: Aim for 1-1.2g per kg of body weight daily, focusing on quality sources like legumes, tofu, nuts, and seeds.
- Avoid processed foods: These hidden culprits cause inflammation that breaks down muscle. Stick to real, whole foods.
- Embrace strength training: Intensity matters more than duration. Challenge your muscles progressively with exercises like squats and push-ups.
- Explore hormetic stress: Small, controlled challenges like cold exposure or short fasting periods can boost resilience.
- Cook smart: How you prepare food impacts nutrient absorption. Steam vegetables, combine iron with Vitamin C, and be mindful of nutrient interactions.
- Nurture your nerve-muscle connection: Practice coordination exercises, ensure nerve-supporting nutrients, manage stress, and keep your mind active.
- Don’t forget micronutrients: Magnesium, creatine, zinc, selenium, and chromium are vital for muscle function. Consider supplementation if deficient.
- Control inflammation: Prioritize quality sleep, a healthy gut (fiber, fermented foods), and anti-inflammatory foods (healthy fats, spices, colorful produce).
Each of these habits has its own power, but the best part is that they’re all within your reach. You don’t need a fortune or complicated technology. These are habits based on science, but applicable in your daily life, with real food and smart movement. So, it’s never too late to start. The human body is incredibly grateful. It responds quickly to good care. Choose one habit, just one, the one that seems easiest or most necessary now. And start today with a small step. Walk 5 more minutes. Add a handful of spinach to your meal. Do five squats holding onto a chair. That small, repeated step builds the path to better health. Take care of yourself!
Source: Dr. Iñigo Martín