Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Dr. Kevin Stone on How to Stay Fit, Injury-Free, and Perform Your Best As You Age

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey there and welcome to another episode of Muscle for Life. I am your host Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today to hear some bad news and that is we're all getting older and we all are going to be old one day. But the good news is that doesn't mean that we have to stop doing all of the physical or at least most of the physical stuff that we like to do and the sports that we like to do and weightlifting and whatever else. It doesn't mean that we have to get hurt and give these things up. It doesn't mean we have to turn into a geriatric couch potato. And in today's interview, you are going to hear from Dr. Kevin Stone on athleticism, injury prevention and recovery, maintaining joint health, and staying fit as we get older, staying super fit as we get older. And if you are not familiar with Dr.

Starting point is 00:00:56 Stone, he is a world-renowned expert in sports medicine and orthopedics, and his work at the Stone Clinic as an orthopedic surgeon and in the field of joint replacement and treatment has resulted in 50 patents and various publications, grants, and awards. He's also the chairman of the Stone Research Foundation, which is a non-profit that pushes forward the science of accelerating healing and treating injured joints. And beyond all that, beyond the operating room, Dr. Stone also has expertise and practical knowledge from working with athletes of all ages and types and levels, all the way up to Olympic athletes, professional skiers, professional ballet dancers, and many more. And in his newest book, which is called Play Forever,

Starting point is 00:01:46 Dr. Stone talks about staying injury-free and helping you do what you love until the age 100 and beyond. And in today's discussion, Dr. Stone and I talk about listening to your body. What does that mean really? And knowing the difference between bad pain and soreness. We talk about stimulating the body to accelerate healing, particularly in regards to joints. We talk about joint nutrition, like lubrication, stem cells, and PRP, which is platelet-rich plasma. And he explains what that is in the interview. Dr. Stone talks about how mindset impacts performance and injury recovery, how to use injury to come back stronger, and more. Before we get into it, I've worked with tens of thousands of people over the years, and the biggest thing I see with the

Starting point is 00:02:40 people I have helped the most is they're often missing just one crucial piece of the puzzle. And if you are having trouble reaching your fitness goals as quickly as you'd like, I'm going to guess it is the same thing with you. You are probably doing a lot of things right, but dollars to donuts, there's something you're not doing right. And that is what is giving you most of the grief. Maybe it's your calories. Maybe it's your macros. Maybe it's your exercise selection. Maybe it's food choices. Maybe you are not progressively overloading your muscles and whatever it is. Here's what's important. Once you identify that one thing, once you figure it out, that's when everything finally clicks. That's when you

Starting point is 00:03:27 start making serious progress. It's kind of like typing in your password to log into your computer. You can have all the letters, numbers, and symbols, right? Except just one. And what happens? You can't log in, right? But as soon as you get that last remaining character right, voila, you're in business. And I bet the same can be said about the body you really want. You are probably just one major shift, one important insight, one powerful new behavior away from easy street. And that's why I offer VIP one-on-one coaching where my team and I can help you do exactly that. This is high level coaching where we look at everything you're doing and we help you figure out that one thing that is missing for you. And it can be a couple of things too. That's fine. There's no extra charge

Starting point is 00:04:18 for that. But once we figure it out, that's when you start making real progress. That's when you start looking better and feeling better. So if you're ready to make more progress in the next three months than maybe you did in the last three years, and yes, that has happened for many of our clients, head on over to muscleforlife.show slash VIP. That's muscleforlife.show slash VIP and schedule your free consultation call, which by the way, is not a high pressure sales call. It's just a friendly chat where we get to learn about you and your goals and your lifestyle, and then determine whether our program is right for you. Because sometimes we do speak with people who just aren't a good fit for our service,

Starting point is 00:05:03 but we almost always have other experts and other resources to refer those people to. So if you are still listening to me and you are even slightly interested, go schedule your free consultation call now at muscleforlife.show slash VIP. Hey, Kevin, thank you for taking the time to come and speak with me and my, my crowd. Glad to join you. Yeah. I wanted to get you on the show because you have a lot of expertise in some areas that I get asked a fair amount about, and that is involving performance and aging, injury prevention and aging, injury recovery and aging, because I have a lot of people in the, in the 40 plus, uh, 50, 60 plus even, uh, buckets who

Starting point is 00:05:56 are just getting into fitness for the first time or getting back into it or who are into it and want to, they want to, they want to get as far as they can get without doing anything stupid. Um, or if, if something happens, not even necessarily from doing something stupid, they want to know what's the best way, uh, to bounce back from that. So maybe let's talk about performance first. Could you talk to us about mitigating the negative effects of aging and mitigating the negative performance effects of aging? You know, we don't think about it that way. We don't think about the negative effects of aging. We think about the optimal effects of aging because, you know, many of our women athletes,

Starting point is 00:06:43 especially our endurance athletes, don't start their endurance sports until they're in their 30s and 40s and sometimes 50s. And they really gain their peak performances later in their careers, possibly because their maturity helps them bring to their sport a level of confidence, of wisdom, of that little good judgment that so many of us lack when we find ourselves getting hurt for one dumb error or another. So, you know, we look at aging as part of life, of course. What we hope to do, and I just published a book on this called Play Forever. We hope to help people play and drop dead at age 100 playing the sport they love. And so the keys are which things can people do in order to keep playing? And how do you enjoy every stage of life? Well, let's talk about that then. I like that perspective. And there are certain, I would say, like if you look at

Starting point is 00:07:46 strength training, I think you would agree, maybe not, if you don't agree, I'd be curious to hear your thoughts, that as we get older, we can be strong, we can have plenty of muscularity, but our body's natural ability to recover from training isn't the same at say 50 as it is 20 or 25. Would you agree with that or no? Oh, for sure. What are some of the big levers that we can pull or the big buttons we can push? What's the 20% that gives you the 80% in what you just said and being just said, in being able to, um, play at a, at the level we want to play at, play at a level that's fun. It doesn't necessarily for a lot of people listening, it's not going to be, it's not going to be a, a career. Um, and it might not even be at the level of like

Starting point is 00:08:38 a, an amateur league of competition. Maybe it's something that they're just doing for themselves, but, um, it's not fun to suck at something. And so physically, if we just suck, then we just don't even want to do it. You know what I mean? So at least we got to get over the suck where we feel like we're doing something at a certain level of proficiency, you know? Let's talk about some of the basics that I think everybody can do at every age and is super important to incorporate into your program as you age. So the first thing is to exercise every day. And that's not three times a week. It's not go to the gym three times a week. It's really doing something every day. And their most important reason for

Starting point is 00:09:19 that is that when you do something every day, you become addicted to the feelings, the testosterone, the endorphin, the pheromones, the feeling of sweat, the feeling of your body, so that you miss it and you feel bad about it when you miss a day or you don't get a chance to do something that really makes you feel good. So step number one is design your life so that either your training program or your play program, some part of that is done every day. Step number two, I think, and kind of like sort of the key core lessons for how you achieve what you were asking about. How do you stay fit? How do you keep playing? Step number two is design your workouts to be fun.

Starting point is 00:10:04 Because if it's not fun, it's hard to do. And step number three is design your workouts to permit you to be focused on yourself. And that means don't read a book, don't watch TV, listen to music's fine. But unless you hear your heart rate, unless you feel your muscles, unless you know where you are bumping up against the barrier of your cardiovascular fitness, then you won't push yourself a little bit harder to train and get a little bit better every day. And that's such a critical part of aging fit. Because if you feel where you are each day and you push a little bit past that, then every day you're going to get a little better. Even though you're having the effects of aging occur, you're going to optimize every stage that you're at. And that's just one of the

Starting point is 00:10:55 most important parts about it is listening to your body. And lastly, on that point about listening, so many of the errors that I see are mental errors. Your mind wasn't in the game. You reached out at the time you shouldn't have. You were going too fast. You knew you were. You sort of took that turn you shouldn't have taken. And so if you can avoid the mental errors, so much more of your athletic life will be outside of my office and outside of my operating room. Because so many of the errors we see are mental errors. And you just made that mistake. You lifted that weight with poor form.

Starting point is 00:11:33 You just did that thing you knew you shouldn't have done. And then you got hurt. And so if I can help you avoid those, if I can help you to exercise every day and to listen to your body, if I can help you add fun into everything you do, if I can help you to exercise every day and to listen to your body, if I can help you add fun into everything you do, then I can promise you you'll have a much higher chance of having a long life of sport and fitness and happiness than if you don't. What are your thoughts on knowing when, let's say, let's take weightlifting, right? And when, when it's a pain, that means it's time to stop versus a discomfort, maybe it's muscle soreness. I hear, I get questions along these

Starting point is 00:12:14 lines, uh, usually from people who are a bit newer, uh, to it, but experienced weightlifters, they can make the same mistake for different reasons. They can go, yeah, that's a pain. There's some, but I'm just going to keep going i've made that mistake um and so so what are your thoughts on because people they're the they want to listen to their body but at the same time they want to make sure they're not kind of fooling themselves into just training less intensely than they should or could because it kind of just is hard. So when you're listening to your body every day, you get to know what muscle soreness feels like, what pushing a little past feels like. You just, you know. Also, however, you know when something

Starting point is 00:12:56 doesn't feel right. So a good example, probably the single best, most efficient exercise anybody can do, especially if they do it with great form, is the squat. And everybody knows that when they're doing their squat and they're slowly increasing their weights and they're getting in their best form, when it feels good, it feels great. And when you're in that squat, all of a sudden your low back just doesn't quite feel right. all of a sudden your low back just doesn't quite feel right, you know, this is not right and you need to stop. And if you can just be attuned to that difference between, oh, that doesn't feel right and stop versus, oh, that doesn't feel right, but it's going to push through it. That's where you get hurt or where you don't get hurt.

Starting point is 00:13:40 And I think it's smart. I mean, this is something I've a little bit of wisdom, I guess I've developed because I've done the opposite, which is, yeah, it doesn't feel good. I'm just going to keep going. And then one day I'm like, I can't really even like move my neck all the way. I should probably actually stop now with the 275 pound incline bench press that is just hurting at this point. bench press that is just hurting at this point. But is I try to err now on the side of being not overly cautious, but I would say err on the side of caution rather than just kind of piss and vinegar, you know, no pain, no gain. And just people listening, an example is a couple of weeks ago, I was doing one arm dumbbell rows. And for some reason, the arm that I was bracing with, it just annoyed my, something pissed off my shoulder, right? And then I found out, okay, my lat is tight. My subscapularis is tight. Infraspinatus is tight. Shoulder doesn't feel good on a bench press. I could do it, but there's a little bit of pain. It doesn't feel right. All right. I go and find a machine,

Starting point is 00:14:45 a lying, it's like a machine bench press that feels good. I can move my, my grip in a little bit and I'm now I'm just doing that. And it almost is, is I'm also working on with a massage therapist on the muscles and it's almost resolved. When I was younger, I probably wouldn't have done that. I would have just said, nope, my program, I want to bench press. And so I'm just going to keep bench pressing. It'll probably get better. But again, I've learned that when you start push, when you push through pain, if it's sharp and it's localized, it doesn't usually get better. It just usually gets worse. So the key is to really teach people how to listen well, listen to your body, get to know your body, get to know what it feels like in each exercise that you do.

Starting point is 00:15:32 And once you really pay attention, center down and listen, you'll avoid those errors quite a bit. That first point of exercising every day, what are your thoughts on, um, how you balance that with the need for recovery? Um, and, uh, the, the mistake that some people make, which is, would be an over-exercising mistake where they're trying to, you know, I hear from people who they want to lift weights. They want to do intense weightlifting strength training six days a week, seven days a week, and they're not 18 years old and you know invincible basically what are your what are your thoughts on doing something every day but doing it doing that in a way that doesn't cause more problems uh than it prevents so the

Starting point is 00:16:18 example you just gave would be you know just an example of how to burn yourself out and not too well yeah but even every cyclist that I treat and the great ones who train really hard on their day off, they go and spin. And so it's the idea of just spinning the legs, getting them moving easily, enjoying the ride, but it's not do nothing. And that's the difference. So learn how to let your body recover, learn how to let your body build muscle, learn how to feed your body, both nutritionally and, you know, we're getting better and better with lubrication and PRP and stem cell derivatives that, you know, we can talk about. We're getting much better at learning how to provide nutrition to the body and to the joints.

Starting point is 00:17:04 learning how to provide nutrition to the body and to the joints. Let's talk about those treatments. Those are things that I get asked about fairly often. Sure. There are more and more clinics. And even where I live, I live in Ocala, Florida, in the middle of the state. And there are clinics now popping up that offer those and many others. Sure. So we've learned an awful lot about joints.

Starting point is 00:17:21 And we can talk, let's just focus on the knee for a minute, because it's a space that I spent a lot of my life in and um and we've learned that that as knees get injured the most logical thing to do is to treat them right away rather than letting them stay injured or hope that they'll get better and so simple injuries injuries, overuse injuries are, of course, treated with all the usual things we do of soft tissue massage and ice. However, we've also learned that we can inject lubrication, the natural lubricant of the joint called hyaluronic acid, into these joints to provide more lubricity. And then on top of that, we've learned that we can add growth factors to these injections. Right now, the most common one is PRP, where you take some blood from your arm, spin the platelets, induce those platelets to release growth factors. And we've learned that the growth factors and

Starting point is 00:18:18 cytokines, these chemicals in the PRP, recruit the body's own stem cells to release from vessels, divide, and send these progenitor cells down to the site of injury or joint. So let me explain that. So in the case where we're using growth factors and cytokines with lubrication, we've learned that they stimulate the lining cells of the joint to produce more lubrication. We've also learned that the growth factors in cytokines can induce the body's stem cells, which live on the walls of vessels, to divide and release what we call progenitor cells, these cells that go to the site of injury or go to the joint and instruct the cells in that joint and the tissues in that joint in the repair process. So this whole field has gone through this wonderful stage of what I call anabolic orthopedics,

Starting point is 00:19:16 where we've, in the past, we thought of anabolics like testosterone, but now we think about anabolics. It sounds like a book title. Yeah. How do we stimulate the joints to produce more lubrication, to recruit more stem cell derivatives, to stimulate healing. And so that applies to early injuries. It applies to arthritis. It applies to almost every time that I do a meniscus repair or replace a meniscus, the shock absorber of the knee in somebody's knee, or I rebuild their articular cartilage, I'm almost always stimulating that repair or

Starting point is 00:19:47 stimulating that tissue now in order to accelerate their healing process. So this field is going through a wonderful stage of accelerating healing and diminishing the effects of arthritis. As so many of my patients, I'm sure your athletes ask, hey, why does it take a year to come back from an ACL or from a rotator cuff injury? Isn't there something we can do to accelerate that process, to speed up that healing? And now there really are things we can do that have good science behind them that are safe to do and that are pretty cost-effective these days too. Just to clarify one other point, we no longer inject stem cells or cell-derived cells themselves into these sites of injuries because while that went through a little phase

Starting point is 00:20:32 of popularity and you saw those clinics pop up that you saw, we've learned that everyone, including older people, have billions of their own stem cells in their body. And if we can just learn how to recruit those cells, how to stimulate them to divide and come to the site of injury, that's much more potent than having somebody inject a few million cells into the joint that probably go away fairly quickly or die. So the field has evolved now of how do you stimulate the body to induce its own healing response and accelerate that healing response. And that's what's so exciting about the field that we're in. And it's so exciting about our ability now to speed

Starting point is 00:21:12 up healing and to keep athletes playing and in the game every day. Would it make sense for someone to do, let's say a PRP treatment if they didn't have an injury, if, if they have been using their joints for a long time and, um, could it be viewed as like something that's supplemental to even healthy joints or. So it's a great, it's a great question. This field of when is nutrition for the joints, which PRP and lubrication would be like nutrition for the joints. When is it appropriate to do it when there's no injury? And the only reason that we don't do that now is just the risk of an injection, you know, potentially could cause a problem, even though it's extremely rare. We do do it though for early arthritis and later stages of arthritis as well, because then you have

Starting point is 00:22:00 an injury that's going on and we want to change the course of that disease. So not quite at the point where we're taking it like a vitamin every day, but very early in almost all the injuries we're seeing. Interesting. And so if the risks were, it sounds like, I mean, you mentioned they're very low, but if they were below a certain threshold, there's certainly a lot of benefit to be had. It sounds like even if you have healthy joints, there's just a potential cost that needs to be weighed. That's a good way to put it. So we're excited about, you know, figuring out more and more about nutrition for the joints, accelerating healing and finding these injections that will be safe and cost-effective, of course. Speaking of nutrition for joints, a lot of people listening are pretty in tune with, you could say, what healthy eating actually is and eating a variety of nutritious,

Starting point is 00:22:58 relatively processed foods, a few servings of fruit per day, three to five servings of vegetables per day, whole grains, lean proteins, all of that. But are there any, it could be foods or supplements that you particularly like for preserving joint health or enhancing joint health or function? I'm just curious. Yeah, so it's a good question. So the ones that still have the most robust data to say that they're helpful is glucosamine and chondroitin. There's no question that when you ingest these compounds, they're the key precursors to the building blocks of lubrication, hyaluronic acid in the joints, and they're incorporated into the tissues. So super safe, inexpensive. The number one thing our patients say is they feel less stiff when they take glucosamine and chondroitin. And anybody who's owned an older horse or dog knows that when you give the older horse or dog glucosamine, they limp less. And we've seen that for 30 years now. So we know it's not just a placebo. We know there's a definitive benefit in horses and dogs. And we hear that from tens of thousands of patients now over the last three decades of

Starting point is 00:24:13 doing this work. All the other supplements have varying amounts of data around them and hard to put a pinpoint on does this really help? And so because of that, we counsel our patients, you know, focus on a super healthy diet, focus on water as your main beverage, which is a super important part of this. Glucosamine, chondroitin probably do help from the joint health and stiffness. And everything else is kind of an optional. Where as long as it's not producing harm that we have data on,

Starting point is 00:24:45 then maybe okay. Like curcumin, for example. Yeah, curcumin and a host of others are natural anti-inflammatories. So intuitively, it makes sense to have natural anti-inflammatories in balancing off an otherwise inflammatory diet. But we can't lay enough solid science on there to say you should spend your money here because there's a definitive benefit to the joint. And in the case of drinking water, this is a question that I've been asked for years now. How much water is enough? What's the right way to drink water?

Starting point is 00:25:18 Should you be shooting for a certain amount? Should you just drink when you're thirsty and just make sure you're not thirsty? Hydration is a very hot topic these days. So here's the way to think about it from our point of view, as you drink your water. As I say, as I drink my water. Every cell in the body works better hydrated than dehydrated and your brain being the most sensitive.

Starting point is 00:25:44 And so given that we want to perform at our best and we want to keep improving our performance, it makes a lot of sense not to be dry because there's no cell in the body that works better dry and there's degradative effects of being dry. And so to the degree that you can stay well hydrated during the day probably helps everything that you do. So if you're going to reach for a hydration beverage, the most efficient is water, calorie-wise, taste-wise, cost-wise. And so we think that almost every other beverage has downsides for a host of reasons. And we all tend to do things that dehydrate us.

Starting point is 00:26:28 We sleep long. We drink coffee. You might have an alcoholic drink. We're out in the sun. We mouth breathe too often. All those things are dehydrating. And you've got to work at countering that. And best during the day so you're not up all night peeing, but really helpful.

Starting point is 00:26:44 Then if you're trying to lose weight, if you're trying to optimize your weight, two glasses of water before you lift the fork is portion control. You simply won't eat as much. It's the easiest way to reduce caloric intake. And it's cheap and it works and it's everywhere. So if you can just remember to do that before you lift the fork, and if you can remember to do that in between each alcoholic drink, again, it will reduce your intake. It will increase your hydration and you'll be healthier. And if you want to upgrade that fluid intake, you could also turn it into a soup. Then you're

Starting point is 00:27:19 getting in vegetables, like make a good vegetable soup out of it. Let's, let's shift to talk about injury. Now, you, you mentioned mindset earlier and that having the right mindset is important. We were talking about performance, but, but with injury, how does mindset impact? Let's take somebody who has an injury. It could be an acute injury. It could be a repetitive stress thing, but it's clear something's wrong now and it's going to impact their ability to train the way they want to train, to live the way they want to live, whatever. What role does mindset play in their ability to recover effectively? So the first part about that is knowledge. So you need to know

Starting point is 00:28:01 what's wrong. And given we have such good tools with MRI and physical exams and x-rays now you should be able to make an accurate diagnosis and so if you've injured your knee your mindset should be oh I'll just wait till it gets better if you if you've heard a pop and your knee swelled you have about a 90% chance of a surgical injury to the knee, meaning having torn the meniscus, torn the ACL, or damaged the articular cartilage. And so the first part of mindset is be aggressive about making a diagnosis and finding out what is actually wrong. The second part about it is having confidence that the treatments that have evolved now are much better than your parents' treatments for

Starting point is 00:28:45 the same injury. So if you've torn the meniscus cartilage in the knee, we've gotten very good at repairing almost all of those tears now. If you have lost some of your meniscus, we've gotten very good at putting the meniscus cartilage back in your knee and stopping that arthritis that definitely develops after a surgeon goes in and takes out the torn meniscus. You know, we've gotten very good at regrowing articular cartilage surfaces after injury and replacing ACLs, which we now add PRP to and other stimulants to help heal. And we can use donor tissues for each of these so we no longer have to take out your patellar tendon or your hamstrings to rebuild one part of your knee, damage one part of your knee to rebuild another.

Starting point is 00:29:28 The field has just progressed so much now that first part of mindset is number one, be determined to be healthy. Number two, be determined to find out what's wrong when you have an injury. And then number three, be determined to find the latest, best technologies for treating those injuries. And we think if you do that, this rampant disease of arthritis, which has affected so many athletes, you know, years after their injuries, can really be reduced quite a bit. Hey there, if you are hearing this, you are still listening, which is awesome. Thank you. If you are hearing this, you are still listening, which is awesome. Thank you. And if you are enjoying this podcast or if you just like my podcast in general and you are getting at least something out of it, would you mind sharing it with a friend or a loved one or a not so loved one even who might want to learn something new?

Starting point is 00:30:22 Word of mouth helps really bigly in growing the show. So if you think of someone who might like this episode or another one, please do tell them about it. What are some signs that you might be developing arthritis? Like what point should you start to maybe be concerned isn't the right mindset, but start to give it some real attention? The first thing is if you've had an injury where tissue was taken out of the knee, you need to pay attention to can that tissue be replaced. The second thing is if you're getting stiffness or pain or loss of motion, those are bad things because loss of motion, your knee is like a car. You know, when the car is out of line, the tire wears out so much faster. And so if you're having stiffness or loss of motion, you're using less of the joint

Starting point is 00:31:15 and wearing out one part of it so much faster than you need to. So just as in weightlifting and so many other sports, mobility matters. Mobility and technique really matter. Walking technique, running technique, movement technique really matters to how fast you're going to wear out those joints. If you've had an injury, a normal joint, by the way, can run forever. It's going to be one of my, one of my questions. Cause that's one of those, I just, the joints, you know, like, oh, your heart only has so many beats. Oh, you only have,

Starting point is 00:31:48 you know, so many, your joints can only joint so many times until it's too late. So let me ask you a question for all your audience. So if you walk a mile versus run a mile, which one produces more force on the joints? Running, total force? I mean, you're going to say walking now, but you would think running. It's not necessarily running because it matters on technique. And so if you use short strides, soft surfaces, midfoot landing, your total impact on the joint can actually not be more than if you walked with good technique for that mile. And so technique matters a ton. And so use a good coach, use a good trainer. When you go to the gym, if you go to the gym a lot and do your usual workout a lot,

Starting point is 00:32:37 have a look in the mirror one day and say, you know what, why don't I have someone else watch me work out and see how I can improve my technique. And you'll be stunned how much a good observer can help you do so much better than what you were doing before. You can also video yourself with your phone if you're comfortable doing that. And I do that and I kind of, I do it for social media, but I also do it to check my form, especially on exercises that, you know, maybe they go in and out of my training every several months. It's not necessarily a staple, uh, but that helps a lot because often what can happen is you think you're doing one thing, but then you actually see, and you're doing something else. And anybody who

Starting point is 00:33:17 has played sports and worked with coaches on camera has experienced that it can be really frustrating, but sure. And, um, so what are your thoughts about this idea that, okay, someone's, they got injured, they've recovered now. And they're, they're afraid that this injury is going to severely hinder their performance in the future or just that idea that that's just how it goes, that you get hurt and you're not going to bounce back. You're going to be worse than you were before you got hurt. So as we coach our injured athletes, especially our young ones, every great athlete gets hurt sometime in their career in some way. The great athletes use their injury as an excuse to come back fitter, faster, and stronger, which is

Starting point is 00:34:07 the phrase we use here at Stone Clinic, than they've been before. And how do they do that? They recognize the injury, they get professional guidance, they train, and they do all the right things surgically if they need it or rehab wise. They use that window of time while the knee or shoulder or ankle is recovering to train all the rest of their body and really focus on things that they didn't think about before. So injuries as an opportunity is a big part of the way we're coaching our athletes and our patients.

Starting point is 00:34:36 And using that injury as a way to come back better is the mindset that keeps you healthy and sane. We have something called ACL depression syndrome where you injure your ACL, you're all excited about the injury and getting it fixed. And then three or four weeks later, you're just kind of sick of the whole thing. You're sick of the crutches and the swollen knee and the soreness.

Starting point is 00:34:55 And it's like, oh me, oh my, right? And so on that day, if you can just get a really hard sweat workout and spinning well on a well-legged bike or doing your upper body training program, you can get that good testosterone flowing again and start to feel better. And so use every injury as an excuse to come back better than you were before. And of course, put your head in the game and try to avoid that injury in the first place.

Starting point is 00:35:19 What's that saying? Nature doesn't see problems, only opportunities, I think. There you go. that saying nature doesn't see problems only opportunities i think there you go um last question is is when recovering from an injury do you have any diet tips any maybe even body composition tips some people will ask me for example if they've hurt their knee and they're a bit overweight should they restrict their calories for a bit to get to a healthier body weight or is that going to impede recovery? Should they be eating a high protein diet? Is there anything else that they should know? And so on. Yep. Dietary, dietary restriction when you're recovering from injury or surgery is generally a bad idea. You need protein to heal. In fact, you need protein for everything. And so if we're going

Starting point is 00:36:01 to talk about diets at all, whether injured or not, we really encourage people to focus on a high protein diet and use everything else as a condiment. Because basically you need protein for your body and fat and carbs are really sweeteners on top of the protein that you really need. And so we bias all of our diets to a high protein diet. We really encourage people lean lean high-protein, of course, and we encourage people to focus that way, and especially when recovering from injury or surgery. And what about calories, energy balance? Yeah, you need to adjust to your output.

Starting point is 00:36:39 And so if you're used to pounding in a lot of calories and a lot of output every day, and then you're stepped back a bit during your injury recovery, either number one, work with a great trainer so you can keep that same caloric intake output up by well leg is a good example of one way to do that, or adjust your caloric intake down to match your energy output. But again, focusing on protein for that injury recovery is so important. And as far as matching, so is the general recommendation for recovering to eat, you could call it maintenance calories, try not to be consistently in a calorie deficit, because that could impair the process? Or is that not really? No, that's exactly right. You need the calories, you need the protein, you need to heal.

Starting point is 00:37:25 You also need the good mindset too, because so much of it's not fun to diet and be hurt. You want to, you know, if you're going to, if you're going to recover, turn it into a fun game, figure out how to, how to make it a good experience. Awesome. Well, uh, that was all of my questions. This was, this was a great, a great interview. A lot of great information. Is there anything else that you wanted to share? Uh, obviously we're going to wrap up with mentioning your book and where people can find you, but any other information that, that you, you wanted me to ask, or you were hoping that you could, you could share? No, I think you covered the wide field of it really well.

Starting point is 00:38:01 Okay, great. Well, um, yeah. So why don't we just wrap up quickly again about where you tell people about your book, where they can find it. If they want to find your other work, where can they go? What do you want them to know about? Sure. So the book play forever is on Amazon easy place to find it and covers a lot of what we talked about today. And it talks about both inspiring you to, to play forever, how to recover from injuries, how to avoid injuries, what the latest science is on replacing cartilage and meniscus and ligaments and injured knees and shoulders and ankles. And the stoneclinic.com is where I live and where we treat patients here in San Francisco. And I'm happy to help anybody who needs help. And we do actually free outside consultations

Starting point is 00:38:45 for people at stoneclinic.com slash consults. And then stoneresearch.org is where all of the research, it's a public nonprofit research foundation. Come check it out and you'll see information about different research programs and come help support it. It's how we're pushing forward the science of accelerating healing and treating, preventing and curing arthritis. I love it. It's how we're pushing forward the science of accelerating healing and treating, preventing,

Starting point is 00:39:06 and curing arthritis. I love it. Well, thanks again for taking the time to do this, Kevin. It's a pleasure. Good to talk with you. Well, I hope you liked this episode. I hope you found it helpful. And if you did, subscribe to the show because it makes sure that you don't miss new episodes. And it also helps me because it increases the rankings of the show a little bit, which, of course, then makes it a little bit more easily found by other people who may like it just as much as you. or suggestions or just feedback to share, shoot me an email, mike at muscleforlife.com, muscleforlife.com, and let me know what I could do better or just what your thoughts are about maybe what you'd like to see me do in the future. I read everything myself. I'm always looking for new ideas and constructive feedback. So thanks again for listening to this episode, and I hope to hear from you soon

Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Dr. Kevin Stone on How to Stay Fit, Injury-Free, and Perform Your Best As You Age

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.