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Episode 96: Bone Density Grifters: Introducing the Grift-O-Meter!
845 Plays13 days ago
In this episode of the Movement Logic podcast, Sarah and Laurel dig into the grift surrounding popular bone health programs, critically analyzing Bones for Life, Bone Coach, and Buff Bones. They introduce the Grift-O-Meter™ scale to rate each program on their misleading tactics and claims about osteoporosis treatment. They conclude by decrying the patronizing nature of some fitness regimes, urging a more empowered and scientifically sound approach.
Sign up for our FREE LIVE online Strength class on 4/26 at 11am ET / 8am PT
00:00 Introduction
11:40 Critique of Bone Density Programs
43:30 Debunking Pseudoscience in Marketing
45:49 Feldenkrais Movements and Bone Health
01:23:43 Understanding Naturopathic Education
01:29:49 Exploring Kevin Ellis' Supplement Company
01:31:22 Osteo IQ: DNA Testing and Bone Health
01:41:20 Buff Bones: A Deep Dive
02:05:36 Outdated Research and Spinal Flexion
02:16:28 Instagram Messaging and Audience Engagement
02:20:52 Strength Training for Bone Density
02:39:49 Lifting Weights in a Patriarchy
Download Your Grift-O-Meter here!
Episode 56 Does Hypermobility Cause Osteoporosis?
Episode 82 Weird Science: When It Doesn’t All Add Up
Episode 90 Capacities for Longevity Part 1: Strength
Episode 91 LIFTMOR, Not Less: An Interview with Belinda Beck
Episode 93 Should You Avoid Spinal Flexion With Osteoporosis
Episode 94 Capacities for Longevity Part 2: Power
https://www.integrativenutrition.com/
Bone Turnover Markers in the Diagnosis and Monitoring of Metabolic Bone Disease
Sleep Duration and Bone Density
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Transcript
Debunking Bone Density Myths
00:00:00
Speaker
If body weight was enough, especially lying down on the ground and rolling around, like we'd have strong as fuck bones because we just go to sleep at night and our bones would be getting stronger. And posture does not improve bone density.
00:00:16
Speaker
That is not how it works. I know you want it to work that way yeah because you want to fiddle with posture because that is what your format Cells, that is the skill you've developed to be good at what you teach, but that does not mean it builds bone, okay?
00:00:34
Speaker
I'm Laurel Bebersdorf, strength and conditioning coach. And I'm Dr. Sarah Court, physical therapist. With over 30 years of combined experience in fitness, movement, and physical therapy, we believe in strong opinions loosely held. Which means we're not here to hype outdated movement concepts.
00:00:50
Speaker
or to gatekeep or fearmonger strength training for women. For too long, women have been sidelined in strength training. Oh, you mean handed pink dumbbells and told to sculpt? Whatever that means, we're here to change that with tools, evidence, and ideas that center women's needs and
Marathon Mishap and Victory
00:01:06
Speaker
voices.
00:01:06
Speaker
Let's dive in.
00:01:20
Speaker
Welcome to season six of the Movement Logic Podcast. I'm Sarah Court, and I am here with my co-host, Laurel Beaversdorf. Laurel, what is up? What is going on? Well, for me, I'm just getting over a cold. I ran a half marathon in a parking garage.
00:01:39
Speaker
I did well. I got first place master's female, but I had to do it a fucking parking garage. I mean, congratulations, but also yuck. Thank you. And now the reason I won it is because I went ahead and did an extra lap.
00:01:51
Speaker
It's a long story. Anyway, they measure it.
Path to Self-Employment
00:01:53
Speaker
So it lightning out. So they're like, crap, we can't have the regular race. So we're going to measure out in the parking garage. The race officiants measured the course too short. Oh, no. And then everyone ran it And a lot of people did the number of laps they told them to do. was like a figure eight in a parking garage.
00:02:09
Speaker
um And they were like, oopsies, we told you too few laps. So I didn't know this at the time and I forgot to count. Of course, I forgot to count. But I looked at my watch, which seemed to be working. And I was like, oh, it's 13.06 miles. Like that's not a half marathon. So I went an extra loop or an extra figure eight.
00:02:26
Speaker
And then ended up, I would have been third master's female, but I ended up getting first because the first and second place apparently didn't run 13.1 miles.
00:02:37
Speaker
Right. so i bet I bet they're pissed. Oh, they're there they have to be sort of pissed, I guess. I mean, I think I'm going to get like a $20 gift card at
Success Stories from Bone Density Course
00:02:44
Speaker
the store. So it's not like. No, but I mean, just like the the fact that like they would have won probably. oh yeah. For sure. Anyway.
00:02:53
Speaker
yeah I'm just impressed that you did it in a parking lot because I saw friends, I saw some like, I think video and photos of it and it looked heinous. It was. but just I'm just thinking about like the way a parking lot smells and having to like deeply breathe while you're running through it. It was sweaty. It wasn't like gasoline fumes, but it was sweaty. And the bonus, I'm always bright sighting everything. The bonus was that you had this like condensed,
00:03:19
Speaker
course of spectators.
Strength Training as a Lifestyle
00:03:20
Speaker
So no matter where you were, there were people cheering or like holding signs. Yeah. Yeah. It is good it was good. It was It was interesting. i always say like, well, good story to tell.
00:03:31
Speaker
Glad I did it. Hope I never have to do it again. Totally. And also talk about like, it's like when in Rocky, when he has him chasing the chicken around to make him get faster, right? Like this is definitely, this has prepped you for having to run in horrible conditions, right?
00:03:46
Speaker
it's like how to get good at turning, dodging people, signs, barricades. Yes. They even kept like the gates down. So we had to like run, you know, those arms that lift up? Yeah, we had to run like between the tip of the arm and the post. No.
00:04:02
Speaker
No. like I PR'd my half marathon, which is that's awesome really saying something because there's no there's no way that i I probably would have run it faster had it been like on the actual course.
00:04:16
Speaker
But because so all the turns, but it it what it says is that I'm new to running. Because but when you're new to running, every race is a PR. Right. It's like when you're new at lifting. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. When you're new at lifting. It's every lift. You're like, oh my God, I can lift 20 pounds more than I did last week.
00:04:30
Speaker
Yeah. So like I PR'd, I PR'd my half marathon in a parking garage because I'm new to running. But hey, ah ah a PR is a PR. We'll take
Challenges in Selling Exercise Programs
00:04:42
Speaker
it. I will take it. I will take it yeah What's new with me, you ask?
00:04:46
Speaker
ah Yes, Sarah. What is new with you? Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'm so glad you asked. I actually have, I sort of have been hinting at this for a while, but I am now 100% self-employed as a physical therapist.
00:05:01
Speaker
And it feels really good. It's a little bit scary because I've, since I've been a PT for the past eight years, I've never not also worked at a clinic, either part-time or full-time. And that always felt like kind of a safety net, like, well, they're going find people, they're going to find clients. There's always going to be work, right? You're getting paid no matter how many people show up, something's happening, you know?
00:05:21
Speaker
It had always felt like something I wanted to do, but kind of too big of a jump and too much potential for it to go wrong. But this past year has just been kind of incredible with my private clients.
00:05:35
Speaker
There's just been a like a huge uptick. And i have to think that at least part of it is just from this condensed work that you and I have done where people are getting to know who I am. i mean, I have clients from the podcast, which is kind of incredible. Yeah, it's so good.
00:05:48
Speaker
it's very It's very exciting.
Critique of Bone Health Programs
00:05:50
Speaker
And the nice thing about it as well, apart from me being 100% taking home 100% of the earnings, which is a very nice thing. yeah It also frees up my schedule a lot. I can do more stuff for Movement Logic. yeah All the things that are on my list of like to do and have been on that list for like a year.
00:06:07
Speaker
And I just keep reading them and going, uh-huh. And then like doing whatever thing I had to do that day, right? Yes. I'm like, this huge thing I want to do, that's still there. All right. Well, what am I doing today? I'm solving this tiny problem, right? Right. Putting out fires. yeah Yeah, exactly. So I'm going to have a lot more time to do stuff like that, which is very, very exciting. That is so, so exciting, Sarah. Thank you.
00:06:27
Speaker
I know it it does feel kind of scary, but I think that honestly, something that you don't realize right away, but you come to understand is that at is there's actually a lot of security in having a lot of different people paying you than when you have just one person. Right. And I know you kind of had both, but it feels scary, but in many ways, it's actually and ah safer bet.
00:06:56
Speaker
Because if one client stops working with you, it's one of 20, right? Right. It's not the one. It's not the one. yeah I'm it' super excited for you. Thank you. and And I just want to say Laurel has been massively supportive through this whole process because it was a very sort of like step-by-step process. And there were a lot of times that I was like, yeah and she was like, it's going to be fine.
00:07:16
Speaker
Yeah. So thank you. I really appreciate your help talking me down off of my various cliffs or whatever. Well, it's way easier to give someone else advice than to give yourself advice. So I'll tell you always my my best, boldest move. Fantastic.
00:07:32
Speaker
Then I'll need to come to you for you to tell me my best, boldest move because I won't probably think that way about – I don't know. is that Do you find that's not the case? Absolutely. We just have a lot more hangups about like what we should do. but like Yes. you I see so clearly what Sarah should do. This is easy, Sarah. This is what you're going to do. You've got this.
00:07:50
Speaker
This not going to be an issue for you. like Are you kidding? This is what you were made for. And then and when it comes to me, I'm like, I don't know. I don't know. Maybe. I don't know. I'm not sure. You think I could do it?
00:08:02
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. So speaking of giving other people advice, we have just finished our second cohort of our bone density course, which was great. it was There were so many wins.
00:08:14
Speaker
And just watching these women take the six-month journey has been really, it always feels like an honor to me in a lot of ways to watch them step into their own empowerment. Laurel, I think you have a testimonial you're going to read.
00:08:27
Speaker
Yeah, this one is from Susan Saylor. believe she's an attorney in New York City. And she wrote, thank you for this excellent course. I am 60 years old and had a lot of baggage about the idea of lifting heavy, of using a barbell.
00:08:43
Speaker
It has taken me all six months of this program to get comfortable with the equipment, with how it feels to lift, to establish a new habit. I could not have done this without your guidance and expertise.
00:08:57
Speaker
Yeah. So that's great. and And I love, you know, it took her six months of this program to get comfortable with equipment. That is That is accurate for me too. Like it has taken me probably longer than six months.
00:09:10
Speaker
Yeah. Literally, i feel like I've hit my stride with strength training just in the last couple of years, but I've been doing this for nine years. And so those seven years when I hadn't quote hit my stride,
00:09:23
Speaker
I was still making a lot of progress for my strength. I was still building strength. But like now I feel like it's become so ingrained in me that it is way up on the top of my list of priorities. yeah Like it's very, very unusual. Ask my husband. It's very unusual for me to become so derailed that I won't strength train.
00:09:40
Speaker
It's just what I do. Yeah. It's nope, got to go train. Sorry. this All of this can wait. Totally. Got to go lift. I mean, i so I have a new primary care doctor. And when I went in to meet her, she was asking questions about me. And she said, do you have any hobbies? And the first thing that came out of my mouth was weightlifting.
00:09:59
Speaker
And I've never said that before. And I don't really think of it as a hobby so much. It's like what I do. But I was like, hobbies. What do I do when I'm not at work? I lift weights. yeah You know? That's it. That's it.
00:10:10
Speaker
And, you know, you are... like me, Sarah, I think you like to turn your hobbies into careers. Like pretty soon Sarah's going to be coaching at super bike school, teaching people to ride motorcycles. mean, no, unfortunately. No, okay. No, only because to be a coach at the school, you have to have been a professional motorcycle racer in the past.
00:10:33
Speaker
Yeah. I'm kind of glad because, well, selfishly, I want you to be working with me on. Oh yeah. No, no, no. I mean. No, but also I'm just, I get nervous when I think of you like racing. Because I know you could probably be pretty competitive. And so.
00:10:44
Speaker
Yeah. i Yeah. But i also i have learned I have learned, honestly, just from it from it failing every time, I have learned to curb the the thing that happens when someone passes you and you get that ah feeling. Oh, yeah.
00:10:55
Speaker
And I'm like, I can go that fast. And I start to go that fast. I'm like, no, I can't. And I slow right back down. Because yeah I'm like, OK, I am not as good as so many of the people on this track. I've only started. It's been three years of writing for me. Yeah. But anyway, more to the point.
00:11:08
Speaker
Yeah. So if you yourself have been curious about the bone density course, you have questions or, you know, you're just like, i don't know, they're funny on their podcast, but can I spend six months with these people?
00:11:22
Speaker
These people is is you and I, Laurel, just in case you're wondering who these people are. So what we're doing is we have a free class that is actually the very first class from the whole six-month program.
00:11:35
Speaker
And you can take it. It's actually happening in just a few days. It's happening on Saturday, April. 26, 11 a.m. Eastern, 8 a.m. Pacific. And people always ask this. And even though we repeat this information, they still ask, yes, you will get a replay. You'll get the replay for 30 days. So you could try the class multiple times and see if you're like, oh yeah, like the sort of, I like the way this working with weights thing is. It feels good. This feels like a direction my body needs to be going in. This feels like it's filling a space in my movement that that has not been filled up until now and that this is going to be useful and I want to start doing it. So please join us for that free class. Even if you're like, I don't know if I'm ready right now, but let me just, let me just poke a toe in and see what's up.
00:12:19
Speaker
Yeah. And that also, if you take the class, you're also going to get the only discount available for the full course, should you decide to take it. So you might as well sign up anyway, because don't you want the free coupon?
00:12:33
Speaker
Yeah, you get the discount by getting on a list that is basically the wait list. So we've been talking a lot about the wait list and many of you are on the wait list. If you sign up for this class, you will also be added to this special list where you get the discount to the course. Also, those of you on the wait list will hear about the class.
00:12:53
Speaker
Those of you on our mailing list will also hear about the class. But you should just go to the show notes right now and sign up so you don't forget. That's right. Okay, so what are we here for today in this episode? Well, we're going to take a look.
00:13:04
Speaker
Why are we here again? What are we talking about? Wait a second, huh? Who are you? Where am I? In this episode, we're going to take a look at some bone-focused exercise and lifestyle programs that I think that like the nicest way to say this is that they're a little iffy.
00:13:19
Speaker
in how they sell their bone-focused exercise and lifestyle programs. They are iffy in a variety of ways that we are going to discuss, but ultimately, whatever the mechanism, they're using tactics of coercion to either discount or completely omit the research-proven ways in which we can build bone in favor of whatever they're selling.
00:13:39
Speaker
Yeah. And I would also say that they also sometimes scare you away from it. Oh, yes. Yes. That's one of our tactics. Yeah. So just a very quick review, because we talk about this nonstop. We know from research that movements that emphasize the qualities of moderate to heavy strength, the quality of power that you need to create impact and the impact itself are the ones that show improvement in bone mineral density.
00:14:04
Speaker
There are a lot of studies out there that look at the difference between heavy lifting and moderate lifting. And at this point, my understanding is that it's not out of the question that moderate loads are also osteogenic, that they're also bone building, but we need more research of a higher quality to be able to say for sure one way or another.
00:14:21
Speaker
And then there's also research going on around the efficacy of impact training. And we saw in trials like the Lift More trial that it can be or may be helpful in increasing bone density.
00:14:32
Speaker
So within the context of all this research that's still going on, we do know that heavy lifting and impact training are shown in research to be efficacious for building bone and improving bone density.
00:14:45
Speaker
So we're going to be looking at these three programs that downplay, disregard, or just dismiss this research in order to promote whatever they are offering. Cool. Yeah. And before you start thinking, oh, no, here they go again. Sarah and Laurel, they're on a rampage to tear others down.
00:15:01
Speaker
These poor, misunderstood people, they just they don't know, you know, they don't know about strength and impact training. They've been following Harvard Health and the Mayo Clinic and just telling people to walk because that's what you get when you Google it.
00:15:13
Speaker
Okay, let's be clear. These are people who claim to be osteoporosis experts, okay? Some for decades, okay? They are positioning themselves in many ways as authorities on advice for people with osteoporosis. They are selling things.
00:15:32
Speaker
They are selling solutions to the problem, right? They're selling products, courses, services that supposedly help with osteoporosis. So here's the deal. They are either ignoring the mountains of evidence about the benefits of strength training in omitting or demonizing or fear mongering around it or downplaying it, or they simply have not put in the time and effort that they would need to put in to become the experts they claim to be.
00:15:59
Speaker
But honestly, I think there's another angle at play here. okay They want to obviously sell something. And what is better to sell? Something difficult to sell or something easy to sell?
00:16:12
Speaker
Well, if you want to make a lot of money, the easy thing to sell is probably your, you know, path of least resistance. And it is just far easier and more profitable to sell products, deliverables. why Because selling products way, way easier.
00:16:31
Speaker
I'm talking supplements. I'm talking recipes or what have you, foods, things that you can ingest because it's a hell of a lot more profitable than selling a process, the process of strength training, which will likely require, and many of our bone density course participants have experienced this, a massive identity shift, probably a lifestyle shift, a reorganization of how you participate in exercise.
00:17:03
Speaker
And this is very much the case for older women, especially, right, who have been basically talked out of strength training in various different ways through societal messaging.
00:17:13
Speaker
So it's just, it's not an easy sell to be like, you should strength train and here's how you're going to do that with, no, it's way easier to go. These are the supplements or this is the coaching program that I can basically sell you additional products through.
00:17:28
Speaker
So unlike Sarah and i these folks have been unwilling to embark on this long, hard campaign of persuasion that might actually make a lasting impact to bone strength. Now,
00:17:38
Speaker
Selling products is better business when it comes to making money. And this is also true because people notoriously, people being all of us in this society, notoriously undervalue exercise.
00:17:51
Speaker
And i don't know if you've noticed, Sarah, but it seems to be a race to the bottom when it comes to pricing. Everyone wants to pay the least for exercise programs. So the value proposition is constantly getting watered down.
00:18:04
Speaker
On the flip side, let's just take, for example, supplements. These are a fucking gold mine, right? Take a look at the average monthly cost of a proprietary blend supplement. It can easily run 30 50 bucks a month for something that is not scientifically proven to make a dent in anything.
00:18:23
Speaker
And that might actually create more problems. I follow doctors on Instagram talking about how their patients are coming in with fucked up heart rates, fucked up blood levels due to the supplements they're taking.
00:18:34
Speaker
Yet people will willingly fork over that amount of money month after month for the hope that these pills will somehow fix whatever issues they're facing. Meanwhile, an actual exercise program that would help them ah live longer, be happy and healthy, potentially build bone and improve strength, just I think seems a little too effortful, little too hard, little too long-term, doesn't give you the the placebo of, I just took a pill and now I'm going to feel better and and it you might actually have some sore muscles the next day. They just therefore think it's too expensive, right?
00:19:11
Speaker
So on the entrepreneur end, if you want to make a lot of money, OK, and you aren't really that attached to your personal values and the ethics of why you're doing business to begin with. It's just way easier and more profitable to sell the quick fix, the hack, right?
00:19:26
Speaker
The products that promise easy solutions rather than something that's actually quite hard, like strength training. And that's exactly what we're up against. right? A business model that thrives on selling people ah quick fix, not backed by science, rather than guiding them toward a habit change, lifestyle change, identity change, regular exercise forever, right? For the rest of your life.
00:19:54
Speaker
That is a proven process, but it just requires a lot more work, right? If you want to see those real results. So all that to say, listen, if you're listening and you're like, you really just don't like it when we criticize other people and programs for their false claims because it's so mean, you're really not going to like this episode. So you should just turn it off.
00:20:14
Speaker
Yeah, you should stop now because all we're going to do from here on out is be mean.
00:20:20
Speaker
Also, I wanted to say, because I think it's easy to just look at what we're doing be like, oh, well, you're just trying to push your own program. So you're gonna talk shit about these people. Right. But Laurel and I, ah from in our work, I will say, Laurel has questionable choices around reality television shows that she likes to watch. But that's her personal time and she's allowed to use it however she wants.
00:20:43
Speaker
When we're working, we hold ourselves to the absolute highest standards that we are capable of. You listeners, you don't see it because 100% it happens while we are not podcasting.
00:20:55
Speaker
But we put a lot of work into making sure that what we create, what we talk about, all of the work that we do is research-driven, evidence-based.
00:21:08
Speaker
And if we need to, we change things. We update things in our work in order to reflect that. So all that to say, we're not just being mean for the sake of meanness. We hold ourselves to extremely high standards in our work. And if we see people not doing the same for whatever reason, we're going to call it out.
00:21:27
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, listen, it's hard tearing grifters to shreds, but somebody's got to do it. So in this episode, we're going to look at three different programs and the people who created them and then investigate their tactics more deeply based on these nine categories of offense, of grift that we're going to talk about in a moment.
00:21:46
Speaker
But Laurel, I just wanted to ask, do we keep doing things like this, right, where we're taking other programs to task for their contents because we're just trying to sell our strength training and impact program and we believe in negative advertising?
00:21:58
Speaker
Are we in fact doing the exact thing that we are critiquing? Yeah, we are trying to sell our strength training and impact program because if we don't try to do that, nobody will fucking know about it. And if we don't charge money for it, we won't have a place to live.
00:22:12
Speaker
So we are marketing right at this moment. All right. So I'm not going to like blow smoke up your ass. This is marketing. What you're hearing right in this entire podcast is marketing. Anyone with a podcast or a social media channel or a newsletter who sells anything is marketing.
00:22:31
Speaker
word And negative advertising is an effective way to market because people love to hear the dirt, right? They love to hear the drama and the scandal. Additionally, people like to know the dark side of what they've bought into. At least I do. I love a good reality check.
00:22:47
Speaker
For a while, I thought everything my Garmin was telling me was valid information that I needed to pay attention to and care about. But now I realize most of the metrics on my Garmin running watch are just total fucking bullshit. Like body battery, training load, performance goals, sleep tracking, steps. Sorry, steps are wildly inaccurate.
00:23:06
Speaker
That's... Ironic. Heart rate variability. Like who the fuck knows what algorithm this company, this profit driven company uses to measure any of this. None of it's tested. None of it can be peer reviewed because it's all proprietary. It's all bullshit.
00:23:20
Speaker
So I'm glad I know that. I'm glad I'm not like being jerked around by this made up shit on my watch. Instead, I pay attention to the stuff that that is probably quite accurate, like mileage and heart rate.
00:23:31
Speaker
Right. And that's going to help me be a better runner. So we've chosen a highly effective way to market, negative advertising, if that's what you want to call. I like to think of it as like critical thinking practice, right? Mostly i like doing it.
00:23:44
Speaker
I like marketing this way because I have a hard time shutting my mouth. And always have. No. when Yeah. When I hear someone say something I believe is wrong, I mean, I might be wrong, but like if I believe they're wrong, I can't shut the fuck up about it.
00:23:59
Speaker
Now, I've gotten better, okay? I have grown up a little bit. But you know those students there in class who are always asking the teacher tough questions and then continuing to raise their hand and prod for a better answer when they don't like the first five the teacher gave because the answers didn't either address the question or they don't make sense?
00:24:19
Speaker
Oh, I sure do. It me! I'm that student. I'm that fucking student. I've been that student in like countless teacher trainings for yoga, which is really awkward. I bet.
00:24:32
Speaker
Because I'm kind I'm like not passive aggressive. I'm aggressive aggressive. Just aggressive aggressive. I'm aggressive aggressive. However, at the same time, Negative advertising, whatever you want to call it, aka my toxic trait, is also, I think, double as exercises in critical thinking.
00:24:48
Speaker
like Sarah, do you feel like our episodes that we've done that have been critical in nature, quote, negative advertising, have been exercise for our personal critical thinking skills? Yeah. Yes, absolutely. I feel like I've gotten much better at picking out things where I'm like, wait a minute, what's that? Wait a minute, what's that? So for sure. Absolutely. Yeah, me too.
00:25:06
Speaker
And I hope that these episodes have been ah similar exercise in critical thinking for our audience. And I think that's really, really what I'm trying to do with this podcast.
00:25:19
Speaker
So here's how this is going to go in this episode. We're going to look at three different programs. The first one is called Bone for Life. The second one is called Bone Coach. And then the third one is called Buff Bones. And we're going to discuss what each person or program offers.
00:25:34
Speaker
And then Laurel and I are going to rate them on the griftometer or griftometer. You can pronounce it either way. I like grift-o-meter because it reminds me of like carnivals and snake oil salesmen. But we also have decided that grift-o-meter sounds more scientific. So you can pronounce it however you want.
00:25:54
Speaker
So we're going to rate them on our grift-o-meter based on their score for each of the categories and then how much they offend from one to five in that category.
00:26:05
Speaker
So Sarah and I text message each other a lot. And Sarah was telling me about the grifters episode that she's the lead on. And that's this episode that you're listening to.
00:26:17
Speaker
And I was like, oh, it kind of reminds me of decoding the gurus, how they have a grometer. And so one of my favorite podcast episodes, also excellent exercise in critical thinking is decoding the gurus. They look at a different charismatic figure in various different industries and to rate them.
00:26:35
Speaker
I'm not sure exactly the scale they use and what all the criteria are that they're rating the individual on, but they they have this grumeter scale. And so I was like, well we could do one called the griftometer or griftometer scale.
00:26:47
Speaker
And I thought it would be kind of fun to structure the episode this way. And then Sarah took it a step further and she was like, oh, what if we create a scorecard and the audience gets to play with us at home? I was like, girl, you got time for that? Okay, go for it. She's like, I'm going to do it.
00:27:03
Speaker
So you can download in the show notes, the Griffnometer scorecard. And this scorecard is going to give you a chance Well, to get to know some of the features of grift that we've spotted to better be able to spot that grift in the wild from other programs and companies claiming to be selling solutions to osteoporosis.
00:27:23
Speaker
So go ahead and download that scorecard in the show notes now and then press play and let's let's play. So if you are now looking at your griftometer, you will see on the left side, there's a vertical column of our nine categories of grift. So let's go over them one by one with a brief description of each. Laurel, will you kick us off?
00:27:45
Speaker
Sure. Category one. Do you even know what the real problem is, bruh? No, you don't. I'm going to tell you what it is, though. It's not your bones being fragile so that when you fall, they break.
00:28:00
Speaker
It's that you are falling because your balance is poor. Bone density isn't the problem. Falling is the problem. So the real solution, we have to work on your balance. And we're not going to worry about making your bones stronger. Forget about that.
00:28:15
Speaker
Yeah. and Okay. Category number two is called hot tips for moms. Hide broccoli in brownies. and i don't know if you remember this, Laurel. This was all the rage a while ago where it was like to get your kids to eat more vegetables, grind up some broccoli and then stir it into their brownies and they'll never know. And then you're getting them eating more vegetables.
00:28:34
Speaker
Right. So the way that that relates to this is, for example, the program might bring up strength training. but hide it somewhere, like in the caption of the post or like at the absolute bottom of a list of 10 things that you need to do for your bone density.
00:28:50
Speaker
So they're they're kind of kind of mentioning it, but not very much. Or it's like saying yoga is strength training. Right. exactly Alignment assassinators.
00:29:02
Speaker
So alignment assassinators is the third category. This is a form of gatekeeping. where the real benefits lie, programs that spend a lot of time emphasizing correct posture.
00:29:14
Speaker
Or telling people, don't round your spine ever. And here's 17,000 different hypervigilant ways to make sure you're not doing that. Essentially, this is obsessing over details that don't really make a difference in bone health.
00:29:26
Speaker
And really stopping people from accessing the type of exercise that will because they're just so fucking afraid that they might flex their spine. and Number four is it's fragilistas, but I had to put fragilistas as well because I have this obsession with relating bone formation to the show Fraggle Rock.
00:29:44
Speaker
I don't think that's really worth going into that much right here, but you will hear me talk about it. i take every possible opportunity to reference Fraggle Rock. Or if you if you take all about osteoporosis, the bonus course associated with bone density course, Lift for Longevity, you will get a very well-rounded idea of what this analogy means, the fraggles in bone building.
00:30:04
Speaker
Thank you. So this is essentially just fear-mongering around heavy lifting, claiming that lifting heavy weights is too dangerous You're going to hurt yourself if you have osteoporosis, even in the face of the Liftmore trial, which did exactly that and saw no significant amount of adverse effects.
00:30:24
Speaker
Category number five, fiddle faddle, my new favorite noun. This is also sometimes called word salad, nonsensical claims that don't mean anything when you try to parse their meaning.
00:30:35
Speaker
This is a classic marketing tactic where you include a lot of buzzwords to make it seem like your program is doing something meaningful like functional movement, but that doesn't have much to do with bone building. Yeah. Number six is called at least you are doing the absolute minimum.
00:30:55
Speaker
I have a lot of feelings about this one. And i I know my, I haven't fully figured out the whole train of thought that I have around encouraging people to just do something because on the one hand, it is good advice.
00:31:06
Speaker
Doing something is always better than doing nothing when it comes to exercise. But there's something a little bit insidious about the, at least you're doing the absolute minimum because there's this component of like, just do my program. Don't worry. You're you're not going to have to work hard. Don't work hard. Hard work is yucky. It's not, you don't want to do it. oh good. You did the absolute. You stood up. Oh, good for you.
00:31:29
Speaker
You stood up. So while in its SDS, something is better than nothing, there's something about this and I still have to work it out for myself what exactly it is, but there's something about this that just doesn't really sit right with me. If I if i remove all empathy from my body at the moment and just let myself say what like my meanest self would say, and this isn't even really that mean, it's like kind of true. It's like telling people they just don't have to be personally accountable for their health. Right. Right.
00:31:56
Speaker
Like you you really, you don't. It's okay. Right. No, you're doing the least you could possibly do Absolutely. But you're doing something. It's okay. Yeah. Don't worry. It's kind of lack of accountability or like convincing people they don't have to take personal accountability. And that can be taken to this really...
00:32:14
Speaker
horrible place of like putting all of the onus on the individual, not taking into account the social determinants of health, not taking into account inequality and just being like, it's just all in the individual. It's your own fucking fault.
00:32:28
Speaker
You know? And like, I i don't want to sound like that because I don't believe that. But I also do believe that there is such a thing as personal accountability and taking responsibility for your health. And I don't think it's helpful to pat people on the back for doing the absolute minimum when they could in fact do a little bit more than that.
00:32:44
Speaker
Yeah. You know what it made me think of as well? I had this old theater teacher and he taught Shakespeare. And he would talk a lot about how so often when you were creating something like a play, you're encouraged to like play to the lowest common denominator. Like who are the, again, not to be mean, but what's the sort of least...
00:33:02
Speaker
intelligent level that we could produce you know this stuff. And he's like, no, no, no. You need to be playing to the highest potential so that people have somewhere to go, that they can grow with you.
00:33:13
Speaker
right And there's something about this as well where it's like, you know, not encouraging people that there is growth and that they can actually partake in that, right? It's kind of taking that away a little bit as well. Yeah.
00:33:24
Speaker
I think this may end up being in-betweeny about the whole idea of like something's better than nothing, but right we'll see. Definitely. All right. Next category seven, microscope of practice. So we know about the scope of practice, right? Different professions have scopes of practice. There's also such a thing as a microscope of practice within your scope of practice. Yeah.
00:33:42
Speaker
So this person, okay, they might be called, say, a coach. That's their scope of practice. We're going to talk about coaching, but okay, they're a coach, right? So they coach people. That's their scope of practice. But does this person have credentials within that scope to be giving the type of advice they're giving?
00:34:01
Speaker
Like is the nutrition advice, for example, a part of their microscope of practice? Or is everything their scope of practice built on sort of shaky ground are their credentials absolutely what's the word I'm trying to think of non-existent you know we're going to talk about coaching and the problem with that industry but my question is if you're selling stuff okay you're selling stuff but are you selling stuff in a medicalized way to treat a disease if you are you have any business fucking doing that like what are your fucking credentials for that
00:34:41
Speaker
Yes. Number eight is called Unfair Advantage. And this is actually the name of a proprietary supplement sold by the whole Bulletproof diet, you know, Bulletproof coffee. That was that butter and coffee. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I did that for a hot second in New York. And actually, it's like I kind of liked because who doesn't fucking like but Oh, I mean, exactly. Butter is also the same as milk and cream, right? So, I mean, yes, it was delicious. But so now there's this whole lifestyle of food and supplements and whatever, and one of them is called unfair advantage, right?
00:35:10
Speaker
As in this supplement is going to give you an unfair advantage. So this category is about does this program sell supplements or other diet-related products? And if so, is there any oversight at all as far as the claims that are made about what the supplements can do?
00:35:28
Speaker
Spoiler, probably not. Category number nine, itch doctors. Sarah and I had a whole text exchange about this one. So pseudoscientists make Sarah and I very itchy.
00:35:40
Speaker
And so when we talk about pseudoscientists, we're talking about functional medicine doctors, naturopaths, anyone with a non-clinical background.
00:35:54
Speaker
being used as a clinical reference to support their arguments slash sales. so So we'll get into it. But functional medicine doctors and naturopaths, this is not evidence-based medicine, folks.
00:36:08
Speaker
Nope. All right. So let's start with our first program. And this program is called Bones for Life. And I honestly don't remember how I got on her mailing list. Do you remember how... Did you find this person?
00:36:24
Speaker
Yeah. Okay. So I think I found this person... While I was looking up Ellen Saltenstall. ah And I don't know if I found it associated with her work, but I was like, what's this? Oh, Bones for Life. So yeah, I found it and I immediately texted you. Hey, I want to look at this one. Check this lady out.
00:36:44
Speaker
Okay. So this is this a woman named Helen Davis. She's based in England and she runs a program called Bones for Life. Now I want to make the point that I don't think that there's anything particularly unique about what Helen is doing with the Bones for Life program.
00:36:58
Speaker
she's kind of following the gentle exercise, do your best, watch out, not too hard path, because that's what a lot of other people have done historically for osteoporosis as well. So we're looking at Helen, not because she's the most egregious, because we're saving that one for later, but because she represents a really specific category of movement person who is trying to sell her movement program, but the program itself is lacking in meaningful bone density building content.
00:37:25
Speaker
So when we read more about Helen on her website, the plot thickens because turns out Helen herself did not create the Bones for Life program. Bones for Life was created by a woman named Ruthie Ailon.
00:37:39
Speaker
to And it all started to make sense when I read the following. This is a quote from Helen's website. Quote, Bones for Life evolved out of the Feldenkrais method and was developed with a specific aim of supporting bone strength and resilience within the range and scope available to each individual.
00:37:58
Speaker
Rather than fighting the body to get results, ah Bones for Life teaches us to trust in our own movement intelligence, our own observations, and... yeah Sensations.
00:38:11
Speaker
Practiced consistently over time, this can help us let go of unhelpful patterns of movement, leading to more satisfying and efficient movements and self-management.
00:38:27
Speaker
Sorry. like The result... is there was I'm stuck on satisfying self-management. All right. right Listen, and I'm going to be doing a little satisfying self-management later on, if you know what I mean.
00:38:44
Speaker
the result is a sorry okay The result is a series of 90 individual movement practices known as processes that help you tune into the movement intelligence of your own body and creates the rhythmic, dynamic movement that is necessary.
00:39:06
Speaker
Truly, what the fuck?
00:39:13
Speaker
I think my mind might be in the gutter or... I think my mind just just melted out of my ears trying to make any of that make sense about anything.
00:39:24
Speaker
Okay, maybe we should talk about Feldenkrais. I think so. So the Feldenkrais method is a form of gentle movement and body awareness training. Some call it somatics, designed to improve physical function and well-being.
00:39:39
Speaker
It was developed by Moshe Feldenkrais, a physicist, And judo expert in the mid-20th century. I just want to say I love Feldenkrais. I did a lot of it in New York City. I considered doing the certification, which is lots of time and dollars.
00:39:53
Speaker
I love Feldenkrais. I love somatics. So Feldenkrais really focuses you in on how you're moving. how much you're moving, how hard you're efforting while you're moving. It uses relatively small, intricate, but not overly complicated mindful movements to reeducate the nervous system. I would feel wonderful after these classes, just very downregulated and relaxed, right?
00:40:17
Speaker
It aims to improve posture. ah so anyway, I won't harp on it, but like the degree to which Feldenkrais is really going to change your posture. and Moving on. Flexibility. Flexibility.
00:40:28
Speaker
Coordination. Coordination is specific to the movement you're doing. Okay, but moving on. And ease of movement, whatever that means. All right. It encourages self-awareness, sure, while you're moving, but not in any meaningfully emotionally intelligent way, in my opinion Anyway, it's claims are that it helps you move more efficiently and with less strain. Again, like in what context? Okay. Right, right. But I just want to say, okay that that the claims made about Feldenkrais by Feldenkrais aside, I think it's a wonderful way to move and it feels really good. And I would do it today if someone would come to my house and be like, I'm going to teach you some Feldenkrais. I'd be like, let's go. Cool.
00:41:04
Speaker
But I'm pretty sure that Feldenkrais is not a building. Right. exercise modality. However, there is a quote on the Bones for Life website from Ruthie Alon, who passed away in 2020, that really seals the deal, in my opinion.
00:41:20
Speaker
And here it is. Quote, the more your posture improves, the stronger your bones become. When your movement is coordinated as nature meant, The very weight of your body itself spontaneously works to strengthen bone in the activities of daily life.
00:41:40
Speaker
And when I dug a little more into Ruthie Elan and who she was, really all I found was that she wrote a book in 1996 called Mindful Spontaneity Lessons in the Feldenkrais Method. And I've linked it in the show notes if you want to see it.
00:41:53
Speaker
Laurel, what are your thoughts about this? She just fucking made that shit up. She just wanted to believe it and decided that because she wanted it to be true, it was true. Yeah.
00:42:05
Speaker
That's literally what happened there. She's clearly claiming that body weight exercise used as load in Feldenkrais is enough to build bone. And what we know about that is perhaps for someone who's been in outer space for six months, it would be beneficial to their bones to first come back to earth.
00:42:25
Speaker
yeah And also do a little Feldenkrais. Or if someone's been bedridden for a while, yeah, absolutely. But for everyone else, it's really not going to do anything. I mean, Feldenkrais could, I'm sure, take place in a lot of different orientations to gravity. Most of the classes I took, most of those classes were done horizontal.
00:42:45
Speaker
Hmm. And if body weight was enough, especially lying down on the ground and rolling around, like we'd have strong as fuck bones because we just go to sleep at night and our bones would be getting stronger.
00:42:58
Speaker
And posture does not improve bone density. That is not how it works. I know you want it to work that way yeah because you want to fiddle with posture because that is what your format is.
00:43:12
Speaker
cells, that is the skill you've developed to be good at what you teach, but that does not mean it builds bone, okay? But Laurel, hang on a second, because Helen also offers self-hypnosis as an adjunct treatment.
00:43:29
Speaker
And here's a quote from her website, harness the power of your subconscious mind to optimize your bone health. And at no point does she elucidate exactly how that's gonna happen. And it took me roughly like 23 seconds to confirm that there is no research that backs hypnotherapy as an evidence-based tool for bone building.
00:43:47
Speaker
So she kind of wiggles out of the question of whether her program can build bone. And we see this in the FAQ section on her website about her program. And the question is, does Bones for Life help with osteoporosis?
00:44:02
Speaker
And here's what it says. Bones for Life focuses on good postural alignment and explores a variety of ways to optimize transmission through the skeleton of the gravitational force that is essential for bone building.
00:44:16
Speaker
Since um appropriate impact is essential for strengthening bone, this can serve as a basis for everything that we do from daily activities to exercise and performance. Laurel, how do we optimize transmission of gravitational force through the skeleton?
00:44:30
Speaker
Oh, yeah. Well, let me tell you about the old optimize the transmission of gravitational force through the skeleton trick. Here's how works.
00:44:38
Speaker
Oh, that old chestnut. Your mother didn't teach you about this when you were little? but What? Yeah, this kind of poetic pseudoscience that sounds like it came straight from a sci-fi retreat on Saturn.
00:44:51
Speaker
This is is a classic example of marketing language that sounds technical, but falls completely apart under scrutiny. Yeah. Words like, quote, optimize, quote, transmission of force. I mean, transmission of force is probably not like pseudoscience-y, but used in this context, it most certainly is. Quote, through the skeleton. Like, this sounds great. It sounds legit. It sounds- Boney.
00:45:15
Speaker
Yeah, and science-y and transmission-y. And it's just completely undefined and unmeasurable in this context. This is the kind of jargon that uses complexity- to mask the absence of actual evidence.
00:45:29
Speaker
It's like saying you can upgrade the quantum flow of your spine. Ooh. Let me do that. Sounds fancy, but what does that actually mean? So let's break it down in plain English.
00:45:41
Speaker
Optimizing the transmission of gravitational force to the skeleton is a vague and complicated way of saying, let's improve posture or let's improve your alignment so gravity flows better through your bones.
00:45:57
Speaker
And just keep getting stuck on that.
00:46:02
Speaker
I don't know much about gravity. And by the way, science doesn't know everything about it either. But gravity is does not flow. Gravity is attraction between two bodies. It's not even really a force. Gravity is fucking weird. It is weird. But this phrase, it paints a really nice picture of your body as some kind of architectural marvel that channels cosmic energy. But anatomically and physiologically, this is just hand-wavy nonsense.
00:46:28
Speaker
Gravity is a constant. It doesn't need optimizing. Okay. You don't transmit gravity like a radio signal. Your skeleton already bears your body weight.
00:46:39
Speaker
That's literally its job. Unless your skeleton suddenly becomes a suspension bridge, it doesn't need better gravity flow, whatever the fuck, right? It needs load to build bone. That's what your skeleton needs.
00:46:50
Speaker
Which brings us to the bigger issue with this claim. Feldenkrais is not osteogenic. It doesn't build bone. For bone to respond and adapt, it needs mechanical loading that exceeds what it experiences probably most of the day, right?
00:47:01
Speaker
Feldenkrais movements by design are slow, low load, and low impact. They might actually... Oh, God, here he comes. My cat has just climbed up onto my shoulder.
00:47:12
Speaker
Feldenkrais movements by design are slow, low load and low impact. And they might actually they probably fall short of the loads that you're experiencing most of the day. Because, again, lots of Feldenkrais takes place lying on the ground.
00:47:27
Speaker
That's, I think, what people like about Feldenkrais. i mean, that sounds great. You know, it's very fucking relaxing. and And it's probably good for pain relief for a lot of folks for that reason.
00:47:39
Speaker
It could certainly increase sensory motor awareness in the context in which you're exploring it. It's probably wonderful for proprioception. it just it falls short of the exercise intensity that we'd need to stimulate bone growth.
00:47:51
Speaker
Again, unless someone is extremely deconditioned. Yeah. So the gentle rolling and micro movements of Feldenkrais just won't reach the threshold required to trigger bone adaptation because bones don't grow stronger in response to metaphors, especially ill-conceived ones.
00:48:09
Speaker
They respond to force. But wait, there's still more.
00:48:15
Speaker
When I was prepping this episode, I thought this was going to be the quickest one to prep. And then it just kept giving and giving. So while I was prepping this episode, I got a couple of very timely emails from Helen about a new class that she's teaching.
00:48:27
Speaker
The first one, the email had the subject line, quote, the real risk to your bones. And then in parentheses, it's not what you think. Voril, based on our experience with this argument, can you take a guess at what Helen says is the real risk to our bones?
00:48:43
Speaker
I feel like it's going to be that we're just falling too much and we have to work on our balance. That is 100% correct. Here's what the rest of the email said. Most people think fragile bones are the biggest problem as we age, but the truth is it's falling.
00:48:56
Speaker
Falls are the number one cause of fractures in later life, and those fractures can be life-changing. A hip fracture, i mean, this is true. A hip fracture can lead to long, difficult recovery, loss of mobility or independence, and in some cases can even mark the beginning of the end.
00:49:10
Speaker
And then she has a list of this class is for you if, and one of the things on that list is if you want to prevent future falls or fractures without spending hours in the gym.
00:49:22
Speaker
And I'm sorry, but you want me to do 90 quote unquote processes? How the fuck long is that going to take? i know 90? What the?
00:49:33
Speaker
Holy. That's what it says. It's a series of 90 processes. No, i would I would much, much rather do about 15 sets of five different exercises. Yeah.
00:49:44
Speaker
Way, way more prefer that one. Yeah. Okay. And then the next day I got another email and the title of this email is why your balance matters more than your bone density.
00:49:55
Speaker
o Laurel, will you read this email to us? Sure. but You can have healthy bones according to DEXA, bone density scan, and still end up with a fracture if you fall awkwardly.
00:50:08
Speaker
And you can have low recorded bone density, but seldom fall and never break a bone. That's why balance matters more than you think. even small improvements in balance and coordination can make a huge difference.
00:50:23
Speaker
That's what functional movement helps with. boom um' sorry I'm sorry, feeling little itchy.
00:50:32
Speaker
This isn't about exercise or building strength. It's about learning to move in a way that supports your body's natural stability. So you walk, stand, and recover more easily. Yeah.
00:50:45
Speaker
Recover from what? Yeah. My 90 processes? I think I'd recover with a couple of beers after that. Yes, seriously. Bones for Life is built on exactly this principle. It teaches your body how to organize itself in keeping with gravity, safely, efficiently, intelligently. Okay, I just want to go It teaches your body how to organize itself in keeping with gravity.
00:51:10
Speaker
I mean, is anyone organizing themselves outside of gravity on this planet? I just like the phrase in keeping with. Yes. We're not to fight gravity. We're going to work with it. We're going to organize ourselves in keeping with it.
00:51:22
Speaker
Does that just mean i'm going to lie down on the ground because gravity won? Sorry. We're going to be kept by gravity. I just, that turn of phrase really reminded me of my Nana. Like in a good way. i was like, oh, that's such a cute little way of saying that.
00:51:35
Speaker
You'll start small, move gently, and feel the difference often from the very first thing we do. Okay. Well, I just want to go back to the source of my itch, which is what the fuck is functional movement? Can we talk about this for a second? If we take, quote, functional to mean something that helps us function better in our life.
00:51:51
Speaker
Okay, let's... Picture it. Two overstuffed tote bags full of Trader Joe's, three flights of stairs, oat milk wedged in your elbow crease, eggs perched precariously on top of broccoli and skinny pop. Your phone is in your mouth. Hopefully you don't catch a virus. Well, that sounds bacterial.
00:52:05
Speaker
Then Feldenkrais, as a standalone practice, really misses the mark in preparing you for something like that. Or let's say you're getting up from the floor to chase your dog who just stole your sock. Hatters! Come back! yeah, Henner's has a sock fetish. He does.
00:52:18
Speaker
He does. He will steal your socks. And just kind of mouth them gently. He doesn't rip them up. He just wants to get the flavor out of them. Yes. But somebody left the gate open, Sarah. And he has now he is now sprinting toward the squirrel that just ran up the tree on the other side of the road.
00:52:35
Speaker
And you are now sockless on one foot having to chase him. Okay. So this is going to require a little bit more than just refined pelvic clock awareness. Or let's skip the tired suitcase in the overhead compartment example and say you're hoisting a giant bag of dog food onto a top shelf so your dog doesn't binge eat it in one sitting while balancing a coffee in the other hand because you are a hardcore caffeine addict and you're also trying to avoid stepping on your cat who is literally always trying to trip you. You know what, folks? These things demand strength.
00:53:02
Speaker
They coordination, balance, sometimes even speed and a little bit of luck. Qualities you won't get from slow, gentle rolling around the floor. And let me just emphasize that you might need a little bit of luck to not fall because sometimes no matter how fucking good your balance is, you're fucking going down.
00:53:20
Speaker
That's it. It's you in the floor and hopefully you've done some work to keep your bones strong. okay So sure, Feldenkrais might make you more aware of how you move while you're doing Feldenkrais. And That awareness can be useful and frankly relaxing, but let's be honest, okay? We spend 99.9999% of our day not thinking about how we're moving.
00:53:43
Speaker
We're just trying to get shit done and not die. in fact, if we did focus on how we were moving all day long, we'd not only move worse, we'd also be insufferable to be around. No one wants to hang out with the person who's hyperanalyzing their scapular glide while getting out of a car. That is not functional. That is not fun. That's a fucking personality glitch. Hmm.
00:54:03
Speaker
The deeper issue is that functional has become this catch-all word that can mean whatever someone wants it to mean. It's vague. It's squishy. It makes everything sound important while saying absolutely nothing.
00:54:14
Speaker
It's like calling a smoothie smart because it has chia seeds. What the fuck does that even mean? Does it help your brain? Is it good at math? The word doesn't tell you if the thing is actually useful, just that someone wants you to think it is.
00:54:27
Speaker
Same goes for movement. If everything is functional, then the word function doesn't mean shit. Yeah. She's acting like there's a shortcut to maintaining all these capacities and qualities we need to not fall.
00:54:38
Speaker
And that shortcut is called Feldenkrais. But I'm sorry, 90 processes is not a shortcut, first of all, but if I'm horizontal for most of the class or most classes and I'm not externally loading with progressive overload, it's going to fuck all for my balance. Yeah.
00:54:52
Speaker
And there's a lot of the problems with this just work on your balance argument. But to my mind, the biggest problem with it is even when you work on your balance, however that is, people still fucking fall.
00:55:04
Speaker
They just do. We talked about this in our part two episode of longevity when we're talking about power. People will continue to lose their balance, trip on something they didn't see, miss a step, get, what's it called when someone like blocks you at the shins?
00:55:19
Speaker
Isn't that a thing? A side swiped? Yeah, get side swiped by your cat. It's called a Tanya Harding. Oh. no No, that was a knife in the back. oh Okay. Or was it a baseball bat to the knee?
00:55:30
Speaker
No. She she yeah hired people to knife the girl. What's her face? Oh, no. It was a bat. What? She got her knees like hit with a bat. Nancy Kerrigan. Oh, why did I think someone stuck a knife in her back? Oh, no, that's Monica Sellis. That's a totally different person. um All right. Well, we're gonna we're going to cut all this anyway because this is beyond the point.
00:55:48
Speaker
Right. So life is going to provide multiple opportunities for you to lose your balance. And you'd better believe that what matters in that milliseconds of loss of balance is to be able to rapidly bring your foot or your arm forward to stop your fall. Not the precise alignment of your...
00:56:08
Speaker
fucking skeleton to optimize transmission of the gravitational force that is essential for bone building, right? To do that, we need the capacity of power, which is strength at speed, right?
00:56:20
Speaker
Yeah. We did longevity series this season. And so listen to part two on power of our series that we did a couple episodes back. But basically, if you work on the three capacities we talk about this season, strength, power, and aerobic endurance, which is coming up,
00:56:36
Speaker
you will also likely gain a good bit of the side benefits like flexibility, coordination, and balance. but You don't actually get strength, power, and aerobic endurance from working on stuff called flexibility training, coordination training, balance training, because typically that stuff means low load, often slow paced.
00:56:57
Speaker
Movement that is so far removed from the context in which you'd actually need to be able to use it, you basically just want to work to improve your general preparedness for whatever the fuck life is going to throw at you. And it really starts with just working on your strength, working on your power, working on your aerobic endurance, and you will be more ready for whatever the fuck life throws at you. Yeah.
00:57:20
Speaker
Thank you. All right. Now, Laurel and I are going to pull out our griftometers and we're going to take a moment here to score bones for life.
00:57:32
Speaker
In each of our nine categories, if there's one where it doesn't come up, then you can just leave it out. They don't have to get a score for everything.
00:57:43
Speaker
Yeah. if we're going to take like their total score, we should just divide by, I mean, there's nine categories, right? Yeah. We'll divide by eight instead of nine. Category one, do you even know what the problem is? Yes.
00:57:53
Speaker
One to five. gets a five. Not too bad. Five being pretty egregious. Yeah. Five. That's a five. Hot tips for moms. Hide broccoli in the brownies. She doesn't really talk about strength training at all. Well, she says who wants to go to the gym.
00:58:06
Speaker
Yeah, she downplays. She's like, strength training? Fuck that. Do my 90 processes. I give her a five. Okay. Alignment assassinators. Yes, it's all about posture, right? I wouldn't say she's like super fear-mongery about it.
00:58:19
Speaker
But she's only offering posture as a solution. Okay, so. Should we give her a three? Yeah. Okay. Fraadulistas, fear-mongering.
00:58:31
Speaker
She just kind of leaves it out. but So when we say fear-mongering, it's like fear shame fear-mongering, strength training. Yeah. i would day No, I don't think she really does that. She just leaves it out. So I guess it's a one.
00:58:41
Speaker
Yeah. Fiddle-faddle. That's a oh definite five. Five. Five. At least you're doing the absolute minimum. She's really telling them that like close to the absolute minimum is going to be enough. So She's not patting them on the back for doing the absolute minute. She's encouraging them. Yeah.
00:59:00
Speaker
I wouldn't even count that one. Yeah. Me neither. Let's take that one off. Microscope of practice. She doesn't really claim to be any She doesn't. No. No. So I give her a one. Okay. Unfair advantage. So she's not selling supplements.
00:59:14
Speaker
She's not selling supplements. She's not selling anything other than Feldengrist. And hypnosis. Ooh. Yeah. She's selling hypnosis. Maybe that's a two. Yeah, okay.
00:59:24
Speaker
And then itch doctors. One. She's not talking about... functional medicine, naturopathy or anything like that. Okay. Okay. So let's add up her score. It's going to be out of a total of 40 because she only really came up in eight categories. so hu So bones for life. So the way you're going to add up your score, listener, if you're playing along, you may be scoring differently than us, but we got her in eight of our nine categories. She got a total of 23 points.
00:59:55
Speaker
And so then to get a percentage of that, We're going to divide it by the absolute total points, which is 40. And then we multiply that whole thing by 100. And she gets a grifter score of 57.5%. Okay.
01:00:10
Speaker
and okay She's 57.5 grifter according to our grifdominor. All right. So we'll be using this tool again to then see how everyone else scores. Great.
01:00:27
Speaker
Lifting heavy and impact training are the only research-proven ways to build bone mineral density and guard against osteoporosis. In our six-month live online progressive barbell course, we teach you to do just that.
01:00:40
Speaker
If you'd like to sample a free workout from this progressive barbell course, join us April 26th at 11 a.m. m Eastern, 8 a.m. Pacific. If you already have barbells, great. And if you don't, bring your weights and a dowel or a broomstick. You will receive live feedback on technique if you want it.
01:00:57
Speaker
Camera off if you don't. If you can't make it live, you'll get a replay. Click the link in our show notes to sign up.
01:01:08
Speaker
Let's see if grifter number two, the bone coach, can beat Helen's so far high score since she's the only participant. on the Gryphonometer. So next up, we have the Bone Coach, AKA Mr. Kevin Ellis.
01:01:24
Speaker
Now, when I went and looked at Kevin Ellis's website, it turns out he's got three different websites and technically three different companies. So it's under the umbrella of something called the Stronger Bones Companies, which already makes me itchy.
01:01:40
Speaker
So the first one is Bone Coach, which is his coaching company. The second one is called Healthy Bones Company. It's a supplement company. And then the third one is OsteoIQ.
01:01:53
Speaker
which is genetic and bone marker testing. Laurel, you found this person. Where did you find him? Someone emailed us about him. So I looked into him and I got in his sales funnel.
01:02:04
Speaker
Oh my God. Oh my God. I email every fucking day. Something about blueberries every week. All right. Can you tell us a little more about him? Yeah. So his bio...
01:02:15
Speaker
on his website is quote Kevin is an integrative nutrition certified health coach, stronger bone solution TM program instructor, osteoporosis quote thriver, and founder of Bone Coach TM.
01:02:31
Speaker
He has made it his mission to help over one plus million people around the globe address bone loss, build bone strength, stop fearing fracture, and lead active lives. He's most known for helping people with osteopenia and osteoporosis gain clarity and confidence that improving is possible.
01:02:51
Speaker
But is he actually helping them improve or just gaining clarity and confidence that they're improving? Yeah. He's not most known for building bone density or reversing osteoporosis or osteopenia.
01:03:03
Speaker
He's just here help you gain clarity and confidence that those are things and they exist in the world. Yeah. Let's look at these certifications real quick. So he's an integrative nutrition certified health coach.
01:03:15
Speaker
At a glance, this seems to be a coaching certification with a nutrition focus. So this is not a clinical degree. Let's just say that right off the top. Here's the difference between a nutritionist, what this seems to be, and a registered dietitian.
01:03:32
Speaker
A nutritionist may or may not have formal education or certification. They often work in wellness, fitness, community health settings, and they generally cannot treat clinical conditions unless also licensed as a dietitian.
01:03:50
Speaker
Whereas dietitian, registered dietitian, or RD or RDN, this is a regulated title. It requires specific extensive education, supervised practice, and passing a national exam.
01:04:07
Speaker
Typically, this person has a bachelor's degree at minimum in nutrition and dietetics. Dieticians can work in hospitals and clinics and can treat medical conditions like diabetes, eating disorders, and heart disease.
01:04:23
Speaker
So here's where i want to talk about the dark side of the coaching industry. It's that it is largely unregulated, which means Anyone can call themselves a coach, health coach, life coach, business coach, without any standardized education, credentials, or oversight.
01:04:39
Speaker
And that opens the door to a lot of well-meaning but woefully underqualified people who offering advice on serious topics like trauma, like mental health, like financial planning or medical issues that they are not trained to handle.
01:04:57
Speaker
Sorry, but charisma and believing you can is not education, is not ability. It's really a lack of humility and it's deeply misguided. Even worse, there's a booming market of coaches training other coaches.
01:05:14
Speaker
coaching Coaches, coaching coaches. Creating a kind of pyramid scheme logic where the business model depends on selling the dream of becoming a successful coach rather than delivering real, effective, evidence-based help to clients.
01:05:30
Speaker
Many coaching spaces also lean heavily on cult dynamics. They're pyramids that prey on people, promising transformation, manipulating emotions to create a false sense of it without any accountability, without any evidence.
01:05:47
Speaker
For consumers, the red flags are coaching programs that promise fast results, that shame people for, quote, not wanting it badly enough, or that discourage questioning their method, and that lean very heavily on pseudoscience or very weak interventions with mixed or no evidence behind them.
01:06:11
Speaker
So Kevin's other listed certifications include the Stronger Bones TM program instructor. This is his own program. So he has certified himself to teach it himself.
01:06:26
Speaker
And he's he's he's the founder of Bone Coach TM. So many TMs. Kevin's story is that he had some GI issues in his late 20s, early 30s. He had celiac disease, which, Sarah, can you tell us a little bit about celiac disease?
01:06:46
Speaker
Yeah, celiac disease is when, unlike the people who claim they are gluten intolerant, but they just want to get out of eating carbs so that they can diet, but not actually say they're dieting.
01:06:58
Speaker
Celiac disease is a real intolerance of gluten. Any sort of like a colitis or a irritable bowel, any of these things, it can really impact the functionality of your intestines and the way that they're actually able to absorb nutrients that you ingest. So you may be eating all of the right things and doing all the stuff you're supposed to do, but your body cannot process it because there's just this underlying intolerance that makes it, it's like having an allergic reaction to the food, right? So that you can't actually take in what's what's in the food.
01:07:30
Speaker
Yeah. So he has this disease and his body's not absorbing the nutrients in his food and he's 31 and he's 30 pounds underweight and And that's when he finds out he has osteoporosis. So this is very, very much not the typical osteoporosis story.
01:07:44
Speaker
yeah We have a young man with osteoporosis. And this would probably be considered secondary osteoporosis, right, Sarah? Yeah. It's an outcome from a separate disease pathway, which was whatever his GI issues were.
01:07:56
Speaker
And so he tells this super emotional story on his website about how this struck terror in his heart and he was so afraid he was going to fracture something and how he just wanted to dance with his daughter on his wedding day. Wait, to dance with his daughter on his wedding day.
01:08:13
Speaker
And he just wanted to dance with his daughter on her wedding day or his wedding day. I can't remember. And then finally, after tons of research, he makes a plan and that plan made him feel better. And now he has, quote, transformed his health no mention of his T-score or current osteoporosis status. And now he wants to help you, osteoporotic person or osteopenic person, also make confident plans to thrive. So just want to shed a little light on this tactic, which is called the hero's journey.
01:08:43
Speaker
And so the hero's journey is really just the structure of a story about a hero that we've observed over centuries, right, in the storytelling. And so this is literally the structure of the hero's journey. And this is how Oftentimes, marketing coaches will coach you to tell your hero's journey, just so that we can kind of peek behind the curtains here.
01:09:03
Speaker
Here's the structure of this hero's journey. Part one, the ordinary world. Everything is fine. Everything was fine, right? Part two, the call to adventure, a.k.a. crisis hits. Something goes terribly wrong.
01:09:16
Speaker
Part three, refusal of the call. No, panic sets in. They spiral. They're confused. They're overwhelmed. They're scared. They don't know what to do. Part four, meeting the mentor. Or or Did my own research. I figured it out instead of a wise guide. In this case, we have some form of education, Googling mismash of gurus, personal experimentation, whatever it is. Okay. Part five, we cross the threshold, AKA the plan is born.
01:09:44
Speaker
The hero emerges with a plan, some method, strategy, toolkit. This is the first sign of transformation. i started doing X every day. I slowly began to feel different. Part six, tests, allies, and enemies, aka the journey wasn't easy. You know, they struggled. They had some setbacks, but they kept persevering.
01:10:03
Speaker
Part seven, the reward, aka the transformation. Here's where they claim the big win. I feel better than ever. I'm thriving. I danced with my daughter at someone's wedding. There's there's no hard data, just a powerful visual to cue the emotion.
01:10:21
Speaker
And then part eight, return with the elixir. Now I want to help you. This is the sales hook. I've walked this path. I know how hard it is. That's why I've created this program to help others like you.
01:10:37
Speaker
And so their personal journey becomes the emotional bait for your buy-in. And we respond powerfully to stories. Human beings have evolved making sense of the world through storytelling.
01:10:51
Speaker
So far up to now, there has been no research to show how shifting your mindset or being positive is going to make your bones stronger. The Hero's Journey is a story structure designed to basically bypass skepticism by making you feel rather than think. And it works because it's a story about him, but it's built to make you believe it could be you too. But I want you to remember, this is a young man selling his solutions, likely mostly to women in their 60s,
01:11:29
Speaker
sixty s seventy s And he's a coach. Yeah. So thank you for that. And that kind of emphasis on the emotional content is really like his big kind of touchstone. Like most of how he sells what he sells is through emotions.
01:11:48
Speaker
But ha there is a free masterclass with a three-step blueprint. Gotta love a blueprint. Yeah. And it's described as, on the site it says, don't let osteoporosis hold you back.
01:12:02
Speaker
Discover proven solutions to strengthen your bones, reduce fracture risk, and reclaim the active life you love. So Laurel and I both have watched the 15-minute masterclass, and frankly, it's time that I'll never get back. I was so mad because sometimes with things like this, they'll let you watch it on double speed, and it wouldn't.
01:12:21
Speaker
So i had to take all of the 50 minutes. Hey, I think that's the 10th category on our griffometer. Like, do theyla do they allow you to watch their fucking talks on double speed? no And they they think their words are so important that you've got to hang on every single one at 1x speed.
01:12:39
Speaker
And that is a fucking red flag. That is a fucking red flag. Give me the 2x speed button, goddammit. I'm sorry. You can take that part out. Look, full disclosure, I did play a game on my phone while I was spending 50 minutes listening to this because I was pretty sure it wasn't going to take all of my attention all of the time. And it turned out that was true.
01:12:58
Speaker
So he takes 50 minutes to say what I'm going to tell you or what we're going to tell you rather in probably about three. So one of the first things that he says is that it doesn't matter how much weight you lift if you don't understand his three-step program.
01:13:11
Speaker
Uh-huh. Uh-oh. Shit. I better understand his three-step program because I lift a lot of weight. Oh, yeah. Okay. So step one is you need to identify all the stressors to your bones, right?
01:13:25
Speaker
Chronic conditions, in his opinion, need more than acute solutions. These are his words. Acting quickly, making a quick choice to do something to help your bones. That's a mistake.
01:13:36
Speaker
which I don't honestly understand this argument that you shouldn't act quickly to improve your bone density, but you know, okay. Slow down. Yeah. Listen, you're 85 years old. You're likely to take a tumble at any moment, but listen, don't rush
Understanding Bone Density Loss
01:13:49
Speaker
into anything. Make sure you understand all of the sources of your bone density loss before you make any step at all.
01:13:56
Speaker
Okay. So step one is you have to find all the causes because for some reason, It is important to know whether or not you are still losing bone. He puts a big emphasis on this. Like you may have lost bone, but are you still losing bone?
01:14:10
Speaker
I'm like, well, why the fuck does that matter? I'm already at a deficit. Why am I, you know, maybe, maybe yes, that's something I need to fix. but Maybe that's, ah there's something lifestyle-y with that, but he wants you to think that because he has a biomarker, a bone biomarker company. Oh yeah. Listen, it's very important that you pay very close attention to exactly where your bones are every three weeks or whatever. So If you are a postmenopausal woman who the majority vast majority of women with osteoporosis, people with osteoporosis are postmenopausal women, you are probably still losing bone.
01:14:39
Speaker
Like that's just kind of how it goes, right? Because it's got everything to do with estrogen and nothing to do with journaling. But anyway. Pfft. Laurel, what is step two?
The Importance of Absorption in Bone Health
01:14:51
Speaker
Step two, healthy bones are built by what you absorb, not just what you eat. Ooh, interesting. Tell me more. Okay. Eating's not enough. No, you got to absorb that shit. Oh, yeah. You might have celiac disease. He says 5% of people with osteoporosis have it.
01:15:10
Speaker
This isn't untrue, but since for women, estrogen is what plays a huge role in bone building, and when you are post-menopausal, that estrogen drops dramatically. In the end, it doesn't really matter if you are eating your leafy greens.
01:15:24
Speaker
Your body's endocrine system stops outputting estrogen, and for various other age-related lifestyle factors that I also want to mention, You're also becoming more sedentary potentially.
01:15:36
Speaker
not Not as a rule. You could not become more sedentary, but this is what tends to happen. I think people, as they enter the 50s, 60s, 70s time of their life, their movement routines change due to life changes. They retire, right?
01:15:50
Speaker
Their kids move out. They might have a change in social support around them. Maybe there's less accountability to stay active, again, because they're retired. They might experience increased fatigue related to the hormonal changes that are taking place. I think perimenopause fucking hard, right?
01:16:08
Speaker
yeah And in that time around menopause, it's difficult in terms of the way that women
Bone Strength vs. Bone Density
01:16:14
Speaker
feel, okay? And There's also potentially caregiving responsibilities.
01:16:19
Speaker
You're not only taking care of maybe your kids, your grandkids, but also your aging parents, right? And so you're you are potentially taking care of other people and kind of setting your own health care, self-care, whatever you want to call exercise aside.
01:16:33
Speaker
You might and have advanced in your career to the point where like you're not running around doing the grunt work now. You're sitting at the desk calling the shots. Right. We tend to see like bosses of companies are older. Right.
01:16:45
Speaker
And then there's all which Sarah and I talk endlessly about the negative cultural messaging that encourages older women to slow down. Take it easy. Here's some pink dumbbells and some yoga. So it's just it's not just about the food, folks. like There's a lot going on that is not addressed by eating, right? You got to bring in the exercise component.
01:17:07
Speaker
All right. Well, not according to him, you don't. Okay. So number three in our three-step blueprint is that lots of things go into bone strength, not just bone density. Right?
01:17:20
Speaker
Right. He highlights the fact that your DEXA scan doesn't really show you the full picture. It doesn't tell you if the bone quality is good. It just shows you bone density. And look, it's true. A DEXA scan is not a perfect tool, but at the moment, commercially, it's what we got.
01:17:36
Speaker
And there are other tools coming up that are going to be better, but who knows how long those are going to take to get to market. ah But he doesn't really care about that because his point is that nutrition Life stressors, relationships, all of these can affect your bone strength, even sleep.
01:17:53
Speaker
Although I did find a paper that refutes this. And concludes that nocturnal sleep duration, whether assessed objectively or subjectively, was not independently associated with bone mineral density in older post-menopausal women. All right. so way to make a claim that is not backed by science.
01:18:10
Speaker
And then he says, when your muscles get stronger, your bones get stronger, which under certain circumstances, yes, because it's the force of the load through the tendons of your muscles onto the bones, but that's not happening from taking a walk down the street. Right.
01:18:25
Speaker
And then he ends with just a so classic fear mongering. Do you know how to improve your stress, your hormone hormones, your nutrition, your sleep, how to gain muscles? Are you prepared for the disasters that await you?
Concerns Over Program Costs
01:18:40
Speaker
Okay, so is the Stronger Bones program right for you? Who the fuck knows? Because you have to enter all of your personal, I mean, all. I started to do it see could a little bit of information. And then I was like, fuck this.
01:18:51
Speaker
All of your personal information yeah in order for them to then get back to you to determine how many of the different coaches from his coaching team you need to coach you. Yeah. And I was not about to do that. Can I say, oh, yes can I just say just now I'm remembering this person, I believe it was a woman who emailed me about this guy. ah Was pissed.
01:19:12
Speaker
So that's why she sent him to us. Because she was like, you know, I kind of liked his story and found a compelling. And I started to go through the process of applying. And I guess there's a checkbox on the application that asks, are you willing to pay? And I think it was like four figures.
01:19:29
Speaker
Wow. For coaching. And this was to set up a free consultation. Wow. So you fill out the whole thing. Okay. He gets all that buy-in that way. And then he asks, would you be willing?
01:19:40
Speaker
this Is this something you would be willing to do to pay four figures for coaching? No. She did not check that box. And he did not do the free consult with her.
01:19:51
Speaker
Oh, wow. And so she so she emailed and was like, yo, this guy. I mean, from his perspective as a business person trying to make money, sure, I'm not going to waste time on somebody who's not willing to then fork out thousands on my coaching.
01:20:07
Speaker
I know, what well here's but here's the thing. We give away free shit all the time, Sarah. I know. like How long did it take us to create our bone density mini course? A whole trip. You came over here from LA and we created that shit. That shit is free. Free. We don't make someone check a fucking box. like You only get this if you agree to you think you're going to do bone density.
01:20:26
Speaker
I'm like, are you going to give us money after this? Cause if you don't, we're not going to give you this dude. Free means fucking free. All right. So if you're going to say it's free, then it's free. Don't then also be like, Oh no, but it's not free. Cause you haven't promised to pay me four figures for this thing that, Oh God, it's just gross. It's fucking gross.
01:20:42
Speaker
It's gross. It's gross. I didn't even get that far in the signup. As soon as they were like, what's your phone number? I was like, Nope. So, cause I was like, just based on knowing how many emails Laurel had gotten. I was like, these people going to be texting me and calling me every fucking goddamn day. yeah I don't want to get on a list that I suddenly can't get off. But so Brave Laurel signed up for his emails and but we both have read a bunch of them. I just picked a few to highlight.
01:21:06
Speaker
It's sort of randomness or unrelatedness or just weirdness. So Laurel, would you read the first one? Sure. Email one, how to do an osteoporosis safe fascial release of the foot in under 60 seconds aka roll a tennis ball on your foot okay what does this have to do with fucking literally anything like he's claiming it's a great prep before doing exercise I mean Is it?
01:21:33
Speaker
I think it's a fucking waste of time, personally. I mean, if your feet are sore, sure. Yeah. I mean, I use it when my feet are sore, if they're sore. Yeah, I do it to feel good. I don't need to do it to prep for exercise. No.
01:21:43
Speaker
And also, osteoporosis is safe. Like... People don't get osteoporosis in the small bones in their feet, typically. so I'm sorry. you're You're telling people to stand on a ball. How is that safe, right? Like they could fall.
01:21:56
Speaker
Exactly. Good point. All right. Email number two This one really pissed me off. Did you know that hypermobility, and then in in parentheses being, quote, double jointed, often... wish Nikki were here right now. Her eyes would be rolling so hard, they she would fall over backwards from the force Okay. Did you know that hypermobility being double jointed is often associated with osteoporosis and other chronic health conditions?
01:22:23
Speaker
No, it actually fucking isn't. You goddamn moron. Hypermobility... is not a cause of osteoporosis. We know this because I did an entire episode on it, episode 56, does hypermobility cause osteoporosis? Now he's not claiming that it causes it, but he says that it's often associated with it.
01:22:44
Speaker
And to that, I say, so the fuck what? Because unless you're doing something like heavy lifting strength training, you're not actually helping that person's hypermobility at fucking all.
01:22:54
Speaker
And also lots of people have other conditions and also have hypermobility. Hypermobility is associated with lots of things. Osteoporosis is associated with being white in European.
01:23:06
Speaker
Yes, right? There's so many things that are associated with other things. So this is just like saying, do you know that your car's wheels are associated with the rest of the car? Yes. They're also associated with the axle, right?
01:23:19
Speaker
Or like, what do you know that sitting upright is associated with being awake? Yes. anyway Okay, I'm done on that. Okay, email number three. The golfer's lift can be used to pick up a light object from the floor. but Okay, basically the golfer's lift is like warrior three, right?
01:23:37
Speaker
Okay, so golfer's lift is like if you're walking... you're going to go ahead and reach down, pick up your club off the green, or you're going to pick your tee up off the place you tee off from. You might tip over one hip like a warrior three and so scoop up whatever equipment you need to scoop up to head back to your cart or head back to your bag.
01:23:54
Speaker
So that's what he's saying. It can be used to pick up a light object from the floor. Well, Ike. Fucking can also be used to pick up a heavy goddamn object from the floor. It's called a fucking one-legged RDL. Okay. Anyway, quote, remember to avoid flexing or rounding the spine when you have osteoporosis or osteopenia to decrease your risk of fracture. Okay. So here we go. So as soon as he starts talking about lifting something, it's got to be light and you can't, God forbid, flex around your spine.
01:24:20
Speaker
God forbid. We did an episode, episode 93, Should You Avoid Spinal Flexion with Osteoporosis, all about the fearful messaging around flexing your spine. So check that out.
01:24:32
Speaker
This email that he's sharing has a link to a video by Dr. Beverly Yates, naturopath, praising Kevin and his program. Okay.
01:24:43
Speaker
So naturopath is not an evidence-based healthcare provider in the way a medical doctor or doctor of osteoporosis pathic medicine is. And frankly, it's just, it doesn't even come close.
01:24:55
Speaker
Why? Because naturopathy is not grounded in rigorous scientific backing. It does not help to the same level of clinical scrutiny, plain and simple. Naturopathic education is a mismash a mishmash alternative therapies.
01:25:09
Speaker
Herbal medicine, homeopathy, do naturopathic education is a mishmash of alternative therap herbal medicine homeopathy acupuncture, and nutritional counseling.
01:25:23
Speaker
Remember the difference between an RDN, a registered dietitian, and a nutritionist or nutritional counselor, okay? And also check out our episode called Weird Science When It Doesn't All Add Up, which we will also link in the show notes where we go into stuff like homeopathy and acupuncture and herbal medicine.
01:25:42
Speaker
So sure, some of these approaches might have some benefits, but let's be real. Many of them aren't supported by solid clinical trials. They're not supported by peer-reviewed evidence.
01:25:53
Speaker
We're talking about treatments that have weak or mixed or no evidence to support them. And that's at best. There's no real proof of making a meaningful impact on disease processes with these treatments.
01:26:07
Speaker
The body of knowledge in naturopathy doesn't even consistently align with evidence-based medical practices. In fact, it often diverges from them. And these evidence-based medical practices have been researched. They have been tested. They have been shown to work reliably.
01:26:24
Speaker
If naturopathly did align with these evidence-based medical practices, we wouldn't be having this conversation with you right now, but we feel that it needs to be said. A naturopath is not a medical doctor.
01:26:35
Speaker
And honestly, and this is why i think it needs to be said, it boggles my mind that many people still think that that it's a good thing that naturopaths aren't MDs because they're not, you know, at the whims of big pharma.
01:26:50
Speaker
And listen, okay, it's not a good thing. It's not a good thing that naturopaths are thought of as on equal footing with medical doctors or even better than medical doctors. An actual medical doctor goes through years of extensive education including medical school, residencies.
01:27:05
Speaker
They have to pass licensing exams. Their training is built around human biology, disease processes, and treatment options that are scientifically validated. And you know what that means? It means research, a fuck ton of it.
01:27:18
Speaker
You don't just stumble into being a doctor. It's grounded in years of rigorous evidence-based training. And you got like kind of already be pretty fucking bright.
01:27:30
Speaker
You know what mean? Like it's not easy. You're not going fucking make it if you're not right. On the other hand, naturopathic training is way less extensive. Naturopaths might have some formal education, but it doesn't come close to the depth or breadth of what an MD or a DO goes through. Doctor of osteopathy.
01:27:47
Speaker
Plus their training often focuses on alternative or complementary treatments, many of which are not backed by solid research. Okay, so a lot of the stuff they teach is, again, I'll say it weak, mixed, or flat out ineffective when it comes to meaningful disease treatment.
01:28:04
Speaker
And here's the kicker. Many naturopathic treatments lack the standardization and scientific validation required to be considered mainstream or evidence-based.
01:28:15
Speaker
This means that naturopaths are diagnosing and treating conditions without the support of reliable, well-researched methods. And that's a huge fucking problem. Yeah. To wrap it up, a medical doctor is relying on scientifically validated treatments and clinical evidence.
01:28:30
Speaker
A naturopath may lean on unproven alternative therapies that haven't consistently shown results in clinical trials. That's the hard truth. So no, they cannot be considered evidence-based providers like real doctors. They're not on the same footing as real doctors, period.
01:28:46
Speaker
Yeah. So that's just a quick primer on naturopathy.
Medical vs. Naturopathic Approaches
01:28:52
Speaker
That may end up having to be its own episode at some point. Yeah. If we go back to the emails that Laurel received, the 75,000 emails, ah there was another one that said that if you have osteoporosis, twisting is dangerous and you need to watch this video where we show you how to move without ever rotating your spine.
01:29:09
Speaker
Anytime bone coach talks about exercise, it's always about being careful and doing the absolute fucking most milk toast yeah ah thing while also scaring the shit out of you about it.
01:29:21
Speaker
Will you tell us about some of the other emails that you received? Yeah. There's a whole long email about the dangers of osteoporosis drugs. That's not completely wrong, but it's also not that simple. He very much hypes the dangers and talks about how he didn't take them. So leaning into anecdote.
01:29:37
Speaker
There's ah another whole long email about how much he misses his dad and how to journal about your feelings. And it's like, okay, could you just have to do with anything? Stop like using your traumas to trauma dump and pull our emotional strings to make money. It's so gross.
01:29:54
Speaker
Another whole long email about what supplements to take. And how handy it is that he has pre-picked the right ones for you based on his coaching certification.
01:30:05
Speaker
He sends out so many recipes. Most of them have blueberries. It's all about the blueberries. It's a superfood. I guess he has just figured out through whatever marketing techniques he's tested that like blueberries get good open rates or something.
01:30:20
Speaker
But here's the thing. At the bottom of all the emails is a medical disclaimer. Right. And this is what it says. Kevin Ellis is a certified health coach through the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. He is not a medical doctor.
01:30:31
Speaker
The information contained within this email is for informational purposes only and does not provide healthcare, care medical, or nutrition therapy services. It does not diagnose, treat, or cure any disease, condition, or other physical or mental ailment of the human body.
01:30:43
Speaker
It is not to be used as a replacement or substitute for medical advice provided by physicians and trained medical professionals. That's just a very standard cover your ass thing to say. And frankly, it's something that I think a lot of people who want to believe in the power of non-traditional medicine yeah just overlook or ignore completely. Yeah.
01:31:00
Speaker
Because 99.9% of his email was him delivering advice with all types of like important sounding credentials yeah with a high level of certainty and a strong emotional bent.
01:31:13
Speaker
So then this little part at the bottom is like, eh, whatever. Okay. So that's his coaching company. Now I want to take a look as well at his supplement company. We could do an entire episode just on this supplement company and it's very, very itchy claims. But at this point I was just starting to get really annoyed with this guy.
01:31:30
Speaker
So I didn't want to spend a lot of time going through all of the different supplements yeah available, but it's a lot of the greatest hits like D3 and K2, collagen, magnesium, fish oil, right?
01:31:41
Speaker
But I just wanted to read you a little bit of the copy for a product called Anatrol TM. Laurel, would you read this from the website? Okay. Anatrol TM.
01:31:54
Speaker
So many TMs. So many. Combines anatotocotrienols and geronilogerenol, GG.
01:32:05
Speaker
I don't know. I'm saying that wrong. Two powerful nutrients that support healthy aging. cellular energy generation, oral health, a healthy inflammatory response, heart health, and maintenance of muscle and bone mass.
01:32:18
Speaker
Asterisk. Note the asterisk. What does the asterisk take us to? So there's tiny text at the bottom of the page. Asterisk. Statements on this website have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. These products are not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.
01:32:35
Speaker
Hey, I got to give credit for including this, though. Yeah. Because like a lot of these grifters leave that shit off entirely. Yeah. Yeah. Honestly, it's so tiny. Like I had to put my glasses on to read it. And I think honestly, like it's, I mean, it's more just cover your ass stuff, frankly.
01:32:49
Speaker
Okay. So that's enough about the supplements. And then we get into his third company, which is called OsteoIQ, Bone Health Intelligence Testing for Osteoporosis Prevention, Monitoring, and Reversal.
Skepticism on Bone Health Testing
01:33:02
Speaker
Oh my God. Oh yeah. Okay. So there's, there's two basic things that you can test for. One is called OsteoIQ Optimal Genomics. And this ranges in price from $379 to $850, depending on how much of your genome you want to know about. It's an at-home DNA test, so that means it's like a mouth swab, right?
01:33:21
Speaker
So it's this one-time at-home DNA test, easily analyzed key genetic markers for osteoporosis with a simple saliva test. And then you get something called your osteoIQ TM.
01:33:32
Speaker
risk assessment so that you can understand your genetic predisposition to bone loss and fractures. So this is telling you if you are genetically predisposed to getting osteoporosis.
01:33:43
Speaker
There's a much cheaper an easier way to know this. Do you want to know what it is, Laura? Does your grandmother have osteoporosis? Yeah. Does your mother have osteoporosis? Yeah. If so, strong chance.
01:33:55
Speaker
Mm-hmm. Either way, just pick up some weights. It's so easy. Yeah. Okay. What is the thing called that you you've recommended to people who email us? Frax. Frax. Frax.
01:34:06
Speaker
yes that's free yeah yeah that's totally free yeah okay so that's one thing and then the other thing that he sells that's like medical adjacent or whatever is something called osteo iq tm active monitoring yes like what yes ah fuck so this is a bone turnover marker ah that looks at CTX and P1NP, which are bone turnover markers. i'm going to tell you about that in a second.
01:34:33
Speaker
Now, Laurel, the good news is you can bundle and you can also subscribe and save. So this costs $225 to $250, depending on if you're just getting it every month or however long he says, or if you're only doing once. So bone turnover markers, BMTs, are biochemical substances released into the bloodstream during bone remodeling. Some of them show up when you're going through bone formation.
01:34:58
Speaker
Some of them show up when you're going through bone resorption. So there's constantly remodeling, formation, resorption going on with your bones, right? And so- He's saying that if you get this, I believe it's a, this might be a blood test.
01:35:14
Speaker
It must be a blood test. So it's probably like a pinprick test. i You know what? I don't know that for sure, but I'm assuming that that's what it is because it shows up in your blood, right? So it must be. So he's saying that if you keep a really close eye on this, then you're going to know what's going on with your bones.
01:35:27
Speaker
And he links a research paper from 2018 that is titled Bone Turnover Markers in the Diagnosis and Monitoring of Metabolic Bone Disease. But... The paper doesn't actually back his argument especially well.
01:35:41
Speaker
So this is from the paper. Can BTM, bone turnover marker, show rate of bone loss? And the paper says, overall, while a clear relationship has been documented between perimenopausal BTM levels and subsequent bone loss, the association between BTM levels and subsequent bone loss in elderly women is less obvious.
01:36:01
Speaker
Therefore, the positive predictive value of altered BTM levels for accelerated bone loss in elderly white women is modest. Use of BTMs is not currently recommended as a public health measure to identify patients at increased risk of rapid bone loss. But I'm pretty sure he's confident almost no one who's going to give him money is going to agree that.
01:36:23
Speaker
Of course not. And then if we want to know, can BTM predict fracture risk? The paper says ROC analyses, which is it's a type of statistical analysis, have failed to demonstrate that the combination of low BMD and increased BTMs detects more women at risk for fracture than low BMD alone.
01:36:44
Speaker
However, distinction should be made for patients with secondary bone loss, such as hyperparathyroidism, hyperthyroidism, vitamin D deficiency, and paraproteinemia, as BTMs may have utility in these higher risk patient subsets. But these are a small percentage of the people who have osteoporosis, right? And so the paper summarizes, BTMs are a useful adjunct for the diagnosis and therapeutic monitoring of bone metabolic disorders, but their use has to be tempered by the known limitations in their clinical utility and
01:37:16
Speaker
and pre-analytic variables complicating interpretation. So it's not just a matter of look at the numbers. Oh, it's high. Oh, it's low. I need to do something. Yeah.
01:37:26
Speaker
Okay. Also, this is a fucking coach. Yes. No, he has no business. He's a coach. Well, let's, why don't we grade him on a- Let's grade him. I'm fucking pissed. i This is not when I should be grading someone.
01:37:40
Speaker
Oh, if I love that you're pissed and grading. I want to grade him on our griftometer TM. and I'm going to TM it now. I'm just going to say it's a TM. And, you know, because based on how this person works, if you just say it, it's true. Yeah.
01:37:54
Speaker
Okay. So let's go through our categories. God. You ready? ready I'm ready. Okay. Do you even know what the real problem is? Clearly not. Kevin knows what the real problem is and he's going to tell me it. So I think that's a five. Yeah. but He's just undermines their autonomy every fucking step the way.
01:38:09
Speaker
He's like, before you lift a heavy weight, yeah don't do these three things. Don't act too fast. Because you got to get through all my fucking emails. All right. Hot tips for moms. Hide broccoli and brownies.
01:38:21
Speaker
This is like you mentioned strength training somewhere, but you put it like at the bottom of the list of things you need to do. Does he ever say that you need to be lifting weights? He's always, he's downplaying the fuck out of it if he is. And he's also fear mongering it.
01:38:33
Speaker
Yeah. I don't think he mentions it. I think he might. He says blueberries more than he says strength training, Sarah. That is for damn sure. That's sure. So then on this scale, is he really doing this?
01:38:45
Speaker
A little bit. Let's make it a three because he's definitely really egregious in some of the other categories. Okay. Alignment assassinator. Is he obsessed with posture and alignment? Not not so much. I give him two.
01:38:56
Speaker
Okay, great. Fragilista, is he fragilifying you? Yeah. He does though, but he more psychologically. Yeah. He's just trying to make you feel like you absolutely need him.
01:39:08
Speaker
Right. You can't do this on your own. No, you need him and his team of 17 coaches. And there's so many things that you haven't considered that you really need to consider. Like strength training, meh. but Have you thought about your bone turnover and should you test that for $150? Yeah.
01:39:23
Speaker
Have you journaled about your blueberries yet? Because if you haven't, then you really shouldn't lift it. Yeah. ah yeah What do you think? What should we give him? He's just fear-mongering. No, ah but but he could create a lot of fucking fear in people. And and that's his way of creating dependency. Right. i think So that's a five for me. Yeah.
01:39:40
Speaker
I don't get the sense that Kevin's trying to make himself obsolete. Hell no. Hell no. Okay. Fiddle faddle, also known as word salad. You know, not like the Feldenkrais person, yeah but no but he's almost worse. You know what i mean? Like it's it's harder to see through what he's doing because most people aren't going to read the papers that he's linking.
01:40:00
Speaker
He's taking like entire emails to be super manipulative and... to share stuff that is out of his microscope of practice. We haven't even gotten to that one yet. But then at the bottom, putting his little disclaimer and like that almost helps him right at the bottom where you're like, well, see how honest he is? Like, right. Exactly.
01:40:19
Speaker
He's saying that. I just, I mean, to be fair, like, I don't think he's using word salad. So yeah let's be fair. And I would score him at like a one. Okay. Yeah. But I think he's just being dishonest though. Like extremely dishonest in a sneakier way. Okay. At least you are doing the absolute minimum.
01:40:34
Speaker
Yeah, I think he's high there. I mean, his big focus is on testing. You know, it's like, let's give you a whole bunch of expensive tests so that you really feel like you need me.
01:40:45
Speaker
And then he's pushing diet a lot because he's that's his bias. He had celiac. And that's the easy path as well. Okay. So what's the criteria again? Are you doing the absolute minimum that you possibly could do?
01:40:57
Speaker
Good job, but it's also kind of condescending? No, I don't think he's doing that. Yeah. He actually wants you to do a lot of things, but just none of them are really exercise-based. Yeah. So maybe that's a one. Yeah. I think it's a one.
01:41:08
Speaker
He wants you to do a lot fucking more than you actually have to, in my opinion. yeah Microscope of practice. Five. Five. This guy is so bad. Unfair advantage, which is about taking supplements. Five. Five.
01:41:19
Speaker
Yeah. And then finally, itch doctors. Five. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So when we add that all up, let's see. Beep bop boop. Let's see. Was there a category that we, one, two, three, four, five, six, no, he didn't. So, okay. I'm glad didn't have to do my math homework next to you. Oh, wait, that's not right.
01:41:41
Speaker
um Why? Because the noises I'm making? I'm just doing that because we're in an auditory medium here and I i want people to listen to the sound of me doing math.
01:41:52
Speaker
he find Okay. Ready? Yeah. He is 71% on the grifter scale. Okay. So now that we've got two scores, two final scores to compare against, I definitely feel like he's a bigger offender than the first one.
01:42:08
Speaker
Definitely. Agreed. I think he's a bigger offender because he wades so confidently and on self-critically into the world of like medicalized advice. Like the first person is simply saying Feldenkrais can help. And I teach Feldenkrais.
01:42:24
Speaker
And yes, she uses a lot of word salad to really overplay Feldenkrais. This guy just pretends that he knows a lot about things that he definitely does not. yeah Yeah.
01:42:36
Speaker
And I feel like that is worse. Yeah. Agreed. I think it's more dangerous. Okay. Okay. So grifter number three. This is, as my dad might say, the big kahuna.
01:42:49
Speaker
We're going to be talking about buff bones, which is, I would think, Laurel, maybe the most famous of the three programs that we're discussing today. i think maybe in in our community. Yes. If you're someone who knows anything about bones, you've probably heard about buff bones.
01:43:02
Speaker
Pilates especially because she's Pilates teacher. That's right. So full disclosure, we have pissed off Rebecca in the past, and we're going to talk about it. and Who's Rebecca? Rebecca Rothstein is the creator of Buff Bones, and we have definitely pissed her off in the past.
01:43:21
Speaker
She is not a fan of ours. Possibly even worse, we've pissed off her devotees who have come after us on Instagram. But I guess we're gluttons for punishment because here we are. So there's a few things that we're going to look at here, basically like three different categories. The first one is the Buff Bones website and the various options if you are going to do her program.
01:43:41
Speaker
Then we're also going to look at the Buff Bones Instagram feed with an eye on a tactic that she has repeatedly used. and And this one post from a couple of years ago that kind of started the whole thing. I mean, there's not it's not like an ongoing beef.
01:43:53
Speaker
I shouldn't categorize it that way, but we just know that she's not a fan of our work because we critique her. And then also how Buffbones fared in the Med-XOP research trial with lead investigator Belinda Beck. And if you've already listened to episode 91, our interview of Professor Beck, you know the answer to this already.
01:44:13
Speaker
The essence of our original problem with her program is the total lack of of heavy weightlifting and impact training, which are supported by research as effective bone building tools.
01:44:25
Speaker
And she didn't like that we said that. And so here's the thing though, as it turns out, we were actually partly wrong because there has always been some impact training in the Buff Bones program.
01:44:37
Speaker
So this is what I flashed on. Just like the dad from Dirty Dancing, when he discovers that Patrick Swayze did not in fact impregnate his ex-girlfriend, causing her to need an abortion that the dad performed.
01:44:52
Speaker
But it was actually Robbie, the preppy waiter who I think is going to Harvard, who impregnated Swayze's former girlfriend. So the dad goes to Patrick Swayze and says, when I'm wrong, I say I'm wrong.
01:45:07
Speaker
And that's us. So we were wrong. She did have some impact training. So i wanted to make sure that we corrected that about our critique. Can you tell us a little bit about how Buff Bones started, when it started, what's it about?
01:45:19
Speaker
Yeah, sure. So Rebecca Rotstein, former ballet dancer, created Buff Bones in 2009 when she discovered she had osteoporosis. And she was quite young at the time, i think in her 30s.
01:45:31
Speaker
So here's the description from her website telling us what Buff Bones is. It says, our structured approach uses clinical and creative techniques to help you alleviate joint pain, strengthen your bones, and improve your balance.
01:45:43
Speaker
It draws on Pilates, functional movement, strength training, somatics, and therapeutic exercise, and relies on research findings on bone and fascia,
01:45:54
Speaker
along with teachings of motor control, biotensegrity, and movement quality. This conditions your body to support you through the anticipated and unexpected events of daily life.
01:46:05
Speaker
So is this more than just lifting weights? Quote, just lifting weights. Bone health should take into account muscle strength, balance, responsiveness, function, core control, and fall prevention, along with mobility and posture.
01:46:22
Speaker
as key factors to avoiding fracture. Strength training is essential to maintaining bone mass and research shows that to increase bone density as you age requires lifting heavier loads.
01:46:34
Speaker
In order to perform those large muscle movements, you should also fine tune your muscle activity. You need not only strong muscles, but also smart muscles.
01:46:46
Speaker
You achieve this through sequencing and calibrating the muscle firing with your nervous system. This is especially important if you have injuries or other conditions that have held you back or made you cautious and is pivotal to your success in lifting heavier loads and other fitness pursuits. Okay.
01:47:08
Speaker
So let's just pull out a couple of choice words and phrases in this website description. So she includes that buff bones draws on functional movement.
01:47:21
Speaker
Okay. There's really nothing to draw on there. That's again, it's a marketing term that can be used slapped on any type of movement to make it sound healthier or better.
01:47:32
Speaker
Motor control in this context, she's talking about fine tuning your muscle activity and making your muscles smart and that you need to do this in order to perform those large muscle movements. Okay. So if i try to understand what she's saying using language that, that I would use, what, what I think Rebecca is saying here is that we need to work fine tuning muscle activity that is not large muscle movement in order to be able to do large muscle movements. So then I'm
01:48:07
Speaker
thinking maybe she's drawing on this model of working on the stabilizer muscles and the smaller muscles and coordinating those first to be able to then use those bigger mobilizer muscles. And Sarah and I have talked about this. This comes from outdated research on how movement works, how muscles pattern and how the nervous system coordinates movement.
01:48:29
Speaker
Yeah. It's very, very popular still though in the Pilates world. Like the Pilates world is still very much about this model. We recorded an entire episode with Nikki Nablivi on her podcast, Results Not Typical, which we should link in the show notes for listeners. It's about good and bad muscles. Are there such a thing as good and bad muscles? So Rebecca's not talking about good and bad muscles here, but she is talking about there needing to be some type of sequence in which we prepare to do compound movements and we have to make our small stabilizer muscles smart.
01:49:04
Speaker
And what this often looks like in a movement format like Pilates is focusing on a lot of little tiny movements using tiny weights, And finding this ideal posture in these low load, low intensity movements before we're allowed to do these bigger whole body movements. Think squats, deadlifts, things that involve multiple joints, multiple large masses of muscle. And it's just not true.
01:49:31
Speaker
you You don't actually have to start with small movements or even small weights, frankly, right? You can literally just start squatting. It's true.
01:49:42
Speaker
It's true. Can I jump in for a second before you go on to the next thing? The reason why this is true is you're doing it every day. If you are standing up out of a chair, you're doing a squat, right? And sitting back down. If you're picking something off the ground and standing up, let's say a bag of groceries, that was a deadlift. You don't need to prepare for these movements because you're already doing these movements. Not as heavy as you would imagine with a barbell, but that's just a question of progression.
01:50:05
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. She talks about bone health should take into account muscle strength, balance, responsiveness, function, core control, and fall prevention, along with mobility and posture as key factors to avoiding fracture.
01:50:23
Speaker
So she's listed a bunch of capacities or outcomes that you get from presumably doing buff bones, right? And or approaching bone health the right way. All right. So she lists muscle strength, balance, responsiveness.
01:50:42
Speaker
I'm not sure what she's referring to. She's talking about speed of movement, function. How do we take into account function? i guess we're taking into account function of the person training. Sure. Okay.
01:50:54
Speaker
But function would depend on what we're trying to accomplish, right? So what do we need to be able to do? Core control, Again, sure, but this could also be core strength, right? It could be coordination for the particular task at hand.
01:51:10
Speaker
And then fall prevention, along with mobility and posture as key factors to avoiding fracture. In essence, she's creating this equivalency between all of these outcomes.
01:51:23
Speaker
As though they're all equally important to strength when really strength confers a lot of these outcomes, actually. So if we just focused on strength, we'd get a lot of these outcomes. We'd get potentially better balance. We'd get potentially better responsiveness. I'm not really sure what that means, but like you improve your strength, you're going to also improve your power. yeah We're going to get better function likely because we're going to be able to do more under more you know mechanical stress.
01:51:45
Speaker
Core control. Sure, you can strengthen your core. Fall prevention. Yes, because again, balance and stronger bones. Mobility comes from strength. Like literally your posture can improve from strength. All of these things could come from strength, but she's actually kind of parsing them apart, taking them apart to make them seem like they should all be worked on separately. Yeah.
01:52:03
Speaker
that they all can be worked on separately, absent of the context in which you're working on them, which they can't. Everything she's named is specific to the context you're in. And so in this way, what she's really doing is using this rhetorical device, painting a false equivalency to downplay the importance of, quote, just lifting weights.
01:52:25
Speaker
And this is in service of what she's selling, okay? Which is not very much lifting of... the type of weight you would want to lift to build bone and strength. All right. And then just again, to hit on this idea of there being smart, right?
01:52:40
Speaker
I think there's this idea in Pilates, and I think there is a little bit in yoga, but more so in Pilates, just from the outside looking in, because again, I'm not a Pilates insider, that we have to move in a very specific way within Pilates to achieve, like to graduate our movement capacity Into the realms of like being a smart mover. And so the movement is evaluated based on how it looks ultimately within the Pilates form.
01:53:06
Speaker
And then what's assumed is that if it looks this certain way, according to the teacher's opinion, because it's anytime you're evaluating someone's movement quality, that's another example. f phrase she uses, you're really dealing in the realm of opinion.
01:53:19
Speaker
it's It's qualitative. What is your movement quality? It's not talking about how much can you lift. It's not talking about how many reps you can It's not quantitative. It's qualitative, right?
01:53:30
Speaker
So smart muscles means the movement looks the way I want it to You're a smart mover. And now you're ready to do these compound lifts with a meaningful amount of weight. And I'm sorry,
01:53:44
Speaker
No, know Wrong. Not true. Not true. You can just literally start squatting right now. In fact, you do it multiple times a day. Right. Yep. So thank you.
01:53:56
Speaker
If we go to the Buff Bones website, let's say you're somebody just been diagnosed with osteoporosis. You've heard about Buff Bones from your Pilates instructor and you're like, okay, I need to check this out. So what offerings are there? So the first one is something called the Buff Bones Challenge, which is $79. And by the way, I'm just mentioning prices like we have a price.
01:54:15
Speaker
So i'm just mentioning prices because I think it's good to know what things cost. That to me is a totally fair, maybe even cheap price for a 10 day roadmap. I'm not exactly sure what comes in the roadmap. I'm hoping it's like videos or something, but so the Buff Bones Challenge and it says your 10 day roadmap to overcome pain and master the moves you need next for better bones.
01:54:36
Speaker
You know, the same way that buff bones doesn't really mean anything, neither does better bones. Because again, it's a qualitative description, right? It doesn't say anything about, it just they're just gonna be better, but we don't know better how. Are they gonna be denser? Are they gonna be stronger?
01:54:53
Speaker
Not clear. And then there's an asterisk that if you've had a spine fracture, You should send in your email address so that you can meet up one-on-one with a certified Buff Bones instructor so you can get personalized guidance because you've had a fracture.
01:55:09
Speaker
And, you know, this is probably my bias, but I was like, oh, God forbid you send them to a physical therapist. and No, no, no. That's totally unnecessary. They need to do Buff Bones, but they just need someone watching them do it is what I got out of that. And it it makes me feel itchy You know, it's also, it's not, I mean, are are these buff bones instructors, all clinicians? Some of them might be, but I don't know.
01:55:30
Speaker
If you have had a spine fracture, you're at greater risk for another fracture. Okay. Because we know the biggest predictor of injury is a history of injury. And so I would want to know that she would be referring these people who have real concerns for a second or next fracture of their spine, that they're being referred to a clinician.
01:55:47
Speaker
Do we know that? No. Wow. No, they're being referred to a buff bones practitioner. I think it's, and I also think it's fine if this person who's had a spine fracture and is concerned about it has been cleared for exercise, that they see someone who is a non-clinician.
01:56:01
Speaker
Sure. But, but that would be a conversation that you would have with each individual. I don't know that I would put on my website, if you've had a spine fracture, we're going to set you up with one of our buff bones instructors and And now I don't even know what the qualification of that buff bone instructor is to presumably help me with my concern about a possible second fracture to my spine from this exercise. I mean, yeah that seems problematic, actually.
01:56:28
Speaker
i mean, the most generous interpretation that we could give here is that this is individualized and maybe there are some buff bones instructors who are also physical therapists. It's entirely possible.
01:56:41
Speaker
Sure. there must I don't know. And we would think that if they are, then that would definitely be something you'd want to allay people's concerns with the fact that they're going to be positioned with a clinician right to help them with their concerns about a ah possible future spinal fracture. Yeah, maybe you would say something like one of our clinical Buff Bones instructors or something like that. You know, it'd easy.
01:57:00
Speaker
That would make me feel way better. So then here's a few sentences coming up that just tell you what is in it. So the first one is, and this is a quote, will provide you the solid foundation you need to avoid injury and properly perform other exercises and daily activities now and throughout your entire life.
01:57:18
Speaker
So this goes back to what Laura was talking about before in the description on the site. It's this unnecessary gatekeeping, right? You have to do this first so that you don't hurt yourself later. And there's a lot of that. There's a lot of you need to prepare. You are unprepared to pick up something that's a little heavier. So you have to first do these Pilates-based lying on your back exercises where you contract your abdominal muscles and then move your arms and legs around so that you can stabilize. I mean, that's all fine and good exercise.
01:57:46
Speaker
I use that as rehab for people who are injured. But if you're not actively injured, you can just start lifting. You don't need a 20-month run-up to it or whatever.
01:57:57
Speaker
She writes, you'll learn to decompress your joints while also loading your bones. So there's a question in my mind. as to whether or not she's using language that she knows her audience uses and understands. She's using the language of her audience in order to name their concerns using words they would choose.
01:58:18
Speaker
So someone who has pain might think their joints are compressed. oh Okay. But the reality is that joints are constantly being compressed.
01:58:30
Speaker
There's constantly compression in tensile forces. applied to bones that make up joints and the soft tissues surrounding that joint space all the time. yeah Decompressing means that you're now no longer applying a compressive force to the joint.
01:58:46
Speaker
And so anytime you stand up, right, you say, for example, you're standing up and we're talking about your knees, like your knees are experiencing compressive forces. So it's not an inherently negative thing for your joints to experience compressive forces. In fact, you could say- good thing. It's a really good thing because it's how fluids are moved through the joint and how waste products are cleared and fresh nutrients are brought in.
01:59:08
Speaker
my But she's using this word decompress your joints, I think, because that's the language that her audience would use. I think Rebecca is actually quite educated and yeah and very intelligent.
01:59:19
Speaker
And she probably knows that, yes, okay, this is not like an inherently bad thing. So I want to give the benefit of the doubt there because I don't think it's always wrong to use the language that your audience uses so that they can identify you as somebody who could possibly solve their problems, even when that language is inaccurate.
01:59:35
Speaker
But it does not go any distance toward educating people about the fact that exercise is stress. And there's compressive stress and tensile stress and shear stress, and it's all stress.
01:59:52
Speaker
And the dose is what's important, right? Are we dosing this exercise stress sufficiently to make a positive change, but not excessively so as to overwhelm your tissues? And like, that's really missing from all of her literature here or you know, website copy. Yeah.
02:00:10
Speaker
Also, I think the word decompress sounds to people, if you're in pain, that sounds like it's going to be pain relieving. Right. Right. really decompressed joint is a dislocated joint, right? Potentially.
02:00:23
Speaker
You know, subluxed joint. I'm being ridiculous, but compression is good. Actually, you want it for your joints. There's this idea, I think, that like lifting weights is bad for your joints. Oh, I see. And I think what we picture is that there's weight. Now there's more weight on my joints and my knees already hurt. So now they're going to hurt more because I'm creating more compression and it's bone on bone, right?
02:00:43
Speaker
So I do think she's attempting to allay their concerns in that regard. So again, I'm i'm like not super mad about this sentence. I think that it's important to see the multiple sides of it. to understand the type type of communication that might be happening here.
02:00:57
Speaker
Then there's the question of, oh well, how much am I loading my bones with this exercise format? So that the FAQ says all I need is a mat, a set of two to three pound weights or two soup cans and a chair.
02:01:10
Speaker
So yes, gravity plus my mass, my body mass is weight. That's going to be a load. That's true. But That plus two to three pounds or some soup cans is probably not enough to make meaningful change for very long.
02:01:26
Speaker
And maybe not at all if you're not starting from a very deconditioned state. yeah But this is a real squeaky sentence, I think. You're going to load your bones, right? It's playing fast and loose with the biomechanical requirements that for bone building, right? Which is that the loads have to be moderate at least.
02:01:48
Speaker
yeah And two to three pound weights, most people are picking up things that are far heavier than two to three pounds, far heavier, yeah like orders of magnitude heavier, just times those by 10, 20 to 30 pounds.
02:02:04
Speaker
And they're not really thinking twice about it. They're unloading their cars. They're putting suitcases in trunks. They're picking up kids and pets, like two to three pound weights. Ah, yeah.
02:02:16
Speaker
And so then it goes on to say, and this is a quote, guided lessons that explore the key elements for bone health beyond bone density. And I was just like, ugh, at this point.
02:02:28
Speaker
But I think that again is repeating this idea of that whole list that was in the description of what Buff Bones is about. Like you have to go through all of these different individual things, mobility, function, balance, whatever else we were told we needed to work on first.
02:02:44
Speaker
I think this is just another way of saying all of that. You're going to work on all of those things before you work on strength. And the great irony is if you just worked on strength, you would also get all of those things. but It's kind of a way of saying like, don't worry, there's not going to be that much strength training. not going to be that hard. It's really not. This is really not strength training. It's like all the things you want to be doing or would rather do.
02:03:03
Speaker
Right. It's going to be so easy. Don't even worry about it. Exactly. Okay. So I did not purchase that because I didn't spend many and didn't want to spend any money. So there's also an online studio with a ton of prerecorded classes.
02:03:16
Speaker
So there was a free three-day trial for that. So I joined that. and watched some of the, I didn't watch all of them or a lot, but I watched some of the videos and the classes are grouped in different ways. There's a categorization of like easy, moderate, advanced, and there's all these different playlists. They're organized by length of class, all this kind of stuff.
02:03:38
Speaker
So I focused on, there was a playlist that was called weight training. So I wanted to see what are we doing in the weight training, right? Cause that's what we are are interested in seeing what Rebecca's up to with this. So there's three videos at the moment in the weight training playlist.
02:03:50
Speaker
There are dumbbells in other videos outside of this playlist, but if I went through every single video, we would be here for five hours. So most of the weights, it seems to be, and again, I might be wrong because I didn't look at all of them, but in the other videos, it seems like most of the weights were only small dumbbells, nothing over between five to eight pounds.
02:04:10
Speaker
And then also ah instead of reviewing each video individually, what I'm going to do is summarize the themes and the things that I saw in the videos. So they're short. Two of them are 20 minutes. One of them is 30 minutes, but the first 20 minutes of that one is Pilates.
02:04:26
Speaker
And so there's only actually eight to 10 minutes of weightlifting. All of them are only using between two pound to eight pound dumbbells. Although there is one video at one point where she's holding a 20 pound kettlebell in a suitcase carry, which is just down by your side, holding it by the handle, and then marching, which is a decent exercise.
02:04:43
Speaker
Overall, the teaching of the form for weightlifting is very much Pilates-based. There's a lot of Pilates-based cueing going on, which is fine if you're doing Pilates, but some of them are actually kind of problematic for lifting weights. For example, she teaches an overhead press, right, or like a strict press with dumbbells,
02:05:07
Speaker
but she at one point says something like, make sure your shoulders are down. Don't shrug your shoulders. Right. And so that cue is about not engaging the upper trapezius, but the upper trapezius is one of the main upward rotators of your scapula. And if you're going to take your arm overhead, and then especially if you're going to take your arm overhead with any weight in it, you need that muscle to help you.
02:05:26
Speaker
Right. So that's one thing about the overhead press. The other thing that she says is don't do any sort of spinal extension. And you might be able to get away with that again, while weights are relatively low, but If you get to the point where you're holding a barbell overhead, you got to get into some thoracic extension there to do it because the bar is essentially behind you almost at that point. It's resting on the top of your shoulder blades. So you have to counterbalance by bringing your ribs forward. There's kind of no way around it. And that's not illegal.
02:05:51
Speaker
No, in fact, it's actually a taught technique for yeah elite strict press. But yeah anyway, that she's not teaching that. what What I'm seeing in in this happened with me, too, is like I would just, you know, use a lot of yoga cues to teach strength training. And in some ways, that's actually really effective because the people coming to you are former students of Pilates and yoga. And like, it's maybe going to resonate with them more. And so I don't actually see a problem with it other than maybe there's some inefficiencies there. But yeah, of course, she's going to teach strength training like she teaches Pilates.
02:06:20
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And she mentions like, you know, the dreaded rib flare, which again is a very Pilates cue, but not something that we necessarily want when we're lifting weights. Did she use the word dreaded rib flare? She used the phrase rib flare.
02:06:32
Speaker
Okay. So then there's a lot of holding on to aesthetic ideals as well that can be inefficient counterproductive yeah to to building strength. There is a very strict emphasis on never rounding your spine.
02:06:47
Speaker
There's a lot of, as you put your two pound dumbbell down on the ground, you have to hip hinge to do it with a flat back. As you pick anything up, you have to hip hinge to do it with a flat back, which as we know is not a requirement for every single person with osteoporosis or osteopenia. We talk about this in our episode on spinal flexion.
02:07:05
Speaker
This is based on outdated research from like decades ago. Yeah. And I think that there are some papers looking at very deep spinal flexion in yoga being potentially risky.
02:07:20
Speaker
And that's not what we're talking about here. no Yeah. I think that ultimately this micromanaging of position with like shoulder blades down, ribs down, or watch out for rib flare slash never flex your spine is actually very counterproductive to the encouragement of somebody to get stronger because it's creating a lot of fear around movement. It's creating a lot of hypervigilance. It's creating a lot of inefficient attentional focus, stealing away from like the task of lifting a heavy weight, the focus required to do that.
02:07:54
Speaker
And that's what we want if we're going to get stronger. Ultimately, we want to be able to lift a heavy weight, not constantly scanning our body for any little tiny misalignment that needs fixing.
02:08:05
Speaker
which actually might not be a misalignment as it turns out. And also that might not even be a problem to begin with, which is the case for almost all micromanaging is like we are, let's say it again, focusing on the wrong thing. Wrong thing.
02:08:20
Speaker
So she does occasionally mention terms from weightlifting, like 80% of your 1RM progressive overload. But there's not really any follow-up on how someone might make it to 80% of their 1RM or how you might actually use progressive overload as a tool to get stronger. They're just kind of peppered in language. Do you get the sense that her audience knows what 80% of 1RM even means? Like that that's Greek, I think, to most people coming from Pilates.
02:08:50
Speaker
Yeah. And yoga. Yeah. Why are you talking about percentages and what is one RM? Yeah. I mean, it may well be that her plan is to start to educate people on this. And so she's yeah peppering in the language as like a, Oh, I've heard that before. What is that?
02:09:06
Speaker
You know, kind of a thing yeah that's entirely possible. Yeah. She does include impact, which is great. But then at one point she says, and this is a quote, we are getting the weight training and the impact that our bones demand and request.
02:09:20
Speaker
And I'm just like, I'm sorry, but you're not. if If you are, it's just the absolute very beginningest of it, right? It's just the most, it's the slightest amount that your body could deal with.
02:09:37
Speaker
As Laurel said, if you're already picking up two heavy bags of groceries, that would have been impactful on your bones. But then you're doing this exercise here with five pound dumbbells, that's not gonna be impactful because your body's already been stressed with a heavier load, right? yeah So there's a lot of playing fast and loose in the language just generally.
02:09:57
Speaker
yeah And the bottom line with these videos is yes, they include weights. But you know apart from the 20 pound kettlebell showing up in one exercise, the rest of them, the heaviest is eight pounds. And though she does quote the Lift More trial about the exercises that increase bone density, right the deadlift, the squat, and the overhead press, these videos are not going to do that for anyone except the you know maybe bedridden, severely deconditioned, and even then only for a brief amount of time because progressive overload is a requirement.
02:10:25
Speaker
So when did these slightly heavier weights show up in the Buff Bones online video library? Because we know it's not always... been this way, and we know this because of the MedXOP study from 2021. We've talked about it before, but quick summary of the MedXOP. This was a study by Belinda Beck, and we talk about this in our episode with her, which we will link in the show notes.
02:10:46
Speaker
A quick summary is that MedXOP looks at postmenopausal women, where half are doing the Lift More Heavy Lifting and Impact Protocol, and the other group is doing buff bones. The paper describes buff bones like this in the methods section.
02:11:02
Speaker
The Buff Bones movement system is marketed as a bone-specific exercise intervention and was adopted as a low-intensity exercise control. So in other words, MedXOP, this study, is using Buff Bones as the control group because it's a low-intensity exercise.
02:11:19
Speaker
So it's the low-intensity exercise control. Buff Bones includes exercises and movement principles found in Pilates and functional movement. I cannot unhear that phrase. Along with balance and therapeutic exercises.
02:11:32
Speaker
with a goal to improve whole body strength, balance, mobility, and posture. Each class started with exercises for body awareness and proprioception in an upright standing position, followed by several exercises in supine, prone, side-lying, and quadruped position on the mat.
02:11:51
Speaker
Exercise examples include single leg stretch, side-lying leg lift, single leg kick, prone swimmer, planks, and push-ups. The last 10 to 15 minutes of the session were performed in a standing weight-bearing position and included balance, stretching, and strengthening exercises using body weight and one kilogram dumbbells in, for example, squats, bicep curls, bent over rows, heel drops, and stomping.
02:12:16
Speaker
Six to 10 repetitions were performed for each exercise. Six to 10 reps with 2.2 count Okay. yeah so we know right from that because they i believe someone trained as a buff bones instructor and then taught it because what i'm really interested in trying to figure out is when did these slightly heavier weights show up right so we already know she started the program in two thousand and nine when someone was teaching it in 2021, it only included one kilogram or 2.2 pound, probably two pound hand weights, right? So we already know all the way up to 2021. So it's somewhere between 2021 and 2025 where we see heavier weights coming in, but not heavy weights.
02:12:56
Speaker
No, but i think it's a I think it's positive. I know. i think she's moving in the right direction. and And also I'll say like she started talking about bone strength in 2009 and was like, fuck i was like teaching yoga full-time at that time. I had no idea that I even needed to make my bones stronger. So credit to her for being ahead of the game there.
02:13:16
Speaker
And I'm very sure that the current wisdom back then was a very different than it is now where now doctors are admitting like, look, the advice to walk is crap. The advice to do yoga is not good. We need to be encouraging people to lift weights.
02:13:34
Speaker
yeah And so I want to be fair. We have to give credence to the fact that she's been doing this for a long time and enough time for the zeitgeist around bone strength to have changed quite a bit.
02:13:45
Speaker
Right. And but here's my counter to that too. I absolutely agree with you, but that change in the zeitgeist started with Liftmore and Liftmore was in 2015. Right. So- right so There was from 2015 to 2021, people who adopt research immediately without waiting for repetitions of the study end up with things like the Amy Cuddy power poses where it turns out is totally bullshit. So you don't want to just immediately adopt the latest research right away.
02:14:15
Speaker
But we're looking at at least a six to seven year process. period before anything changed. And as far as we know, it has not changed to lift more level.
02:14:27
Speaker
It's going in that direction. Right. And the thing that's really changed from my perspective is not the knowledge that we need to be lifting weights to build bone, like significantly like moderate to heavy weights to build bone. That's that's not what changed with lift more.
02:14:40
Speaker
What changed with LiftMore is we started to recognize that it's actually safe right for postmenopausal osteoporotic women with a history of fracture yes to lift heavy weights.
02:14:51
Speaker
That's really what started to change. And that was in 2015. So yeah, it's maybe taken a bit longer for Rebecca to get on board. And if I try to put myself in her shoes and go, well,
02:15:01
Speaker
She's a businesswoman. She's savvy and smart. She has all these products that she sells that she's presumably making money with because it's her bread butter and that's what she does. It's her job, right?
02:15:12
Speaker
that That don't include lifting heavy weights, but that are marketed specifically to people with osteoporosis, osteopenia. And they instead involve lifting light weights or focusing a lot on posture.
02:15:25
Speaker
Then i might be slow to change my message for that reason too. Yeah. Yeah. So here's something that I think is interesting. On the BuffBones website, she actually refers to MedXOP, this study that but we were just talking about. She says BuffBones was, quote, included in level one research showing statistically significant improvements in strength and functional performance.
02:15:49
Speaker
So as we know, statistically significant means it didn't occur by chance that people got stronger, right? So this interpretation of the results is not incorrect.
02:15:59
Speaker
I went through the Medix OP with a fine tooth comb to make sure that this is true, and it is, but it's a very convenient read. I mean, it leaves out what the study actually concludes.
02:16:12
Speaker
which is this, and this is a quote from the study. Both programs improved functional performance, but HI-RIT, which is the high intensity resistance and impact training, right? The lift more criteria.
02:16:23
Speaker
HI-RIT effects were larger for leg and back muscle strength and the five times sit to stand test. There was a positive relationship between maximum weight lifted and changes in lumbar spine, bone mineral density, and muscle strength in the HI-RIT groups.
02:16:38
Speaker
HI-RIT improved indices of fracture risk, significantly more than Buff Bones, right? So it's like if you ran a race and Lift More came first and you came in eighth, you're still saying, I beat 32 other people, right? Kind of a thing.
02:16:58
Speaker
but the But you're leaving out the part where It's not the best intervention for what we're trying to achieve. Because I love racing. I would say like, well, you know, it'd be like if Liffmore came in first and you, and you in buff boats finished the race.
02:17:13
Speaker
Right. So like, look, I finished the race. Right. Right. I finished it. Right. It worked. I did the race. I made it through all, however many miles of the race. So. Yeah. but But lift more one, right? if If you're thinking about bone strength as a performance metric, which it's not, but I mean, it it could be if you're a runner and you don't want to have stress fractures all the time.
02:17:33
Speaker
Where are you going to put your money? Are you going to put your time? Yeah. Yeah. That's my question, right? Do you want to win?
02:17:40
Speaker
Or do you just kind of want to want to finish make it across? Yeah. I'm like, God, both are good. Both are good. One's a little gooder though. Okay. So we've made it so far up to 2021, right? Where we know that the weights were still very light.
02:17:56
Speaker
So let's put a pin in that. And we're going to pivot to Instagram because there's a pretty decent size following for Buff Bones on Instagram. And our first real kind of push, I would say,
02:18:08
Speaker
at Buff Bones, and Rebecca started with this carousel that she posted in June 2023. Laurel, you want to talk about that? Sure. Yeah. So this carousel opens, we're going to link in the show notes, but it opens with the first slide, which says, stop worrying about lifting weights for bone density.
02:18:29
Speaker
And then you've got a swipe. And when you swipe, it goes into a number of caveats to that first statement. And then The copy in the post caveats that statement as well.
02:18:43
Speaker
So here's what the slides say in order. Stop worrying about lifting weights for bone density. The next slide says, is lifting weights important to protect your bones?
02:18:53
Speaker
Yes, but... Next slide. If you're dreading leaving the couch because you've been told the only way to help your bones is hit the gym, then you'll just stay on your couch.
02:19:04
Speaker
Next slide says, so find a physical activity or exercise you enjoy instead. Next slide says, because then you'll actually do it and your bones will benefit. Next slide says, compliance is key.
02:19:15
Speaker
And there's a thumbs up emoji. So... The caption of the post repeats these points. It says, lifting weights is certainly important to protect your bones. And in fact, to build bone density, they have to be heavy.
02:19:27
Speaker
Don't be fooled by false claims about exercise building bone density after menopause without the heavy part. Okay, so I did a post on this and you can look at it on our Movement Logic Tutorials Instagram account.
02:19:40
Speaker
I thought it problematic that she created a slide carousel where the very first slide, which is the one that will live forever on your grid, it's the one that people see first. It's often the only one people see because people are just...
02:19:55
Speaker
skimming the internet for something that grabs their attention. I don't think many people read the copy of these posts to stop worrying about lifting weights for bone density. And is that the message that an account called Buff Bones wants to be leading with, knowing how human attention on the internet works?
02:20:14
Speaker
And then why is she choosing to create that message as the lead message and then all these caveats around it that speak to perhaps what her audience really wants to hear rather than what they might benefit from hearing specifically from her, right? yeah It could be something like, I know that you don't wanna go to the gym, but that doesn't mean you have to stay on your couch, because there's other ways that you can build strength that don't involve the gym at all.
02:20:48
Speaker
right Yes, find physical activity and exercise you enjoy instead, know that strength training is probably your best bet to safeguard your bones.
02:21:01
Speaker
And there's ways to enjoy strength training as well. Here's some ideas. You know, and I also think that there's this very simplistic, if this, then this type reasoning here, where it's, if you are thinking that strength training means that you have to hit the gym, then you don't just stay on your couch. And is that painting a realistic, you know, picture of what's actually going to happen in people's minds. Like, what if you dispelled the myth that strength training means hitting the gym?
02:21:31
Speaker
What if you dispelled the myth, even that the gym is a terrible, scary place? Like, what if you gave your audience the benefit of the doubt that they weren't so simplistic in the way they think about things and like actually didn't underestimate their resilience and intelligence?
02:21:49
Speaker
Like, Yeah, I recently went up to Bainbridge Island, which is off the coast of Seattle to teach in a fitness retreat for cancer survivors. It was really amazing experience.
02:22:00
Speaker
And I actually presented about osteoporosis because for women who've had breast cancer and go through chemotherapy and the various drugs that you take afterwards, you are flung into menopause, whatever age you are, aggressive drop in your estrogen. And so it's not uncommon for women after going through breast cancer to discover that they have osteoporosis.
02:22:19
Speaker
So I was there to be like, yes, like that can happen. And the ways that you're going to work on it are lifting weights, strength training, and impact. And these other exercises that you may currently be doing are not going to be enough.
02:22:32
Speaker
And a woman came up to me after my presentation and she said, that felt like a hard pill to swallow. And I was like, yeah, I'm sure it did. Because I'm now making you go, oh no, I actually have to do something else.
02:22:46
Speaker
Yeah. But it's true, right? So it's a little bit of a eat your vegetables message where it's like, you know, great that you've been doing all these other things. great to get up off the couch and and take a walk, walk the dog, great to go do some Pilates or any of those things. But if you want to change how your bones are formed, you have to lift weights, right? There's no really there's really no other way.
02:23:08
Speaker
So this is the other thing as well that I really didn't like about that post because there's sort of a conflation of so many ideas. And one of them is find a physical activity you'll do instead, right? Instead of going to the gym,
02:23:19
Speaker
And then one of the slides actually says, because then you'll actually do it and your bones will benefit. And I'm like, that's just patently not really true. Not really true. Right. Like, I mean, okay, we know something is better than nothing. Something is better than nothing. But but she's she's in a sense kind of painting this false equivalency. Sorry, I kind of yeah jumped in.
02:23:38
Speaker
That's okay. You get excited. So I am all totally on board with, if you are not exercising enough, go do whatever you will do because just doing it is great. But that doesn't mean that it covers all of your body's needs and probably it's not going to cover your bones needs.
02:23:56
Speaker
Okay. So this kind of like halfway accurate information, sort of like partly true-ish shows up all over the place on her Instagram account. And so I went through some other posts and for example, there's one from March 26th of this year, where she's talking about how squats are great for bone density.
02:24:16
Speaker
Awesome. I love it. But instead of talking about and how the research supports this, but with a moderate to heavy load, the caption is only talking about details of the alignment because she's doing like a split stance squat, right?
02:24:30
Speaker
So, and she's doing it with some sort of dumbbell. I don't know that she identified how heavy it was, but it was a dumbbell that you could hold in your hands, right? So it wasn't something crazy heavy. So you could easily look at that, read the caption and go, okay, the alignment is what matters the most, not the amount of weight. So i'm going to go grab a weight that I can hold in front of my chest and start squatting.
02:24:48
Speaker
And this is going to improve my bone density. right It's just very fiddly. And then about a week ago, and someone's alerted me to this, a week could ago, there was a post called osteoporosis confusion.
02:25:00
Speaker
That was the title. And it said how everyone on social media is lifting heavy, but your doctor says not to lift more than 20 pounds because of your osteoporosis. What's the deal?
02:25:10
Speaker
And the caption is all about how you can and should be lifting heavy and how you need to start where you are and build up. And then, so this was interesting because in the comments, somebody asks,
02:25:21
Speaker
oh, is heavy lifting part of the Buff Bones curriculum now? And then someone else, not Rebecca, responds, we teach the foundations of lifting and building load tolerance in the Stepping Stones program.
02:25:34
Speaker
And then the Buff Bones account, which I assume is Rebecca, responds, yes, it is. And we use it in the coaching program. So I had to dig around on the website because I had not seen any reference to Stepping Stones or coaching program.
02:25:46
Speaker
And it turns out Stepping Stones is the level two teacher training for buff bones. So you do the level one and then the stepping stones one I'm assuming is teaching you how to teach heavier loads.
02:26:00
Speaker
I don't know how heavy. We know nothing about the contents of that. And then when she refers to the coaching program, I found something else on Instagram called the bone and joint blueprint. That's another blueprint, which is a 12 week program that claims to future proof your body against fractures.
02:26:16
Speaker
But again, it's not really clear what's in this program and I couldn't find any reference to it on her website. But overall, it seems like heavier weights are coming into the picture over at BuffBones, which is fantastic, right? She has a huge reach, and at least she's starting to admit that two to three pounds, five pounds, eight pounds is not going to do it.
02:26:38
Speaker
It's going to be interesting to see what happens with her programming in the future. But at least at the moment, from what we can see from the outside, nothing that counts as progressive overload is going on.
02:26:50
Speaker
And Part of that's just because the way that the classes and the programs are set up, like 12 weeks is not enough time to see meaningful results from heavy lifting, right? It needs to be at least six to eight months for your bones. yeah So there's sort of a like dipping of a toe into slightly heavier weights, but it seems like there's an unwillingness to let go of the current model.
02:27:08
Speaker
There's sort of trying to fit the weights into the current model. And I just think there's going to come a point where that's not going to work anymore, but we'll see what happens. I like our approach better, Sarah.
02:27:21
Speaker
Well, I was just thinking while you were talking, you know, ah this whole idea of, oh, going to the gym is going be so hard. Like, what do you want to do? On one side, there's a list of all these things that you have to work on, your functional performance and your balance and your coordination and your motor control and da-da-da-da-da. So many things. And then on the other side is do a deadlift, right? Like, which one would you want to do? you know I've been just thinking about the fact that, like, women...
02:27:46
Speaker
And look, Rebecca's not necessarily targeting her programs toward women, at least she's not explicitly saying that. But let's be honest, most people coming to her women.
Gender Misconceptions in Training
02:27:56
Speaker
This idea that women in general just need to train differently than men.
02:28:01
Speaker
Right. When the reality is that if if women just trained more like men...
02:28:07
Speaker
I'm serious. Yeah. Yeah. If they followed a structured program that asked them to lift meaningfully heavy weights for them, that's moderate to heavy, that was progressively loaded over time and they consistently stuck with that program, we just probably wouldn't see as much osteoporosis in the world.
02:28:26
Speaker
Yeah. But we have these ideas about how women should exercise and the things that they should focus on. Do you really think that a dude, a guy... Looking to get stronger, right?
02:28:37
Speaker
Would look at the description of a program and go like, we need to take into account your balance, your responsiveness, your function, your core control, your fall prevention, your mobility, your posture.
02:28:50
Speaker
No, they would be like, am I going to get jacked? Am I going to get fucking ripped? Like, how are my arms and back going to look after I do this program? Right. Or like, am I going to PR my deadlift in a certain amount of time? And they're chasing aesthetic goals. Okay. That are different from what women are typically chasing.
02:29:11
Speaker
They're chasing performance goals a lot of the time. Yeah. Yeah. Whereas women are sold predominantly weight loss, unfortunately, but then also this idea that like exercise is scary and it is dangerous. And so here's all the ways that we're going to make it not scary and not dangerous for you. You don't actually need to worry too much about the performance goals of getting stronger because like we know that's not really what you want. Yeah.
02:29:37
Speaker
You can focus on not falling and not hurting yourself and being safe. Right. And it's like, well, do you really think that program is going to make people strong? I doubt it because there's just a focus on something that is almost antithetical to making positive changes to the body.
02:29:55
Speaker
Right. Which is like fear. Yes. You're going to hurt yourself.
Fear vs. Strength in Women's Programs
02:30:00
Speaker
It's like, well, okay, you have osteoporosis, presumably coming to me, this creator of a program that the title of which implies that i'm going to make your bones stronger.
02:30:10
Speaker
Buff bones, right? Okay. Do I, as a movement teacher, need to focus intensely on All of the things that could go wrong with you in this program, no, because I don't know all that I need to know about your medical background to but even be able to do that.
02:30:29
Speaker
So my question to you is, did your doctor clear you for exercise? Yes? Okay. I'm going to use my training and my team, right? to make sure that we are providing you with a solid program that is designed to actually make you stronger, that is safe.
02:30:48
Speaker
Sure, of course, we're not idiots. We're not teaching you to lift weights like a fucking idiot. Okay? We're going to teach you how to use this equipment correctly. We're going to start you at a moderate weight. We're going to teach you what that even freaking means and how to use tools of strength training to figure that out.
02:31:03
Speaker
And then we're going to very gradually teach you how to progressively overload your strength based on those tools of strength training like RPE, RIR, right? And we're going to do this for a long ass time. And we're going to supervise you. And we're going to coach you. And we're going to field your questions.
02:31:20
Speaker
Because you've been cleared for exercise by your doctor. So your doctor is confident that you can engage in strength training. And that part of everything we need to consider now is done.
02:31:30
Speaker
Now, when you get injured, because you might, then I'm going to send you to a freaking clinician. I'm going to refer you to Sarah, who's probably going to refer you to another PT in your local area to go see.
02:31:42
Speaker
And that's how this should work. Okay. I'm not going to pretend to keep you safe by focusing on responsiveness and function and core control. and You're going to get all of that from strength training.
02:31:54
Speaker
Have you been cleared by your doctor? That is the question. Yes or no. Yes? Well, come on aboard. Get on the strong as fuck train because it's leaving.
02:32:07
Speaker
Let's go. Can we stop infantilizing women? Can we stop talking about bullshit that is outside of our scope of practice that is fragilizing and fear mongering that doesn't fucking matter?
02:32:21
Speaker
Can we just get strong as fuck? Right, mustard seed? Hell yeah. Hell yeah. So we still have to do our grift-o-meter for
Exposing Fitness Program Flaws
02:32:30
Speaker
buff bones. Okay. So our first category, do you even know what the real problem is? I'm going to score that as a five because she's telling us supposedly that the real problem is the fact that we need to work on our balance, our motor control core, whatever, blah, blah, blah. So I'm going to call that one a five for sure.
02:32:50
Speaker
Our second category, hot tip for moms, hide broccoli and brownies. Does she talk about strength training, but kind of hide it? Yes. Big time. All over the place. So going to call that one also a five. Do you think that's a five as well?
02:33:01
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. Okay, so then our next one, alignment assassinators. Does the person overly focus on alignment details that don't matter? Yes, I'm gonna give her five. That's actually the part of Rebecca's brand I find most troublesome.
02:33:15
Speaker
Yeah, me too. Fragilistas or fragilistas. Are we fear mongering? Have you, yes. All over the fucking place. Fiddle faddle. Is it word salad? No, I don't think so. I don't know that it's word salad. No, because i mean, she uses functional movement, but so so do scientists, you know, like. it' yeah All right. I don't think it's fiddle faddle. think she gets a one.
02:33:36
Speaker
Yeah, that's, yeah. there's still one Minimum fiddle faddle. Okay. Next category. At least you are doing the absolute minimum. That is a five to me because that's the one about, oh, don't worry. Don't do the hard thing.
02:33:46
Speaker
It's okay. Just do this gentle thing. I think that I would give her a four. Okay. Or even a three because she does say, she hides it, but she does say you do need to lift heavy. It's true. But then she says a whole bunch of things that are disempowering.
02:34:04
Speaker
Yeah. To get her audience to feel, I think, complacent in the fact that they don't lift. She doesn't encourage them with positive reinforcement and positive messaging around strength training. Right. She plays up the fact that people hate it.
02:34:18
Speaker
Right. And then she goes, don't worry. That's okay. You can hate it. Just do something. Yeah. So to be fair, she does say that it's necessary. She just decides not to highlight that. All right.
02:34:30
Speaker
Microscope of practice. Is she giving advice that's outside the scope of her capacity?
02:34:38
Speaker
I don't think she is. I do think that she basically in telling everybody that they need to be really cautious about posture and that that's somehow connected to their diagnosis of osteoporosis is is sketchy because we know that a hyper focus on posture actually can create fear avoidance. It's a nocebo in many respects.
02:35:01
Speaker
We know that whether or not someone needs to avoid a particular position in their joints with osteoporosis would depend on where they have osteoporosis and the recommendations of their doctor, right? Individualized care, not a blanket statement about move this way and don't move this way if you have osteoporosis.
02:35:16
Speaker
coming from a movement teacher. I think it's really subtle. I don't think she's fully on board with this idea that posture just doesn't matter as much as people in the Pilates world want to think it is. I don't think she's as up to date on the research in that regard.
02:35:32
Speaker
And I think because of that, there's a blind spot there where she may be stepping outside of her microscope of practice, but in a way that a lot of Pilates teachers do, right? So like a way that is still culturally accepted in that particular movement format, yeah which when you do start to look into the research on posture and recognize that it actually isn't very predictive of injury and pain, and especially body weight, I think you start to realize that suggesting that it is, is problematic.
02:36:02
Speaker
it And it it does actually bring you outside of your scope of practice and movement teacher, because in in a way you're telling people what their contraindicated movements are. And that's not your job. That's not your job with any disease diagnosis That's the job of a doctor.
02:36:17
Speaker
So what are we going to score for the microscope of practice? oh Microscope of practice, I think, is like a two or a three. Okay. And then Unfair Advantage is about supplements, which she's not doing. No.
02:36:28
Speaker
So I don't think that even, that category doesn't even come in. I don't think that category comes in. And then Itch Doctors, there is a recommendation from a former surgeon general, I believe, on the front page of her website that says, you know, this is a great program, da, da, da.
02:36:42
Speaker
But that's not a pseudoscience-y doctor. No, it's That's medical doctor. Right. So she gets a one. Because as far as I know, she works with movement teachers. Does she work with any FERS or PTs on her team?
02:36:53
Speaker
I don't know about on her team. It does say that- ah She's been in committees for like certain- Yeah. She works with a bone health and osteoporosis foundation. Evidence-based yeah institutions. Okay. So yeah. So then itch doctors, I guess, should be a one because she should be included in this category for not being itchy.
02:37:11
Speaker
Right. Minimally itchy. Okay. Yeah, exactly. Gotcha. Okay. So now- Pause while I do some very basic math.
02:37:23
Speaker
Divided by out of 40. So Buff Bones gets a 67.5%. Good. So she's number two, I think, right? She's number two. So number one on the list is Bone Coach. Yep.
02:37:36
Speaker
With a whopping 71%. That's what I would hope. Yes. Number two is Buff Bones. Yes, he's the most bullshit, I think. Number two is Buff Bones, and number three is our friend Helen Bones for Life. Now that we've gotten the scores for all three of these grifters,
02:37:50
Speaker
It does line up with my gut in terms of when I look at the work of these three people and their messaging around bone strength to women, I...
02:38:02
Speaker
I am most disturbed by Kevin Ellis, Bone Coach, and the way he runs his business and the tactics, the manipulation that he uses, and the way that he has really harnessed emails and marketing strategies to, I think, prey on the vulnerabilities of the demographic that he targets, which are older women who probably did not spend very much of their life doing any exercise at all, definitely not strength training, have received a diagnosis of osteoporosis.
02:38:34
Speaker
And the furthest thing from what they can imagine themselves doing involves strength training. And so they've got this guy, Kevin Ellis, pep-talking them about different recipes that they should cook to make their bones healthier and stronger. And like they're probably also potentially mistrusting of Western medicine because he's feeding them the care and information from functional medicine doctors and naturopaths. And there's a lot of snake oil.
02:39:01
Speaker
There's just so much snake oil wrapped up in his brand. Yeah. that He just really gives me a bad, bad feeling in my gut. The fact that he scored highest makes good emotional sense to me. Yeah.
02:39:17
Speaker
Just based on how I feel. Now, the difference between Bones for Life and Buff Bones, hu I think that Rebecca is a lot more savvy and smart and educated.
02:39:29
Speaker
And in many ways, it actually makes sense. her messaging more problematic because it's harder to see the problems in it if you are coming from a place of not really knowing that much about strength training or being really heavily steeped in the Pilates world.
02:39:47
Speaker
right Whereas the Feldenkrais woman, and maybe it's just me, but I feel like it's a little easier to see that this is fanciful. This is just... a fun thing to think about that Feldenkrais could build bones. Whereas when you read Rebecca's material, you're like, you could get on board with it. Cause you're like, Oh yeah. I mean, this all sounds right. You know, like I think that her command of language that sort of bridges the spaces of Pilates and medicine and, and bone research, it helps her.
02:40:16
Speaker
Right. So it makes me feel like, pretty good about the fact that she did score higher than Bones for Life, that Buff Bones scored higher than Bones for Life. But the fact that they're close together also makes sense because they're both movement teachers.
02:40:27
Speaker
Right. Right. And they're not, you know, using medical or pseudo-medical professionals on their team to like further dupe and mislead women. Right. they're They're really trying to sell a movement format.
02:40:45
Speaker
Yeah. And in many ways, that doesn't upset me as much, actually. Bone Coach is selling supplements. He's selling tests, biomarker tests. He's putting them in front of naturopaths and functional medicine doctors. yeah And he's using what I feel are just hideous marketing tactics to do it.
02:41:05
Speaker
And so I almost feel like his score is too freaking low. Yeah. Well, you know, the griftometer is a new tool that we're still calibrating. So perhaps the scores may change over time. Yeah.
02:41:18
Speaker
But the point of it, the reason why we framed this episode this way is that not only did we want to talk about these three programs, but we wanted to talk about how important it is just generally to be able to read between the lines of what people are saying when they are selling you
Critical Analysis of Fitness Marketing
02:41:32
Speaker
something.
02:41:32
Speaker
Yeah. Right. And you could take the grift, now I don't know how to say griftometer, and apply it to any situation where a movement teacher or any somebody is is selling you something, right?
02:41:45
Speaker
There's a reason why our bone density course is not also selling you supplements and hypnosis and postural correction and journaling because none of them are research-based. And as I have said in various ways a million times, if the research conclusively showed that Pilates or yoga, or small dumbbells, or badminton, or base jumping, or roller skating was the best way to build strong bones, that's what we would be teaching. And also, nutrition is a huge part of bone strength and bone health.
02:42:19
Speaker
But Sarah and I are not RDNs. We're not registered dietitians, right? So we don't give advice around that in bone density course. And we very plainly state that.
02:42:31
Speaker
And when people have questions for us, we'll either point them toward what is generally available information on the internet about recommended protein intake or what have you, or we will suggest that they look into seeking guidance from a registered dietitian or a nutrition counselor that they trust and feel is, you know, evidence-based.
02:42:54
Speaker
And so we are not interested in creating a one-stop shop, fix your osteoporosis program. We're not. In fact, we don't call this um strength training for osteoporosis.
02:43:08
Speaker
We call it bone density course, lift for longevity. Yeah. And what we teach is how to make strength training a lifelong habit to ensure that you're always going to have the skill and know-how to lift heavy enough to continue to make changes to your strength or to maintain your strength for life.
02:43:29
Speaker
We personally feel that barbells are the simplest way to do that. Can you build strength with dumbbells and kettlebells? Sure you can. We find that it's much more likely for women to underload if that's all they have available, yeah especially when they're training from home.
02:43:46
Speaker
So that especially applies to a collection of women, an audience of women that don't want to go to the gym because now we have a limited supply of dumbbells and kettlebells to work with, right? So we are just, we're going to go straight to what we know to be the probably fastest, simplest way for you to not be underloading for the rest of your life, barbells.
02:44:07
Speaker
That's not all though. How to do the exercises, how to progressively overload them for six months, how to continue to make changes to your strength when you plateau. That's where the coaching comes into it. This is all that we give you, but it is fuck ton.
02:44:21
Speaker
And it is effective. And it is simple. And that is sometimes the thing that people freaking need the most.
02:44:32
Speaker
Yeah. Is a simple, progressable, step-by-step plan. One piece of equipment. Well, multiple pieces, but barbells. We're not asking you to get anything else. Just barbells. That's it.
02:44:44
Speaker
Or you can go to the dreaded gym. That's also an option. And many people do, right? Many people do. Yeah. I mean, here's the thing. The same way that you were like Buff Bones and Bones for Life sort of have a similar tactic slash approach because they're talking about movement, but they're really, it's really undermining a lot of people with advice that that eventually can be detrimental because all of the things that you're scaremongering about, right? Like falling and fracture and hospital and death could still happen on your program.
02:45:14
Speaker
right? Oh, absolutely. But there's also, I just, there's a, this is when I was talking about that category called, at least you're doing the absolute minimum. This is what gives me the ick about it. And it took me a while to figure out like, why is this so icky to me?
02:45:28
Speaker
But it's so deeply patronizing yes to tell women that they need to be careful, do gentle exercise. It's all you can handle. God forbid a barbell would come into the picture. It's a incredibly patronizing.
02:45:41
Speaker
to say, they're there. there don't Don't try anything harder than this. You're doing your best. yeah We would never expect you to push yourself. We would never expect you to find a potential in yourself and rise to it. We're going to have you just stay at this low level that feels safe and keeps you scared, right?
02:45:58
Speaker
And then I got and nerdy because it's what I do. And I was like, what's the etymology of patronizing? Oh, it's pater, like patriarchy. Yeah. Right. These people are still teaching movement in a patriarchy. In a patronizing way. Yeah, I agree. I think that's a great word for it. I think it's deeply patronizing.
02:46:16
Speaker
Yeah. And so one of the things that we highlight a lot of the time is that we're trying to break out of this movement patriarchy and actually reclaim all of the tools that for every person, yeah whatever gender they are, and actually use them in a way that has been shown in research to effectively give you stronger bones. But not only that, make you physically stronger, make it harder for you to fall, make you better at catching yourself. That was the ick for me, is that it just was like, it's patronizing.
02:46:47
Speaker
We also, i don't think, teach people how to get stronger. We show them how to take personal accountability for their strengths. Yes, totally. So we walk you through the process of how to take personal accountability to really learn and understand how to strength train yeah through the process of engaging with strength training in a progressive manner over the course of six months.
02:47:10
Speaker
And when you leave our program, you have learned that. If you've engaged with the program consistently, you will come away having learned that.
Empowering Personal Fitness Responsibility
02:47:17
Speaker
And I want to say one thing about that. That is a amazing thing to learn.
02:47:21
Speaker
It's pretty powerful. Yeah. Yeah. Well, We did it, everybody. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I love it when we end with, we did it.
02:47:33
Speaker
Don't forget to sign up for our free strength class that is on Saturday. There's a link in the show notes to sign up. When you sign up for that, you'll also get on our wait list for our full bone density course, Lift Your Longevity, which starts May 15th. And it's the only place that you're going to get our discount for the course.
02:47:49
Speaker
There's other fun things coming up along the way related to our course. Please continue to support our podcast. If you liked this episode or any of our episodes, please rate, review, subscribe, all of the things you're supposed to do.
02:48:03
Speaker
Pink Pony Club. I'm going to keep on dancing at the Pink Pony Club. We're going to see you next week. Good. Pink Pony Club. Okay, good.