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Kelly: Welcome everybody to our next episode of Live Better, Longer, brought to you by the amazing team at Dividat. I am your host, Kelly Stranberg, and I am super excited today for our guest, Dr. Cody Sipe. Dr. Sipe, please tell us who we are and what you've been up to lately.
Cody: Absolutely. So, I've been up to a lot. I've been working with older adults for about 30 years now in a number of different capacities. I'm currently a professor and a doctor of physical therapy program and CEO of the new franchise concept called Marbles Brain Body Fitness. But along the way, where a lot of people know me from is through the Functional Aging Institute which is an education company that a friend of mine and I established to teach trainers to work with older adults, in all sorts of capacities. So that’s been my focus in my career, exercise for older adults.
Kelly: That aligns with a lot of my background as well so we're going to have fun talking together today. Tell me, what made you become so passionate about functional aging and for now I'm going to call it the concept of longevity because I think that means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. How did you get here? What was the driver for you to really start to hone in on an aging demographic?
Cody: Yeah, that's a great question because I never expected to work with older adults. Growing up, I didn't have hardly any experience with them. I didn't have much interaction with my grandparents and most of them died early. And so, I went into my master's degree in clinical exercise physiology with really negative interactions with older adults, to be honest. And I recall this brief story that had an impact on me from about six or seventh grade when our church youth group went to a nursing home to sing and it was just an awful experience being in a nursing home. I mean, all the stereotypes you can think of: the sites, the smells, the interactions, I was like “whoa this is what being old means, that sucks”, so I had no intention of working with older adults at all. But when I got into my master's program, I was working with older adults but a completely different kind of older adult. Yeah, they had had heart attacks, they had heart procedures, but they were fun, they were intelligent, they were active, they were passionate, they were engaged. I was like, okay, this is also a reality that people could have. Why did those people in the nursing home end up like that, and these people were like this, and that really spurred this interest in seeing “how can we help people live the best they can possibly live for as long as possible”?
And so, when we think about this idea of functional aging, or functional longevity, that's really the key. So many people are focused today on living longer, but nobody wants to live longer if your life doesn't have a high quality to it. If you can't engage and interact and do the stuff that you love, then why be around, right? That's kind of a miserable existence. And we've seen very clearly there's a difference between lifespan and health span, or what I like to refer to as function span. Your ability to just do the things that you really love to do. So those experiences drove me into the research of seeing what is possible. And my passion really grew by seeing what was possible and how so many people just short-changed themselves. Older adults are the most inactive. And you're like, why? Why is that? Because they should be the most active because exercise is going to be the most beneficial for them. It's really this idea of “we know what's possible. We know the potential that's out there.” We're seeing so many people in their 80s and 90s breaking these stereotypes. They're out traveling the world or they're starting new businesses. They're competing in track and field events. They're doing all sorts of things and they are loving life. Why can't we all experience that? And so, my goal has been to, one, try to get people to understand what's possible and then, two, how to get there.
Kelly: I love all of that. What was it that helped you and your friend who launched the Functional Aging Institute? What was the catalyst for that? Because I do think that's an important part of your story and where you are today.
Cody: So, Dan Ritchie and I met at Purdue when we were both getting our PhDs there. And I was running a fitness center at the university that was primarily targeting retirees and staff members. And so, we met there and along our journey during our PhDs we had the opportunity to be on committees with the American College of Sports Medicine and their special interest group on aging. We got to meet some really top-notch leaders in exercise related to older adults. So, we're learning from the best of the best. And I'm learning all this stuff going, why do people not know this stuff. Because then I went out and started looking at the education for trainers regarding how to train older adults. And I was so absolutely thoroughly disappointed in what I saw because it was all stereotypical “senior” stuff. I was seeing all the research and all the experts say, no, what about balance and cognition and mobility and power and all these other dynamic elements that the research shows that’s really what you need do. It’s an input/output. If you’re just doing easy things you’re not going to get better, you’re not going to achieve your potential. So, we took all of that, looked at what was available in the industry and realized there was such a gap. And we thought, who’s going to fill that gap? And that’s where we decided to step in and say, you know, I think we need to put some things out there.
I was doing a lot of speaking at conferences and writing articles and what I found was that people were just consuming it. They were loving these different aspects that we were bringing to the table. So that's what led us to say, all right, let's just go ahead and create our own certification so that we can be in charge of the content. We can control the content. We can change it whenever we want. We can update it. And that's what we do. We periodically do these deep dive updates because we're always learning, right? New information continues to come out. Like, for example, there wasn't a big place for cognitive fitness in the earliest iteration. Well, that has obviously exploded. So now that is taking more and more content because we realize how critical it is.
Kelly: What is a story that always sticks out in your mind from all of your years of experience that just speaks to why exercise prescription or exercise programming can really make a difference in somebody's life?
Cody: So, when Dan and I were running the fitness center that we created (Functional Aging Institute) we received a four paged letter from one of our much older clients, he was in his late eighties, and he went on and on with this story about how he came in, basically thinking he was about dead, but maybe he could eke out a little bit more time. He had grandkids, so maybe he could make it to the next high school graduation. Then he said, I got into the programming and exercising and I started to feel better. I started to be able to do much more. And that got me a little excited. And so, I started to work harder and I did more. And he said within a short period of time, within like that first year, he said his mindset completely changed. He was like, oh my gosh, why am I only trying to kind of eke out another six months or a year? What if I could see my great grandkids graduate college and get married and have kids. He said his whole mindset just opened up. He went from this, oh my gosh, I'm going to die, I'm going downhill, there's nothing I can do about it, to, I have a lot of control over what happens during the rest of my life, and I just feel so much better. And he was just gushing with, thank you, thank you, thank you for bringing me to this place that is not only going to impact me, but his entire family, right? Because all of his loved ones that want him around, he was like, it's just a whole new life for me. That was pretty impactful.
Kelly: I love that story. That's awesome. There's something you said, that he realized he had a lot more control over his longevity and daily well-being than maybe he originally anticipated. There are a lot of people who think, oh, I'm 75. I start to decline. This is just normal. And I'm like, no, it's not, what are you all talking about? And so, it tells me that we still have work to do but also an opportunity to continue to go out there and educate, educate, educate. Because you can make a difference at any age.
Cody: Going back to something really, really foundational that you're talking about is attitude. The belief system in their future. And we know from a lot of research from Becca Levy especially that says, look, attitude is really the primary factor when it comes to longevity. Yet it's the biggest barrier for most people. They don't know what's possible or they don't believe it's possible. They feel like there's some special case. Oh, yeah, all these other people, they've always been active or athletic. So, showing the research and what's possible is one way. There are so many stories of people that didn't start until their 50s, 60s, or 70s. And now they've gained all these benefits. So really trying to impress that on people is huge. And so, when I teach trainers, I say, look, you need to have what I call a positive aging paradigm. The lens through which you view aging needs to be positive because if you're thinking in the back of your mind, yeah, this person's old. They're likely not going to get better. They're going to feel that. They're going to sense that. You're going to convey that. And then you're not going to challenge them appropriately. You're going to say, yeah, we're probably just going to take it easy because I don't expect them to improve. So, it starts with you. And you have to emanate that to the older adult clients as well.
Kelly: If you were working with somebody who was brand new to exercise and they're older, say they're 75 or up, and we've gotten through all the behavior changes (they're ready, they're willing) where would you start? What do you recommend out of the gate initially?
Cody: So, there's a couple different strategies I take. One, I always believe in starting with success. You want to build their self-efficacy, their confidence, their belief that they can do it. Starting off with things that they can be successful with that are challenging, yes, but just gets them into the routine, gets them feeling better about themselves, start with that. And then I really like to start with “what is the worst thing”. Okay, what if we look at them from a functional perspective and we say, okay, you know, is it their cardiovascular capability, is it their strength, is it their balance and mobility, is it some cognitive element, is it coordination? What are they the worst at? Because that has the most potential for improvement and the most dramatic improvement typically occurs early on.
So, we tend to think about being well-rounded. Oh, I have to fit in some strength and balance and all these things, and now you're all over the place, and you're not investing enough time in the one thing that's going to move the needle for them the most. So, you try to figure out what is that thing, and it doesn't mean you can't be well-rounded, but it doesn't mean it has to be proportionate either, right? We can have 90 % focused on balance and mobility, and then 10 % focused on other factors at first, knowing you're going to get to those other things. But really looking at the lowest denominator that you can and then focus on because that’s really where people are going to get better very quickly.
And then the last thing is, what are they saying. What are they saying is important to them. If they're voicing an opinion and you're like, well, yeah, I understand that, but we're not going to do any of that at all, we're going to focus. They're going to feel this disconnect. So, some of that has to be tailored to what they feel are their biggest needs or their biggest problems. And then making sure that you're addressing that, even in your programming or your session. Like, you told me X, Y, and Z, and this is why we're doing that. And that helps them to build that confidence and belief system that, it's not just a generic program, but it's right for me, and it's going to help move the needle on my function.
Kelly: For our audience, when we think about functional longevity, if you could give one simple tip that either our audience can embrace for themselves or for individuals they work with what would it be?
Cody: So the one thing is that exercise, or I'm going to say movement in many different forms, is really just a critical aspect. It is one of the core things. So, is diet important for longevity? Of course it is. Is sleep important for longevity? Yeah, there's all these lifestyle factors that are important. But when it comes from a functional standpoint you're fighting that biological clock that says, hey, you know, you don't need that muscle, right? You don't need that cardiovascular ability. You don't need that motor control, that mobility anymore unless you're challenging it. So really trying to move in lots of different ways is really going to be important. So not just locking into one thing.
I see this happen all the time with people. I use the example of the sloggers. These slow joggers that are out there. And I see them all over the place. They're doing a great job with their cardiovascular exercise but they’re just kind of slogging along. It's slow and it's good for them, but they're not really doing anything else. So then when they try to climb the bleachers at their grandkids football game, everybody's kind of looking at them going, oh crap, are they going to fall because they're so wobbly. They don't go up to the top, right? They sit at the bottom because there's too many steps for them to climb. And so, you can see that they've got some issues, but they're totally focused on this one thing. I see this with some older men as well where all they want to do is strength training. Most strength training is upper body stuff; it's not helping them with a lot of function anyway. And you probably need to work on some other aspects of functions. So, getting people to move in lots of different ways, whether that's in their exercise program, their recreational activities, their hobbies, the sports they're engaged in. And the more, especially if it's something new, go do it. We know how important that is not only for the body but for the brain-body connection as well. When you’re engaged in new activities and your brain is trying to figure it out, that’s just your brain on super sauce, so it’s going to really help it grown a lot more. My tip is to look for ways to be active and to move and don’t settle for settling.
For more insights and tips from experts and thought leaders in the health and wellness industry, be sure to check out our interviews with Michele Wong of Active Wellness, Anna Hall of the Purpose Equation, Mike Studer, Eric Levitan of Vivo, Tony Galvan of Vi Living, Kevin Jardine of FPR - Longevity, and Aras Erekul. It's always eye-opening to hear different perspectives and stories in the field!