Video: Why Weight Training is SO Important While on Hormone Therapy | Helpline Questions

Helpline Questions | Transcription

Hi, I'm Dr. Scholz. A question we get at the PCRI is, "Why is it so important to do weight training when you're taking hormone blockade?" And I'm always very gratified when I hear this question because the number one way to counteract the side effects of hormone therapy is with weight training. 

Why is that? 

Well, men lose muscle rapidly when their testosterone levels drop and loss of muscle is very similar to just getting old. This is what happens as people age. They lose a little muscle every year and then finally they reach the tipping point and then they're decrepit and they're walking with a cane and they're falling over. This is due to muscle loss. So the whole process is terribly accelerated when people are taking Lupron, or Firmagon, or Xtandi, or Zytiga, and the really cool thing is that the process can be blocked completely. The process of muscle loss is what I'm saying, and that requires regular weight training. It's not the same thing as running a treadmill or walking your dog or doing yoga. What it really means is that the muscles have to be stressed and strained and be told in no unequivocal terms that they're inadequate. And that can be done with typical weights—that's why they call it weight training— or these machines that you run into at the gyms, or with elastic bands, or even with calisthenics like deep knee bends and pushups. But the idea is that the strain on the muscles is so great that through a process of repetition the muscles are taken to failure. They feel so weak you can't keep going. 

Now, that's a rather violent thing to do to your body and you need to be aware of that fact that you can injure yourself and then you're offline altogether. So we usually counsel people to start off with a trainer for a month or two and to begin slowly, but there has to be a progressive building up to the point of where this is uncomfortable. A lot of people can't take themselves to that degree of intensity without some sort of supervision. 

Well, how important is all of this? 

It's absolutely critical. It's the difference between feeling relatively normal while you're on hormone therapy and feeling like a limp dishrag all the time. It's a big, big difference. 

Another thing to be aware of is that you can be very faithful with this process of weight training over a period of six months and feel relatively well, take two weeks off—go to Hawaii or something like that—and you crash. Without testosterone, you can lose muscle so fast it'll make your head swim. So you can't stop. If you get an illness or something of this nature, you need to keep going, perhaps at a reduced rate, and don't allow this time period without weight training to occur. Otherwise, the muscles will just disappear and you have to start over. 

So, when we talk about real estate, we talk about the three most important things about buying a house: Location, location, and location. It's an old joke, but with hormone therapy, when we're talking about the three most important things to feel normal on hormone therapy, we're talking about weight training, weight training, and weight training.