Build Effi­cient Meta­bolic Machinery

Step 2 of Dr. Lavine’s Ten Step Pro­gram to Con­quer Chronic Illness

Chronic pain and chronic ill­ness drain your body of its strength.  Not only do you feel weaker, you actu­ally lose mus­cle bulk.  And the longer the prob­lem goes on, the more  mus­cle mass you lose.

But wait, it gets worse…

Mus­cles are your body’s largest store­house of pro­tein.  But pro­tein also forms the work­ing nuts and bolts of your inter­nal organs – your liver and kid­neys, for instance.  Your intesti­nal lin­ing.  And your immune system.

If you’re los­ing mus­cle, you’re los­ing the back-up pro­tein reser­voir needed to replen­ish these organs.  That means a grad­ual dete­ri­o­ra­tion in your abil­ity to effi­ciently digest and absorb food, fight infec­tion, fil­ter your blood, and do every­thing else your body is designed to do.

It’s prac­ti­cally the def­i­n­i­tion of chronic illness.

How do you stop the down­ward slide?

You’ve already made a good start if you’ve com­pleted the first step of Dr. Lavine’s Ten Step Pro­gram to Con­quer Chronic Ill­ness – Reduce Body Acid­ity. Excess body acid­ity is known to lead to mus­cle loss.

Now take the next step.

First, deter­mine if mus­cle loss is a sig­nif­i­cant issue for you.

You can do this with a med­ical test of the amount of nitro­gen in your urine.  (Nitro­gen in your urine comes from mus­cle breakdown.)

But there are sim­ple ways you can assess your mus­cle sta­tus for yourself.

Are you hav­ing trou­ble open­ing a jar?  Car­ry­ing bags of groceries?

It’s easy to obtain a house­hold scale that also esti­mates your per­cent­age of body fat.

(These scales test how eas­ily a mild elec­tric cur­rent runs through your body.  Fat is an elec­tric insu­la­tor, so the cur­rent will flow more quickly if you’re lean.)

You won’t be mea­sur­ing your mus­cle sta­tus directly.  But the higher your body fat, the lower your mus­cle mass.  And vice versa.

A fit woman will have a body fat per­cent­age of 24% or less.  And, for a woman, 25–31% is con­sid­ered “accept­able.”  If your body fat per­cent­age is above 31%, the metab­o­lism of your body is out of whack.

For men, the stan­dards are a lit­tle tighter.  A fit man will have a body fat per­cent­age under 17%, and “accept­able” would be 18–25%.

Don’t go off on a tan­gent with all this dis­cus­sion of body fat.  Don’t start think­ing, “Oh my gosh — it’s the same old story – I’ve got to lose weight.”

I don’t care about your weight.  You don’t have to lose weight.  Really.  I mean it.

But if your num­bers are out of whack you do have to restore mus­cle.

Restor­ing lean mus­cle mass is the sec­ond step of Dr. Lavine’s Ten Step Pro­gram to Con­quer Chronic Ill­ness.

When you’re ready to move for­ward to this sec­ond step of the pro­gram, there are four basic strate­gies you’ll follow:

• Main­tain the improved acid-alkaline bal­ance you achieved in step 1. (With­out the right pH bal­ance, your muscle-building efforts could backfire.)
• Add sup­ple­men­tal pro­tein to your diet as needed.
• Engage in a con­sis­tent, sim­ple, safe weight-training pro­gram. (It’s easy – I’ll coach you through it)
• Choose selected muscle-enhancing nutri­tional sup­ple­ments to boost your results further.

It can be chal­leng­ing to reverse a long-term down­ward health trend.  But you can do it with a con­sis­tent, sys­tem­atic approach.  Don’t give up.  Cher­ish your small vic­to­ries (and build on them.)  Get the sup­port you need.

One way to get needed sup­port is with Dr. Lavine’s Ten Step Pro­gram to Con­quer Chronic Ill­ness.

Deepen Your Body of Knowledge

More on body fat per­cent.