#304 WEIGHT LIFTING IS A WASTE OF TIME

Dr. John Jaquish is an expert in Osteogenic Loading and joins Dr. Susanne to talk about bone density, load-bearing on bones, healthy calcium levels in the body, and amino acids.

Full Transcription

You’re listening to Radio MD. She’s a chiropractic physician, lecturer, author, entrepreneur, and talk show host. She’s Dr. Susanne Bennett. It’s time now for Wellness for Life Radio. Here’s Dr. Susanne.

Dr. Susanne Bennett: Three months ago, I fractured my fifth metatarsal bone on my left foot. Now that’s the bone that the pinky toe is connected to. I was running out of my hotel room in Mexico barefoot and landed improperly on one of the steps. Now I heard a loud snap, just like you would hear when you take a stick and break it over your knee. I knew right away I fractured my foot bone and I just remember wishing if only I kept my sandals on while running out of the room, maybe my Mexico vacation would have been amazing. Anyway, long story short, my body is having a tough time healing it. In hindsight, the orthopedist should have put me in a non-weight-bearing permanent cast and instructed me to keep off the foot for at least six to eight weeks. But instead, she put me in a boot and told me that I could walk on it, as long as I didn’t feel pain.

Dr. Susanne Bennett: Up until then, I’ve had an extremely healthy body and felt really good about my physicality. I’ve never broken a bone and I’ve had optimal levels of vitamin D at 75 nanograms per milliliter and I take the best bone supplements available, as well as workout regularly with weight bearing exercises. But still with all that, at eight 58 years old, my lower levels of anabolic hormones, such as testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone, I’m sure didn’t help and my foot needed more time to heal even after eight weeks and I am still in a boot at 16 weeks. Now thank goodness that I’m going to be going next week to get it x-rayed again, to see if I can get rid of this boot. Otherwise, I may be a candidate for surgery, and this is the last thing I want, especially during this COVID-19 pandemic.

Dr. Susanne Bennett: Now, my question is, could I have prevented this fracture in any way? Maybe if my bones were a bit stronger? I do know that I’ve had a mild case of osteopenia and that’s only because of my age, but I have been on an excellent nutrition and exercise bone building program to prevent osteoporosis, which is the severe bone loss that’s age related, of course, and this condition that 54 million Americans suffer from. Now, studies suggest that approximately one in two women and up to one in four men, age 50 and older, will break a bone due to osteoporosis. And although I don’t have osteoporosis, I don’t like the fact that I’m part of that statistics now, which is why I can’t tell you how excited I am to talk to our next guest today on Wellness for Life Radio. We have Dr. John Jaquish and he’s a biomedical engineer from Rushmore University, who’s also an expert in Osteogenic Loading and has now helped over 30,000 individuals with their bone health. So excited to have you here, Dr. Jaquish.

Dr. John Jaquish: Thanks for having me. That number is well over 300,000, actually.

Dr. Susanne Bennett: Oh my God, I forgot the number then. You’re so cool. So thank you so much.

Dr. John Jaquish: Whoever cut and pasted it from the website, probably didn’t highlight one of the zeros. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. I can’t wait to tell you the story.

Dr. Susanne Bennett: Oh, yeah. You’ve got some amazing stuff that I want to hear about and particularly about your mom’s health. Your mom’s health and how she inspired you to go to this route towards bone health for the world.

Dr. John Jaquish: Sure. She did inspire me, mostly because I realized very quickly that most exercise and nutritional options were very nonsensical. So you’re supposed to do loading. You’re supposed to do load bearing exercise. We’re told that. Well, to what degree? It’s a little like the aspirin recommendation. So you have a headache, you take aspirin. Well, five milligrams or 5,000? Well, five milligrams won’t do anything, 5,000 will kill you. What about 350? That’ll get rid of your headache and the likelihood of side effects is very low. So every recommendation should come with a dosage, but saying load bearing exercise.

Dr. John Jaquish: I’ve lectured in many venues with groups of post-menopausal women that say, “Is a glass of wine load bearing? Because if so, I’m going to do great.” So, right? I mean, they’re making light of it, but they’re also pointing out that the recommendation is very poor and completely lacking of what is relevant and what is not relevant. So what I determined, by just reading the clinical literature, is anything for the hip joint, we don’t know so much about the spine, but for the hip joint, which requires the most loading, you need to exceed 4.2 multiples of body weight.

Dr. Susanne Bennett: Okay, say that again. 4.2 multiples of body weights. So that’s a huge amount, is it not?

Dr. John Jaquish: It is a huge amount. And it’s the amount that no one is getting, who thinks that walking for their osteoporosis is going to do anything. Walking will do nothing.

Dr. Susanne Bennett: Right.

Dr. John Jaquish: Absolutely nothing. Most fitness training, even weight… They say weight bearing, weight training. Only the strongest people in the world are exceeding 4.2 multiples of body weight. So most people who go to the gym and they’re squatting with one and a half times their body weight, they’re doing absolutely nothing for their bone. Doesn’t mean

Dr. Susanne Bennett: Well, that’s shocking.

Dr. John Jaquish: crosstalk or not healthy. They’re doing great things for their cardiovascular health, for their cellular health, but they’re not doing anything for bones. So, I decided just telling my mother to be more active, which was a ridiculous recommendation because she was already an avid hiker, she did a lot of garden work. She was already doing load bearing. And there are many women who will be listening to this, remembering the load bearing stuff they did before they got diagnosed with osteoporosis and wondering, what did I do wrong? What happened that was incorrect was your doctor give you bad information. Load bearing, but how much load? And they always leave that part out because most physicians don’t know.

Dr. John Jaquish: So once I made this discovery, I thought, okay, I’m going to build a medical device that’s going to apply forces to emulate high-impact, meaning giving the benefit of high-impact without the risks. So we just take the risk out of it. And so what we have now is locations called OsteoStrong where these are little franchised clinics where people go in and they go through about a 10 minute protocol where they load every long bone in the body that is susceptible to osteoporosis. So for example, the skull is not susceptible to bone density loss. The humerus bone, your upper arm, that one is. So we load those bones and we load them far beyond the minimum dose response level and then trigger growth.

Dr. Susanne Bennett: So when you say load them… Okay, so, you just mentioned 4.2. I can’t even imagine putting that kind of stress on my body, that much load. So then how is your machine different? What are these… How are they different from the regular, let’s say, exercise machines that are for a squat, let’s say, or a leg press? How are they different?

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, the squats and the leg presses allow you to go a full range of motion. So a full range of motion is great for a number of reasons, but we have very different capacities in different ranges of motion. So for example, when you’re squatting down and your legs are parallel to the floor, you can hold X amount of weight. When your knees are almost locked out and you’re almost standing up, so 120 degree angle behind the knee joint, you’re capable of seven times the amount of force that you were capable of at the bottom. And coincidentally, I have a book coming out that is about this called Weight Lifting is a Waste of Time because it is. It’s just absolutely awful. It encourages injury and doesn’t really stimulate much growth and there are many people who’ve spent years in gyms trying to make weights transform their body with no results, yet they continue to go.

Dr. John Jaquish: So what we have to look at from first, a bone density perspective, is we are capable of incredible forces in very specific position. So for bone density, we isolate those very specific positions where we’re capable of inducing, so absorbing or producing, massive forces, the highest force as possible. And these are the same positions that a human would naturally absorb high-impact. So Susanne, if you trip and fall, you’re going to protect yourself with… You’re going to put your hands out in front of you. The back of the hand will be in line with the clavicle and there’ll be 120 degree angle between the upper and lower arm. So little kids when they fall, they naturally know to do this. Elderly people, if they have time to react, they naturally do this.

Dr. John Jaquish: So we take these positions in the medical device, and then we analyze the force that is produced through sophisticated measuring equipment and we get the positioning correct every time with robotics. So there’s a robotic arm that moves your body and puts you in exactly the same position every time, exactly calculated so that you’re in the optimized position. And then the person can self-impose loading, so you create the load, and then the computer system analyzes what exactly you’re producing and if you’re improving, if you’re not improving. And not improving isn’t necessarily a bad thing, as long as you’re getting really close to your previous loading events. It means you’re growing bone density.

Dr. Susanne Bennett: So what I’m hearing then is that the machine is not putting you in a movement per se, but an actual static position so that you get the load on the bones, depending on which bone we’re talking about, you mentioned about the arm for the humerus. And so you position your body in a certain way to load that bone at a certain vector, certain angle, but let’s say that if it’s for your legs, for instance, your femur and your lower legs, then you’re going to be doing it more in an upright position or whatever it is, where you are getting that axial stress.

Dr. John Jaquish: That’s right. Yes, axial. We want to load the bone on its axis. Now the only thing that’s slightly different than what you described was it’s not actually static, and this is one of the craziest things. You can actually see the bones compress. So there is a range of motion because the bones in question are getting shorter just for a few seconds and then they spring back into position and this is what creates the growth.

Dr. Susanne Bennett: Interesting, that is not in the joint where you see the bones that what’s getting shorter. Is it the joint that’s taking on the brunt of the stress or… People don’t realize that bone is actually malleable.

Dr. John Jaquish: Bendable.

Dr. Susanne Bennett: That’s what you’re saying.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, it is.

Dr. Susanne Bennett: It’s bendable.

Dr. John Jaquish: It is. Yeah, so the entire bone, the entire bone compresses. Now there are softer tissue in the joint, so within the joint, there is that compressive force, which actually induces growth in fibrocartilage of the surrounding tissue as the joints and tendons and ligaments become more powerful. So OsteoStrong reduces joint pain as well. So anyone with osteoarthritis, we can reduce their pain because they have better support around the joint.

Dr. Susanne Bennett: That totally makes sense. So then you just mentioned that it was 10 minutes long, which isn’t a lot. And how many days do you suggest? Is it a daily thing?

Dr. John Jaquish: You can only do it once a week. The metabolic cycle of bone is between five and 10 days with an osteogenic event. It’s five and 10 days for the body to fully respond from a primary growth standpoint. Secondary growth takes over a hundred days.

Dr. Susanne Bennett: Wow.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. So bone has a very slow metabolism.

Dr. Susanne Bennett: Right.

Dr. John Jaquish: Which is why we reach peak bone mass and basically don’t do anything significant to bone density and it takes most women till after menopause to where bone density is a problem and you reach peak bone mass at 30 years of age. So there might be 20 years in between those events and bone density is going down slowly, but not enough to be a noticeable problem. That’s why that gap is there.

Dr. Susanne Bennett: Right, right, right. Well, goodness. This is fascinating. I love this information because you’re sharing information that majority, as you even mentioned earlier, doctors don’t know, and this is clearly something that you’ve done, as you said, over 300,000 people and you’ve seen results, so let’s talk about the results. There’s a certain percentage. I’m sure. After how many months do you see a percentage of increased rate of bone growth or bone density increasing?

Dr. John Jaquish: Sure. So, as I said, it took my mother 18 months to completely reverse her osteoporosis and she’s in her eighties now and she has the bones of a 30 year old. So her T-score is almost zero. But it took her, it took her 18 months. It takes most people, I would say, two to three years. My mother’s therapy was a little more aggressive because I was standing next to her giving her encouragement, which she described as yelling at her.

Dr. Susanne Bennett: Yes.

Dr. John Jaquish: But I realized later on the point of discomfort is really all you need to go to, to trigger the growth. So you just want to stop short of being uncomfortable, so it feels very good to actually have bones compressed and release because the blood flow increases immediately. People feel very alert and happy and that experience lasts for days after your therapy session. So the time under tension is very short, just a few seconds per exercise. The whole protocol takes about 10 minutes. And then you go and tolerate it once a week because you want to let the body respond. And yeah, like I said, most people two or three years and they’ll build enough bone density to last them 30 years.

Dr. Susanne Bennett: Amazing. So obviously with your mom in her years being post-menopausal like I am, it would be… It didn’t matter, in fact, for her to have more hormones. It didn’t matter at all. In fact, all you did was stress the bone and you stressed it in the right position, in the right amount, in the right direction and the bone did exactly what it’s supposed to do, which is grow more. When it’s put under that state and creating some form of adaptation obviously, it’s adaptable.

Dr. John Jaquish: When speaking with orthopedic surgeons or physical medicine and rehabilitation physicians, we frequently laugh about this, but there is a very strong mental bias with most people where they have this idea that a change in your hormones or change in your nutrition is going to drastically change something that has become deconditioned in the body. And this is absolutely false. It’s sort of like you can have a weightlifter who has excess protein in his or her diet and then lifts weights. And I asked this of internal medicine physicians all the time when they say, “Well, all you really need is more growth hormone,” or, “All you really need is more protein in the diet.” And I said, “Okay, what if a weightlifter just takes protein and doesn’t lift any weights? Are they going to build any muscle?” Of course the answer is no.

Dr. John Jaquish: Okay, why would you expect bone to grow without the stimulus? So you give it the building blocks, but no stimulus. Why would you expect it to change? And really the only pharmaceutical category out there that has worked for bone density is an anti-catabolic, which just keeps the old bone from being lost. It doesn’t do anything to create new bone and then has side effects seen as irregular fractures, so shattering a bone as opposed to a clean break, which then people can’t recover from. So it once again shows that you need the stimulus, just flooding your body with building blocks, flooding your body with calcium, will give you kidney stones.

Dr. Susanne Bennett: Got it.

Dr. John Jaquish: It won’t help your bone density, unless you give the bones a reason to pull the calcium in and recalcify that material.

Dr. Susanne Bennett: Which is probably why our levels of heart disease and calcification within the blood vessels is super high. There is what’s called a calcium scan that you can do for your heart blood vessels and see the level of calcium that’s deposited within the arteries and in the arterials. And that can give you an idea of how healthy the heart is with the calcification score.

Dr. John Jaquish: Right, right.

Dr. Susanne Bennett: So not only is stressing the bone properly and getting the right type of exercising, the type of exercise you need to build more bone, to get that bone calcium to go into the bone, it basically will help other types of conditions, including heart disease. You mentioned catabolic drugs. Is it a drug that you’re thinking about?

Dr. John Jaquish: Oh, it’s the whole drug category.

Dr. Susanne Bennett: Anti-catabolic, I mean. Anti-catabolic.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, it’s an anti-catabolic, the whole entire bisphosphonate category and-

Dr. Susanne Bennett: Right, okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: And there’s another anti-catabolic that isn’t a bisphosphonate technically, but same or similar mechanisms.

Dr. Susanne Bennett: Okay. Let me ask you this doctor, you’re familiar with the term sarcopenia?

Dr. John Jaquish: Of course, yeah, the loss of musculature based on-

Dr. Susanne Bennett: Exactly.

Dr. John Jaquish: It’s not based on aging as a lot of physicians will say. It’s based on lack of activity.

Dr. Susanne Bennett: I agree totally about that one. But there’s studies done because in my practice, I use a great deal of amino acid therapy. And the one that I use is called Super8 Aminos. Anyway, what I found with my patients who do have, I take it myself, with bone issues, with muscle issues, even people who’ve had surgery and they are in bed, let’s say, because they’ve had surgery or they’ve hurt themselves, the level of muscle loss and bone loss, at least for sure muscle, I could tell because we’ve done measurements of the girth and whatnot, but anyway, their muscle loss is much less if they take in amino acids, even if they’re in the hospital bed. They’ve done studies out there regarding that with amino acid therapy. Do you still feel the same thing about that?

Dr. John Jaquish: Well, everything is a building block.

Dr. Susanne Bennett: What I mean is amino acids that… You believe that amino acids might not help?

Dr. John Jaquish: You need the body to use those building blocks. So again, like amino acids… Now, now, you’re speaking a little bit from people who have had damage. I produce an amino acid product that is essential amino acids also, and it’s very anabolic and we’re targeting at people who are trying to build musculature. But the repair of cells assisting in autophagy, using the autophagic process for the non-essential amino acids and then introducing the essential amino acid is going to help cell regeneration. And we’ve seen this in a number of studies. So ultimately, the essential amino acids are very critical.

Dr. John Jaquish: They have to be in the right proportions and they have to be made correctly. I see a lot of them are synthesized via various means and I don’t think they’re used by the body at all, because I know when you look at… There’s some studies that use a bacterial fermentation product and those do very well inaudible made and I see other ones that don’t use bacterial fermentation and people get no results. But some of the… If you know who Professor [Lucca 00:23:34], but he started treating radiation and chemotherapy patients with essential amino acids that were made via bacterial fermentation. They were able to regenerate their cells much faster.

Dr. Susanne Bennett: Right, exactly.

Dr. John Jaquish: Faster than with any pharmaceutical.

Dr. Susanne Bennett: Right. I’m a big believer in amino acids, essential amino acids, so I’m glad that we chatted about it. Before we’re done, I want to just go just a little bit about OsteoStrong because that is the location that people all around this country can go to. I know there’s various amounts of locations around, is that correct? Is it called OsteoStrong Centers? I don’t know what-

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. The clinics are called OsteoStrong and there’s 130 clinics in eight different countries right now. But we’re opening them every week, every other week.

Dr. Susanne Bennett: That’s fantastic.

Dr. John Jaquish: They’re growing very, very quickly.

Dr. Susanne Bennett: At these clinics, there’s a full set of these machines that everyone can go through for 10 minutes and it could be of any age, right? I mean, not children, but adult.

Dr. John Jaquish: You want someone who fits in the equipment. So yes, I mean, children can use it, but it’s designed for adult sized people. Children get impact anyway. They’re running around. That’s where they build their bones. That’s where bone density comes from.

Dr. Susanne Bennett: Mm-hmm (affirmative).

Dr. John Jaquish: So, you think about a toddler who pounds his or her feet against the ground, doesn’t toe strike when they run. So is it possible that they’re increasing the amount of impact that the foot gets as… They’re doing it because they don’t really have a balance to toe strike, but it also could be they’re just building bone density.

Dr. Susanne Bennett: Correct.

Dr. John Jaquish: That may be an evolutionary process.

Dr. Susanne Bennett: Just instinctively knowing to do that.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, yeah. Little 40 pound kids, they sound like elephants when they’re running through your house.

Dr. Susanne Bennett: Yes, heavy foot.

Dr. John Jaquish: They’re building bone density. That’s what they’re doing.

Dr. Susanne Bennett: Well, I’m telling you-

Dr. John Jaquish: Just pounding.

Dr. Susanne Bennett: I can’t wait til I get out of this boot and I’m thinking to myself, I mean, I’ve never felt really my age because I’m super active. I’m youthful in every way, inside and out. My mindset is so much more youthful than someone my age. And this thing took me for a loop. Getting stuck, and thank goodness it was during the pandemic, but even so, I’m not a happy camper. And I’m even thinking that even if it’s non-union, it’s not going to be a complete healed, I’m thinking I’m not going to even do the surgery because I don’t want to go in there. It’s just the thing. But anyway, I’m hoping next week I’ll find out it’ll be good. Before I’m done, where can we find out more about what you do? Where can we get… And your book, again, your book, the title of your book, please share that and where can we get that book, anyone who wants to learn more about bone and strengthening, loading the bone.

Dr. John Jaquish: So you can go to the Jaquish Biomedical, J-A-Q-U-I-S-H biomedical.com website and you can find all the things I work on. I also have another product called X3 Bar that influences musculature. It takes the same logic of how we have variable capacity, therefore, we use very aggressive variable loading for triggering muscle growth, which then in turn makes you much leaner. That’s available on the website, as well as the protein I was discussing. So Jaquishbiomedical.com. And if you want to find me on social media, it’s Dr. John Jaquish. And then on Instagram @drjaquish That’s on Facebook, D-R. J-O-H-N, last name J-A-Q-U-I-S-H. And then on Instagram, it’s just D-R-J-A-Q, that should get you there. And I’ll probably be the top result when you type that in the search bar.

Dr. Susanne Bennett: Oh, thank you. Thank you, Dr. Jaquish.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah.

Dr. Susanne Bennett: Such a great interview. I’m really happy we got to talk and I might check out, because I know one of your locations is very close by me in Santa Monica, and I’m going to go check it out when we can open up in Los Angeles to various places.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah. Yeah, there is one right there. It’s in Mar Vista, specifically.

Dr. Susanne Bennett: Oh, okay. Okay.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, yeah.

Dr. Susanne Bennett: Mar Vista, it is.

Dr. John Jaquish: Yeah, if you’re in Santa Monica, you’re very close.

Dr. Susanne Bennett: Awesome. Thanks again, Dr. Jaquish, and thanks for what you’re doing for everyone. Making sure that we all prevent bone loss and prevent fractures, because we do know that as we age, one of the things that can reduce our ability to live longer is actually a fracture and it’s definitely been documented that. Thanks again.

Dr. John Jaquish: Awesome. Thanks, Susanne.

Dr. Susanne Bennett: All right.

Dr. John Jaquish: All right.