What is ‘cognitive shuffling’ and does it really help you get to sleep? Two sleep scientists explain

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If you’ve been on social media lately – perhaps scrolling in the middle of the night, when you know you shouldn’t but you just can’t sleep – you might have seen those videos promoting a get-to-sleep technique called “cognitive shuffling”.

The idea, proponents say, is to engage your mind with random ideas and images via a special formula:

  1. pick a random word (such as “cake”)
  2. focus on the first letter of the word (in this case, C) and list a bunch of words starting with that letter: cat, carrot, calendar and so on
  3. visualise each word as you go along
  4. when you feel ready, move onto the next letter (A) and repeat the process
  5. continue with each letter of the original word (so, in this case, K and then E) until you feel ready to switch to a new word or until you drift off to sleep.

It’s popular on Instagram and TikTok, but does “cognitive shuffling” have any basis in science?

Ursula Ferrara/Shutterstock

Where did this idea come from?

The cognitive shuffling technique was made famous by Canada-based researcher Luc P. Beaudoin more than a decade ago, when he published a paper about how what he called “serial diverse imagining” could help with sleep.

One of Beaudoin’s hypothetical examples involved a woman thinking of the word “blanket”, then thinking bicycle (and imagining a bicycle), buying (imagining buying shoes), banana (visualising a banana tree) and so on.

Soon, Beaudoin writes, she moves onto the letter L, thinking about her friend Larry, the word “like” (imagining her son hugging his dog). She soon transitions to the letter A, thinking of the word “Amsterdam”:

and she might very vaguely imagine the large hand of a sailor gesturing for another order of fries in an Amsterdam pub while a rancid accordion plays in the background.

Sleep soon ensues. The goal, according to Beaudoin, is to think briefly about:

a neutral or pleasant target and frequently [switch] to unrelated targets (normally every 5-15 seconds).

Don’t try to relate one word with another or find a link between the words; resist the mind’s natural tendency toward sense-making.

While the research into this technique is still in its infancy, the idea is grounded in science. That’s because we know from other research good sleepers tend to have different kinds of thoughts in bed to bad sleepers.

People with insomnia are more focused on worries, problems, or noises in the environment, and are often preoccupied with not sleeping.

Good sleepers, on the other hand, typically have dream-like, hallucinatory, less ordered thoughts before nodding off.

Pages appear to fly out of a book and turn into birds.
Good sleepers typically have dream-like, hallucinatory, less ordered thoughts before nodding off. fran_kie/Shutterstock

Sorting the pro-somnolent wheat from the insomnolent chaff

Cognitive shuffling attempts to mimic the thinking patterns of good sleepers by simulating the dream-like and random thought patterns they generally have before drifting off to sleep.

In particular, Beaudoin’s research describes two types of sleep-related thoughts: insomnolent (or anti-sleep) and pro-somnolent (sleep-promoting) thoughts.

Insomnolent thoughts include things such as worrying, planning, rehearsing, and ruminating on perceived problems or failings.

Pro-somnolent thoughts on the other hand involve thoughts that can help you fall asleep, such as dream-like imagery or having a calm, relaxed state of mind.

Cognitive shuffling aims to distract from or interfere with insomnolent thought. It offers a calm, neutral path for your racing mind, and can reduce the stress associated with not sleeping.

Cognitive shuffling also helps tell your brain you are ready for sleep.

In fact, the process of “shuffling” between different thoughts is similar to the way your brain naturally drifts off to sleep. During the transition to sleep, brain activity slows. Your brain starts to generate disconnected images and fleeting scenes, known as hypnagogic hallucinations, without a conscious effort to make sense of them.

By mimicking these scattered, disconnected, and random thought patterns, cognitive shuffling may help you transition from wakefulness to sleep.

And the preliminary research into this is promising. Beaudoin and his team have found serial diverse imagining helps to lower arousal before sleep, improve sleep quality and reduce the effort involved in falling asleep.

However, with only a small number of research studies, more work is needed here.

It didn’t work. Now what?

As with every new strategy, however, practise makes perfect. Don’t be disheartened if you don’t see an improvement straight away; these things take time.

Stay consistent and be kind to yourself.

And what works for some won’t work for others. Different people benefit from different types of strategies depending on how they relate to and experience stress or stressful thoughts.

Other strategies to help create the right conditions for sleep include:

If, despite all your best efforts, night time thoughts continue to impact your sleep or overall wellbeing, consider seeking professional help from your doctor or a trained sleep specialist.

Melinda Jackson, Associate Professor at Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, School of Psychological Sciences, Monash University and Eleni Kavaliotis, Research Fellow in the Sleep, Cognition, and Mood Laboratory at Monash University, Monash University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • How To Choose The Best New Year’s Resolution(s)!

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    And how to make it work for you:

    First: what matters the most?

    Most people’s new year’s resolutions are health-related, and we are after all a health science publication, so that is what we will be focusing on today.

    But! Mental health is also just health, and it’s worth bearing that in mind too.

    Writer’s anecdote:

    ❝This year, my new year’s resolution was to undertake a “Sunrise Quest”.

    In few words: I resolved to see as many sunrises as I reasonably could this year.

    In more words: by “reasonably”, I mean that I’d try to, around sunrise time, be in a position to see the sunrise. But I would not go chasing sunrises like a stormchaser.

    • Pros: my bedroom faces south-east, where the sun rises at this latitude. So I could often do this without undue effort.
    • Cons: in summer, the sun rises at something past four in the morning where I live, and in winter, there is often thick cloud cover.

    Result? I saw 106 sunrises this year. Some were very beautiful; others were “yep, the sun is visible now”. All of them gave me a moment to pause and reflect, and experience the moment—while still simultaneously being aware of the passage of time, and the importance of making it count.

    According to my mood tracker bullet journal app, there’s enough data to conclude I have a better day, on average, when I see the sunrise.

    I’m glad I did this; it was a good idea.❞

    There can also be other resolutions to be made that aren’t directly related to health, but (like this writer’s “sunrise quest”), can have strong indirect benefits.

    Let’s apply this with a larger scope…

    Next: what matters the most, in the big picture?

    For example: Finding Your Ikigaithe Japanese concept of “ikigai” is about finding one’s “purpose”. Not merely a function, but what actually drives you in life. And, if Japanese studies can be extrapolated to the rest of the world (and it is reasonable to assume this is so), it has a significant and large impact on mortality.

    Seriously, do not underestimate how significant and large the impact on mortality is. We go through the numbers in the above article, but in few words, looking at data from nearly 100,000 people, having or not having a sense of ikigai will decrease or increase (respectively) your mortality risk by a third to a half.

    So, finding your ikigai and pursuing it could be the best choice you make. Maybe you’ve already got it figured out, and if so, we can only recommend making sure to tend that particular garden, in the sense of making sure that you stay true to it as you go, for as long as it carries meaning for you.

    For example, this writer’s ikigai: to reduce suffering where and how I reasonably can without violating higher principles (e.g. triggering a global apocalypse on the grounds that nobody would be suffering afterwards would not be a way to pursue my ikigai). More prosaically: my work here at 10almonds helps me to fulfil that (by helping you to live your best healthy life!), as does a community volunteer role that I fulfil, as do some charitable endeavors. But it’s not all altruistic, because looking after my own health is part of my ikigai too, for I too am a person capable of suffering, and thus looking after my health helps minimize suffering as well.

    So, we’ll ask: What’s Your Ikigai?

    For more good ideas from Japan, see: 15 Easy Japanese Habits That Will Transform Your Health

    Finally: focus, but get synergistic

    Let’s assume you do want to do something health-specific (which is unlikely to be in conflict with the above in any case).

    So we’ll pose the same question again, just more specific now: what matters the most, healthwise?

    We have our own general answer in very broad strokes, in the form of the top 5 things that make the biggest difference to health, namely:

    1. Good diet
    2. Good exercise
    3. Good sleep
    4. Not drinking
    5. Not smoking

    If we were to add a sixth in terms of things that make a huge difference, it would be “manage stress effectively” and a seventh, beyond the scope of our newsletter, would be “don’t be socioeconomically disadvantaged” (e.g. poor, and/or part of some disprivileged minority group).

    But as for those five we listed, it still leaves the question: what are the few most effective things we can do to improve them? Where can we invest our time/energy/effort for greatest effect?

    And we answer that question here: These Top Few Things Make The Biggest Difference To Health ← this in turn includes “and what things to do to most benefit those 5 things”

    So, what’s this about “focus, but get synergistic”?

    It’s about how:

    • If you try to do everything at once from scratch, you will probably fail, likely immediately.
      • So picking one thing to focus on the most is important.
    • If you do only one thing and ignore all other aspects of health, your health will fail, likely quickly.
      • For example, “get x amount of protein per day” is great, but you do nothing but that, you might as well book your hospital trip now

    So, to avoid falling into either of those traps, it’s best to do a little of everything, with a strong focus on something.

    Let’s say you want to focus on your heart health. That’s great. Now remember the 5 things from just above, and ask yourself:

    Now, we only have so much room (and this writer just noticed she’s already done double the word count of what she’s supposed to, but never mind, you get bonus material today), so we can’t give you a list like that for every possible area of health you might personally choose to focus on, so the message here is “take this model and apply it to the area you want to focus on”.

    So, that’s the focus, where’s the synergy?

    The synergy comes from applying that model. For example, if you eat better, you’ll sleep better. If you sleep better, you’ll exercise better. And so forth. But since it’s hard to focus on all the things at once, that’s why we pick one focal thing to orient the other things around.

    Writer’s example: I will, all being well, have a major operation in a few months. The risk is low; don’t worry about me. However, it means that I’ll be focusing on being in optimal health for that, to do my best to ensure everything goes smoothly, and that I can recover as quickly and easily as possible afterwards. In particular, I’ll be focusing on my circulation, since a) that is where the main risk lies, no matter how small that risk may be, and b) that is what will best hasten my recovery afterwards. I’ll still be looking after all other parts of my health as best I reasonably can, but circulation will be my focal point, that everything else points to. I’ll be asking myself how best to eat for that, how best to exercise for that, etc.

    Using the handy search feature in the top right-hand corner of almost any 10almonds page, we can find articles that are relevant to this focus:

    www.10almonds.com/?s=circulation ← lots of good things easily forgotten if one doesn’t re-read them from time to time! Much more specific to circulation than the general heart health examples we went through, by the way.

    You can do the same, just substituting your own keyword (i.e. your own thing you want to focus on), and then apply the model shown above (where we gave the example of heart health, asking yourself the same questions, just, with your focus, e.g. brain health, mobility, glucose metabolism, gut health, etc)

    Want further pointers to get you started?

    Check out:

    Do You Have A Personalized Health Plan? (Here’s How)

    Want to make sure you actually follow through?

    We’ve got you covered:

    Take care!

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  • You Don’t Need To Stretch After Your Workout For Better Flexibility

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    Liv Townsend, flexibility coach, explains why:

    Some of the claimed benefits are a bit of a stretch

    The reason you don’t need to stretch after a workout to improve flexibility is because research doesn’t show meaningful benefits for recovery, soreness, or muscle “relengthening.”

    On which note: contrary to a myth floating around, muscles don’t permanently shorten from strength training, so there’s nothing that needs to be “stretched back out” after a session.

    To bust a few further myths: post-workout stretching also doesn’t meaningfully reduce delayed-onset muscle soreness, speed up recovery, or “flush out lactic acid”.

    So, why do you sometimes feel tight after a workout? It’s just because of increased blood flow (the “pump”) and/or fatigue affecting how smoothly your muscles contract and relax, that’s all.

    In reality, lifting through a full range of motion already stretches your muscles under load, which can improve flexibility as effectively—or sometimes more effectively—than passive stretching. For this reason, movements that allow deeper ranges contribute more to flexibility than partial-range exercises.

    That said, passive stretching does still have a role, because static stretching (a kind of passive stretching) improves flexibility by training your nervous system to tolerate more stretching, which is different from what strength training provides.

    Still, the timing of when you do that doesn’t matter much; stretching works through consistent exposure over time, not because it’s done immediately after a workout.

    A practical approach instead: if you’re short on time and/or dislike post-workout stretching, skip it and instead do dedicated stretching sessions 2x per week for 10–15 minutes.

    For more on all of this, enjoy:

    Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like:

    Overdone It? How To Speed Up Recovery After Exercise ← for what actually helps in that regard!

    PS: this above-linked article of ours also cites some of the research being talked about above, and further details how post-workout stretching probably won’t help—so you know we’re singing from the same songsheet on this one!

    Take care!

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  • More veg, less meat: the latest global update on a diet that’s good for people and the planet

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    A long-awaited expert update on the dietary changes needed to support both human and planetary health comes out clearly in favour of a plant-based approach.

    The EAT-Lancet Commission says a shift towards its planetary health diet, released last week, could prevent 40,000 early deaths a day across the world and cut agricultural methane emissions by 15% by 2050.

    The diet promotes more vegetables, fruits, whole grains, legumes and nuts, with only modest amounts of meat, fish, poultry and dairy.

    If you imagine a plate, half would be filled with vegetables and fruit (with more vegetables than fruit). Most of the remaining half would be whole grains and plant proteins. There’s room for small amounts of animal products and healthy fats, but very little added sugar. Notably, butter doesn’t get a mention.

    The most contentious aspect is the commission’s recommendation on meat: just 14 grams per day of red meat and 29 grams per day of poultry – that’s roughly one small steak, one lamb chop, or two chicken drumsticks per week.

    New Zealand’s traditional diet is a long way off this recommendation. But my recent study of teenage girls across the country suggests a shift is underway, with most embracing a predominantly plant-based diet.

    Getty Images

    How we know what’s best to eat

    Many factors influence food choices – hunger, emotions, health, culture, media, taste, habits and family traditions.

    Evidence-based dietary guidance, such as national food and nutrition guidelines, also plays a role.

    In New Zealand, people may be familiar with the “5+ a day” message promoting fruit and vegetable consumption. That recommendation has since shifted to “7+ a day” as new evidence has emerged.

    Over the past decade, nutritional guidelines have increasingly incorporated environmental sustainability, acknowledging that around 30% of global emissions come from growing, processing and transporting food.

    The EAT-Lancet Commission took this sustainability focus further in its first release of the planetary health diet in 2019. It argued that by changing what we eat, reducing food waste and improving food production systems, we could feed a growing global population while minimising environmental damage.

    Less meat is a win-win

    This approach is a significant departure from traditional diets in Aotearoa New Zealand. The British-influenced “meat and three veg” (often with potatoes as one of the vegetables) and the Māori hāngi of pork, seafood, kumara and local greens don’t align neatly with the EAT-Lancet recommendations.

    One criticism of the original report was its limited consideration of indigenous food systems. In my view, the minimal inclusion of starchy vegetables such as potatoes, cassava, kumara, maize and millet is hard to justify. These are staple foods – affordable, widely available and important sources of energy for many communities.

    But most New Zealand adults consume nearly twice the recommended amount of protein. Reducing meat is therefore unlikely to lead to inadequate protein intakes.

    Currently, about 40% of New Zealanders’ protein comes from animal sources (meat, dairy, fish). The remaining 60% comes from plants.

    The belief that only animal proteins are of high quality – due to their amino acid profile and digestibility – is outdated. It’s a common misconception that some amino acid are only available through meat. Plants contain all essential amino acids, albeit in varying proportions.

    For most adults, a diet with smaller amounts of meat would be a win-win: better for their health and better for the planet.

    So, should New Zealand embrace the planetary health diet?

    In many ways, we already are. My study of teenage girls found those following an omnivorous diet got 69% of their energy from plant-based foods (ranging from 43% to 92%), while vegetarians averaged 83% (ranging from 51% to 100%).

    However, New Zealanders still consume more saturated fat than recommended and not enough dietary fibre. Shifting further toward the planetary health diet could help address these imbalances and reduce the risk of premature death from heart disease and cancer, our leading causes of mortality.

    A diet for people and the planet

    Perhaps unsurprisingly, the meat industry has been pushing back against the commission’s recommendations ever since the first release of the planetary health diet.

    A recent report published by the Changing Markets Foundation identifies a network of influential pro-meat voices in industry, academia and governments actively working to discredit the commission’s findings.

    Some nutrition academics have raised concerns about the relatively low quantity of meat and fish. Some experts argue the low amount of meat may not meet the nutritional needs of certain groups such as pregnant women and young children, who would benefit from the iron and zinc found in red meat because it is easier to absorb than from vegetable sources.

    Adding to the complexity is the global obsession with protein – often associated with meat. While fat and carbohydrates have been vilified, protein enjoys a nutritional halo.

    The updated guidelines place greater emphasis on environmental sustainability and, importantly, acknowledge the need to respect and empower diverse food cultures and uphold the universal human right to food.

    As we face the twin challenges of climate change and rising rates of diet-related disease, I argue the planetary health diet offers a recipe for a healthier, more sustainable future.

    It’s not about eliminating entire food groups or enforcing a one-size-fits-all approach. Rather, it’s about making thoughtful, evidence-based choices that nourish both people and the planet.

    Sheila Skeaff, Professor of Human Nutrition, University of Otago

    This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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  • To Err Is Human; To Forgive, Healthy

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    How To Forgive (And Why)

    There’s an old saying that holding onto a grudge is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die. If only it were so simple and easy as just choosing to let go!

    But it’s not, is it?

    When people have wronged us and/or wronged our loved ones, it’s hard to forgive, especially if they have not changed. For that matter, it can be hard to forgive ourselves for mistakes that we made, too.

    Either way, “drinking that poison” can be close to literal, in terms of what harboring such anger and resentment can do for our cortisol levels.

    So, what to do about it?

    If you have a dialogue with the person, our previous article on communication may help a lot.

    If you don’t, there are various other angles that can be taken:

    The Unsent Letter

    You can even send it, if you like, but it’s not the point here. The idea is to write to the person, expressing your grievances. But, (as per the above-linked article on communication) try to focus at least as much on your feelings as their actions. “When you did/said x, I felt y”, etc.

    This is important for helping you process your feelings. If you send the letter, it’s also important for the other person to be able to understand your feelings.

    Sometimes, we feel the things we do so strongly because we don’t have an outlet for them. Pouring out our emotions in such a fashion, on the other hand, means (to labor the metaphor) they’re no longer bottled up. Even just in and of itself, that can provide us a lot of relief.

    And when we the negative emotions are no longer such high pressure, it can be easier to let go of them.

    Mindfulness

    Following on from the above idea, a good strategy can be simply sitting and feeling everything you need to feel, noticing it without judgement, like a curious observer.

    Sometimes what we need is just to be heard, and that starts with hearing ourselves.

    Compassion

    There’s a Buddhist exercise that involves actively feeling compassion for three people: a loved one, a stranger, and an enemy. Many people report that it’s actually harder to feel compassion for a random stranger, than an enemy. Why? Because we don’t know them; we don’t know what’s good and bad about them in our estimation.

    If you’re reading this because you want to be able to gain the peace of being able to forgive someone (even if that someone is yourself), then in at least some respect right now, that person is in the “enemy” category. So how do we unpack that?

    To err is human. Everybody screws up sometimes. And also, everyone has a reason (or a complex of reasons) for acting the way they do. This does not mean that those reasons excuse the behavior, but it can explain it.

    You don’t get angry at a storm for soaking you through. Even if you might not understand the physics of it in the way a meteorologist might, you understand that there were things that led to that, and you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

    So why do we get angry at someone else for wronging us? Even if we might not understand the personal background of it in the way their psychologist or therapist might, we (hopefully) understand that there were things that caused them to be the way they were, and we were just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

    And ourselves? We probably know, when we made a mistake, why we made it. Maybe we were afraid, insecure, reactive, forgetful, or too focused on some other thing. Whatever it was, we did our best at the time and, apparently, our best wasn’t as good as we’d like.

    If we didn’t deserve forgiveness, we wouldn’t be critical of our past selves in the first place.

    And, the science is very clear that it’s important for our health for other reasons besides cortisol management, too.

    And as for others? They did the best they knew how. Maybe they were afraid, insecure, reactive, forgetful, or too focused on some other thing. Same story, different character.

    Remembering that can be key to “accepting the apology we never received”.

    Forgiving without forgetting

    Developing the ability to forgive is a useful tool for our own mental health. It doesn’t mean we must or even should make ourselves a doormat.

    “I forgive you” does not have to mean a clean slate; it means remembering that the thing happened, and just not holding on to the anger/resentment associated with it.

    It may be water under the bridge now, but it might have been a devastatingly destructive wave at the time, and continuing to acknowledge truth that is sensible. Just, from a position of peace now, hopefully.

    Don’t Forget…

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    Learn to Age Gracefully

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  • What Your Hands Can Tell You About Your Health

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    Dr. Siobhan Deshauer tells us what our hands say about our health—she’s not practicing palmistry though; she’s a rheumatologist, and everything here is about clinical signs of health/disease.

    The signs include…

    “Spider fingers” (which your writer here has; I always look like I’m ready to cast a spell of some kind), and that’s really the medical name, or arachnodactyly for those who like to get Greek about it. It’s about elongated digits. Elongated other bones too, typically, but the hands are where it’s most noticeable.

    The tests:

    • Make a fist with your thumb inside (the way you were told never to punch); does your thumb poke out the side notably past the edge of your hand, unassisted (i.e., don’t poke it, just let it rest where it goes to naturally)?
    • Take hold of one of your wrists with the fingers of the other hand, wrapping them around. If they reach, that’s normal; if there’s a notable overlap, we’re in Spidey-territory now.

    If both of those are positive results for you, Dr. Deshauer recommends getting a genetic test to see if you have Marfan syndrome, because…

    Arachnodactyly often comes from a genetic condition called Marfan syndrome, and as well as the elongated digits of arachnodactyly, Marfan syndrome affects the elastic fibers of the body, and comes with the trade-off of an increased risk of assorted kinds of sudden death (if something goes “ping” where it shouldn’t, like the heart or lungs).

    But it can also come from Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome!

    EDS is characterized by hypermobility of joints, meaning that they are easily flexed past the normal human limit, and/but also easily dislocated.

    The tests:

    • Put your hand flat on a surface, and using your other hand, see how far back your fingers will bend (without discomfort, please); do they go further than 90°?
    • Can you touch your thumb to your wrist* (on the same side?)

    *She says “wrist”; for this arachnodactylic writer here it’s halfway down my forearm, but you get the idea

    For many people this is a mere quirk and inconvenience, for others it can be more serious and a cause of eventual chronic pain, and for a few, it can be very serious and come with cardiovascular problems (similar to the Marfan syndrome issues above). This latter is usually diagnosed early in life, though, such as when a child comes in with an aneurysm, or there’s a family history of it. Another thing to watch out for!

    Check out the video for more information on these, as well as what our fingerprints can mean, indicators of diabetes (specifically, a test for diabetic cheiroarthropathy that you can do at home, like the tests above), carpal tunnel syndrome, Raynaud phenomenon, and more!

    She covers 10 main medical conditions in total:

    Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

    Want to read more?

    Take care!

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  • Yoga Teacher: Avoid Later Regrets—Do This One Thing Now

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    The best time to start this was decades ago. The next best time is now, or you will surely regret it later:

    Stay strong

    After 30, women usually lose about 0.5% of muscle mass per year; around menopause, that loss can jump to 3% annually.

    It’s not a guaranteed loss, but in the 4–5 years before menopause, fluctuating hormones make building muscle much harder, so starting early is big help if you’ve not already passed that point.

    As for why it matters, an overwhelming weight of evidence from countless studies links higher muscle mass and regular strength training (2–3 times a week) to longer life and lower chronic disease risk, which is no surprise, since muscle supports metabolism, weight control, blood sugar regulation, joint protection, bone density, and injury prevention.

    In short: start strength training now for future health, confidence, and resilience—prevention is better than cure.

    You may be thinking “yes, yes, I know this already”.

    But… Are you actually doing it? Knowing doesn’t help unless you actually do it! So please do:

    Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

    Want to learn more?

    You might also like:

    Increase Your Muscle Mass Boost By 26% (No Extra Effort, No Supplements)

    Take care!

    Don’t Forget…

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