My Stunning Accident and How My Wholesome Habits Saved Me

Betty Rocker (00:16):
What’s up, Rockstars, coach Betty Rocker here. Welcome back. It’s great to spend some time with you today. And I wanted to tell you a story because I feel like last season we talked a lot about the deposits that we’re making in our quote unquote health savings account, right? That our body sort of stores for us. And if we think about the woman who we were, say 10 years ago and how she’s really the one who set us up to be how we are today, we could think forward from the woman we are right now and how she is setting up the woman will be in 10 years from now. And I think a lot about that because I’m always hopeful that the things that I’m doing right now are really contributing to my health and my longevity as I go through time.

(01:05)
I want to, when I’m in my late fifties, I wanna look back and feel really glad of the things that I did over the last 10 years that have left me with strong bones, with capability, with strength, with the ability to deal with an accident or an injury or like whatever life throws my way. And that really came to mind for me when I had this unexpected fall in a parking lot at a gas station in the middle of Illinois on my way home for Christmas this past year at, I was almost 48. I was 47 when the accident happened. I, I sustained, you know, a bad injury. And yet I’ve been able to heal from it really effectively. And I think pretty quickly. And while it has been difficult, it’s also been something that made me feel really grateful for all of the work that I’d put into myself and my health up until that point.

(02:01)
And it made me even more determined to continue to do that work as I move forward. So that’s where I was thinking of you in this scenario as well, because we never know what’s gonna happen. We never know what’s gonna come our way. We can get a nasty cold that turns into something worse, that sets us back for months. We can take a hit to our hormones, right? Something that makes us feel really fatigued. We can have complicated health symptoms that really derail us from the practices that we want to be doing for our health and fitness. We can have an unexpected accident, like what happened in my case, and have to take a step back from the way that we’re training. And all of these things are so unexpected, but what matters is what we’ve done before that point consistently so that the reserves that we have built into our bodies are there for us to draw upon in these times of, of unexpected trauma.

(02:59)
So this is why I wanted to share my story with you today, because I felt like it’s been something that I’ve been reflecting on an awful lot. And it’s made me very determined to continue my practices. And, you know, so what happened was, I was just at like, at a, at a rest stop, and I was walking the dog and I, I was coming home from, from Colorado to New York and for Christmas, and I was just walking the dog and I was walking behind these RV hookup spots and I stumbled over something in the grass that I could not see. And because I had the leash in my right hand, my arm got trapped under me as I fell off the curb onto the hard pavement. And it snapped my elbow back so hard with all my weight coming down on top of my arm that I really badly dislocated my elbow.

(03:53)
And so I, as I was lying there on the ground, it was like 16 degrees out. It was so cold, and I was so worried about the dog. I, like, I felt like I had to get up to, to put him back in, in the van because he was gonna freeze. ’cause it was so cold out. And in the meantime, you know, I’m laying there in pain and I can’t breathe. You know, I’m breathing like this, like I can’t get my breath back. And it was very, very scary. I mean, if you’ve ever gone on a, a, a cross country trip by yourself before, you know you as women, we, we take steps to protect ourselves as best we can. We’re, we’re very aware of our surroundings. We’re, you know, vigilant. We’re thinking about a lot of different things that could potentially go wrong if we’re traveling by ourselves.

(04:36)
But I’ll tell you what, I never really thought about, I never really mentally prepared for something like this to happen, right? It was very shocking and very unexpected and was very lucky to have this strength, to be able to get myself up off the ground to be able to use my opposite arm to heft the dog back into the vehicle. And I was able to drive myself to a local hospital, fortunately, and, and get care. And that was in part because I was, I had the strength, right? I had, I had the reserves, but I was, I was in a lot of pain. I was really, it was a really harrowing, it was really a harrowing experience. I fortunately was able to call my family and have their support in that moment. That was so scary and, and figure out what to do. I was, I was anxious about leaving Bodhi by himself at a gas station.

(05:30)
And turns out there was a nice hospital just nine miles away from where I was. And the van that I was driving has a shifter that you shift with your finger. So I didn’t have, I didn’t even have to use my other arm, you know, the arm that was hurt. I didn’t know yet before I got to the hospital how bad it was. I couldn’t take my coat off. I couldn’t really move that side of my body. And it was, the dog was very worried, , as you can imagine. But I did make it to the hospital, they took such good care of me. They had to cut my shirt off. The, the bone was sticking out. Oh my gosh. It was, it was really, it was really stressful. It was really painful. But in the end, they were able to x-ray it and they saw that it wasn’t broken.

(06:10)
And they knocked me out for a bit, put the arm back in place, put the bones back, and my wonderful Aunt Lee, who lives in Chicago, drove out and took care of me and helped me with everything. And, you know, I was very lucky to have family close by. I was very lucky to be so near a hospital. I was very lucky that I had the strength to get up and, and, and take care of myself, right? It’s, it was a very shocking experience and it made me really grateful for all of the things that I had done up until that point of taking care of myself. Because a fall, you know, a fall can change your life at any age. Like you, you take, I take that for granted because I think about, you know, we think about the statistics of falls and how they’re one of the leading causes of death in people over 65.

(06:56)
But it could have, you can have a fall at any age that can really mess, mess your, mess your life up, , right? But we’re, we’re really, we are really susceptible to injuries we sustain from, from falling or from anything as we age. And this is partly because we’re, you know, we start to lose muscle. And as we start to lose our muscle tissue, we, we start to lose our own ability to protect and cushion our joints. You know, your reflexes might be slower if you’re not regularly conditioning or exercising. And, you know, not to mention our bone tissue becomes a lot more brittle and, and more fragile and more prone to breaks. I had multiple people tell me, wow, I’m so surprised that you didn’t break your arm , you know, in this, in this fall, it’s much more common to see an arm be broken than to see a dislocation.

(07:43)
And I definitely attribute that so much to having, doing stretching and flexibility, doing strength training, doing all of my explosive cardio, all the things. Not to mention the healthy eating, the intake of more protein in the last few years because I’m in perimenopause. All of the things that I’ve been so diligent about and sharing with you and that we talk about on this podcast and on my blog and in our programs and our workout programs, they all kind of come home to you in a very realistic way when you get an injury and you see how much your work is, is gonna pay off for you, how quickly you actually can recover and you can heal. And, and that’s really like, you know what I was thinking a lot about, you know, whether it’s, it’s whether it’s soft tissue damage or you’ve got a bone break, you know, it does require a ton of energy and reserves from your body in order to heal.

(08:36)
It calls on our immune system and of course it creates this massive inflammatory response that marshals so many of our body’s resources. And a lot of people don’t have those resources and they don’t have those reserves built in. So it makes it much harder to come back from an injury like that. And that can happen a lot as we age. If we’re not being mindful, if we’re not thinking about what are the deposits that we’re putting into our quote unquote health savings account within our body so that we could draw upon them in unexpected situations, you know, when you’ve got that robust immune system and a strong body, you’re, you’re, if you get injured, you have the strength and reserves probably to get up and start walking hopefully if you know, if it’s not a, a lower limb injury. But you, you know, if you can get up and start walking soon after your injury, you’re already stimulating your lymphatic system, which is gonna help your immune system be stronger and help support you even quicker.

(09:29)
If you have more muscle tissue on your body, it makes it much easier for you to be more mobile and more flexible even during your recovery process. So you can, you can do those things that we often take for granted, like feed yourself, go to the bathroom without help and move around. And, and let’s not forget, I mean, mentally we just feel more hopeful the more ability that we have. And that’s really such a big part of the recovery process is feeling like we’re making progress, right? And, and there there are just a lot of complications that can arise for someone after an injury if they’re older or they haven’t been taking as good of care of themselves. If they’re, if they have a lower level of muscle tissue, if their tissue isn’t very flexible, they might not be able to move around as freely, they might not be able to do simple tasks without some help.

(10:21)
And there could be more complications that arise even during the healing process. If they have a weakened immune system, for example, they might be more prone to getting other viruses or get sick more easily while they’re trying to heal from a simple injury, for example. And I mean, you know, if you’ve ever had to recover from a setback yourself and, and you, you know, it was frustrating. Imagine if it was taking twice as long and you kept having additional setbacks within that timeframe. It’s disheartening, it mentally is taxing and it makes us feel more discouraged and more depressed and it makes it harder to recover. And that’s just a terrible state to be in. And, and like we said, you know, there’s this research that shows that adults over 65 are more likely to suffer from these debilitating effects that come from a fall.

(11:13)
But it starts a lot earlier in our lives – these reasons that create us being prone to have these exacerbated conditions, right? It’s the things that we do in the years leading up to that time in our lives that are either creating the likelihood of our own frailty or the likelihood of our own strength and ability. And it’s not that when we we hit our sixties, we’re suddenly inevitably gonna be weaker. No, it’s in our forties, even as soon as our thirties that a lot of us are gradually starting to lose our muscle tissue and our bone density is weakening until one day our reserves have just really dwindled. So, and for women it, the perimenopause years are really when we will most start to notice and experience this. And that’s because our estrogen and progesterone levels slowly, gradually begin to decline. And these two hormones and their interplay over the course of a monthly cycle are a big support to our muscle and bone tissue that we don’t even realize.

(12:12)
I mean, progesterone for instance, just drives the osteoblast or bone cell formation when we’re growing and developing. And that contributes to the formation of strong bones and then it contributes to the maintenance of those bones as we come into adulthood and and live our lives. And our estrogen plays a huge role in the health and development of our muscle tissue. Not only does it support muscle protein synthesis, which is the process our muscles go through to repair and rebuild new tissue after a workout for instance, it also supports the strength of our connective tissues, like our ligaments and tendons. And those connect your muscles and surround and support your joints. And this is what gives us a lot of that stability, right? And when we hit perimenopause, and of course that’s the 10 years or so that lead us up to menopause, when our period completely stops the levels of those two key hormones, as they start to decline and we gradually start to lose our muscle, our our bone tissue slowly becomes more porous as well.

(13:12)
And this is a huge part of why, for example, I created the PerimenoFit program to share more about this type of information and give you the strategies that will specifically help you, um, stop and prevent that from happening to you because, you know, despite hormones changing, there are these great strategies and techniques that we can deploy in our training and our nutrient intake that go a long way to really preventing and even reversing some of the impact that this slow down in our hormones has. And this is applicable to you whether you’re in perimenopause or you’re postmenopausal because building a strong body in the absence of those hormones really comes down to taking advantage of some of the fitness approaches that are available to everyone. But if we know to apply them specifically to our bodies in the absence of these hormones and we know what to do with our nutrient intake, this is going to benefit us immensely and really start to give you that, that reserve that you can call on for years to come with these simple tweaks and so that you can have that advantage when you get to that sort of 65-year-old milestone.

(14:27)
And if you’re already over 65, you can take advantage of these strategies too. They are for everyone. I think one of the most important things to do is to really focus on building and maintaining our muscle tissue now and the way we go about this will also support stronger bones and an overall stronger immune system as well. Because exercise is hugely protective to our immune system. Not only does moving more stimulate our lymphatic system, but contracting our muscles produces peptides and chemical messengers called cytokines that support our immune system function, our insulin response, and our metabolic health. And I’ve outlined many of the benefits of walking more for us as women in some of our recent podcast episodes. And I bring it up here also to remind us that simply walking more is a great way to stimulate our lymph system, maintain our muscle support bone density.

(15:22)
One of our Rock Your Life members just told me she got a weighted vest for Christmas and she’s added that to her walking routine, which I think is a fantastic bonus edition if you’re so inclined. But you know, get out and walk. That’s the most important thing to do. And you know, the way to really maintain and strengthen your muscle tissue and bones in perimenopause and into the postmenopausal years when we lose that advantage, we got from the higher levels of progesterone and estrogen just comes down to a few key factors. So number one, resistance training, which is so important, right? Working the body against a load is what creates the stimulus that the muscle tissue and the bones respond to. And creating this healthy inflammatory response from a workout by challenging ourselves creates the repair process that then builds us back stronger than before.

(16:11)
And not to mention, as we build muscle, we strengthen our bones, we strengthen the connective tissue around our joints, and we also really improve our metabolism. Of course, the more muscle we carry, the more effectively we’re gonna burn body fat and losing our muscle inadvertently either because we’re not aware we’re losing our hormone levels or because we’re becoming more sedentary is a big culprit behind why we start gaining more weight in middle age. That just becomes harder and harder to lose. But simply doing the type of training that helps to increase your muscle tissue so you can hold onto it longer and build it back if you lose it will go a long way in protecting you. And of course I’d really like to guide you in your resistance training with a smart plan to follow because I think it’s really important to train on an aligned body with good form so that you can prevent injury and build your balance and flexibility along the way.

(17:06)
And that’s what I’ve got in all of my workout programs. And I highly encourage you to do some form of explosive cardio alongside of your resistance training because this is going to engage different muscle fibers that keep you strong and agile and it will load and support the strength of your joints, it will improve your cardiovascular health. And it’s also a very efficient way to get the benefits of cardio. So we have more time for resistance training and a more balanced training approach in general. And of course when it comes to balanced training, this is so hugely important. We wanna be thinking about recovery in a little bit different of a way than we used to because when we start to lose those hormones, we don’t bounce back as quickly in our recovery process after we work out. So we just need to have a better, more thoughtful training plan that not only challenges us effectively in the workouts we do, it allows the space for recovery.

(18:00)
Because if we don’t take the recovery that we need when we have those lower levels of hormones, the body will stay stuck in an inflammatory response that it can’t effectively recover from. And if we pile workout after workout on the system that can’t quite recover, not only do we never really get to train to our peak potential, we also never fully repair from the workouts, which depletes us further, robs us of seeing muscle tissue gains and doesn’t really give us the result of a strong body that we are hoping for and that we’re putting all this effort and time into with our training in general because we need the rest periods in between the workouts, we need the building blocks from amino acids, which is of of course gonna come from our protein rich foods. And as we age, we don’t absorb the amino acids like we used to.

(18:47)
And this is so significant. I really can’t stress enough how important this is to know if you are a woman in your forties or older, you need more protein than you used to, just to do the same amount of work in your body as before. And remember that the amino acids do more than just repair our muscle tissue and support all of these body tissues. They also serve as the building blocks for our neurotransmitters, which are important messengers in our brain. They serve as the building blocks of hormones and enzymes, which are also important messengers in our body. They have a lot to do with our immune health. They activate these guardian cells in our body known as NK cells, which is short for natural killer cells. And you want to activate these guys because they limit the spread of microbial infections and help eliminate harmful bacteria.

(19:33)
They also regulate our response to oxidative stress, which is the impact that free radicals can have on our bodies. And you know, free radicals are a normal byproduct of our metabolic process, but they’re also a byproduct of environmental pollutants, chemicals, and toxins. So eating enough protein for your needs and your age is going to support the health of so many different things in your body. Not to mention your immune health, giving you greater reserves to draw on in any situation from simply recovering from a tough workout to getting sick or getting injured like I did. We need our protein, we need fiber rich, nourishing whole food carbohydrates for the energy to push through our workouts. We need healthy fat to support the absorption of fat soluble vitamins for our brain health and for so much more we need to eat regularly. And this, you know, I get can be hard because we do slowly lose some of our appetite as we age.

(20:28)
But regular exercise that’s challenging and stimulating is a great way to keep your appetite going stronger. And focusing on simple meals that contain the essentials is a great way to keep this from being over complicated. Get yourself a meal plan if that’s helpful. Something like My Dinner Plan, which I have created that’s got a of great recipes and it’s well thought out with customizable grocery lists. So you can tell the plan how many people you’re cooking for and it will calculate the exact grocery list with what you need. And all the meals include the nutrients that you really need to thrive because I feel like all of this is very doable. It’s a very accessible and it’s easy to start small and slowly build up. And if you already have some of these things in place, but maybe you’re missing one of them, now is the time to start putting them together like links in a chain because they all work together.

(21:19)
And sometimes people will hear me say resistance training and explosive cardio and then they just stop hearing me after I say that they miss the part where I say, and enough recovery. They think that more training means more results, but that just won’t work and it especially won’t work as our hormone levels decline. And I know I’ve said this a few different ways, a few different times today, but I just want you to know that this is such an important aspect that helps make your training more effective, especially as you get into perimenopause and the postmenopausal years. Did you know actually that inside Rock Your Life, every plan has been optimized with women in different life stages in mind? I have options built in so that there’s a custom training and recovery schedule that will support you in seeing the best results without over training.

(22:06)
Whether you’re still in your cycling years or you’re in perimenopause or you’re in post menopause. Our challenges all have different paths you can follow depending on your life stage and your needs. And I’ve built this feature into all of my programs. So if you’ve invested in something in the past, check out the new features and of course I was telling you I created PerimenoFit, which has this optimal schedule for women in perimenopause to follow. And it will help teach you about this transition in our lives and what you want to take forward as you go through perimenopause and what will set you up for real success in the post menopause years as well. And it will give you confidence in using my other workout programs because they have that program design built in. And once you understand how that works and how to harness its benefits for your body and you surround it with these other aspects of your health, you are going to be so much stronger and well set up both physically and mentally and prepared for anything that life could throw your way.

(23:05)
I would just go back to the story I told you at the beginning of today’s episode about my fall and my recovery. And I feel like I have been healing really fast in the greater scheme of things. I feel like having so much muscle tissue and the flexibility in my joints has given me a lot of reserves when I had to take a step back and recover, I feel like I recovered way faster than I would have without those reserves. And the accident itself would have been much, much worse. Had my musculature, you know, not been there to cushion and protect my skeleton when I fall. Not just cushioned it from harm, but the jarring impact it had on my head and my neck and the impact that it had to the bone tissue, all of it. You know, I can only imagine the impact that that would’ve had if, if those other body parts had had gotten injured as well.

(23:54)
And here I am now at 48, well before I hit my sixties or that time when they say that we’re gonna get the worst injuries from the fall, I didn’t think there that I was really in danger of falling at my age. But anyone can fall at any age. It’s really how we’re able to get back up that matters. And I’m determined that you will be able to get up, that you will be able to carry on, that you will be able to heal if something like this ever happens to you, knock on wood . But I would really rather see like our savings account full to the brim and this this health savings account full to the brim and never need to draw on it than not having much of a reserve at all to draw on when I really need it. Right? And that’s, I know a lot to think about and I, I hope that you’re inspired to continue to be consistent and thoughtful in your approach to eating and training.

(24:48)
Now more than ever, I hope that I gave you some good ideas. If you are in the perimenopause years, like me, or if you’ve surpassed me and gone into the post menopause years, all of these techniques are applicable. We’re just starting them in perimenopause so that we can be well set up and prepared for post menopause. But these, these are the most important things to think about. The strength training, we want some explosive cardio in the mix. We wanna be recovering well and we wanna be really focusing on our nutrient intake and upping our protein. And there are of course many other things around this that we can do. But I would say that those are the sort of the primary ones I would focus on. And then you can stack and build around that with other important habits, right? Because we don’t wanna discount the importance of gut health.

(25:32)
We don’t wanna discount the importance of sleep hygiene, of stress management. There are many other aspects of our health that play together with our hormone health and support us over time. But those are the big ones to focus on when it comes to the things you actively do and practice daily, like your fitness routine, right? So I wanna make sure you have access to those facts and to that information and know that I have plans available to help support you so that you aren’t sort of trying to figure all this out on your own or, you know, just not getting the, the response in your body that you, that you are wanting because you know, you are the main character in this story of your life, right? Our, our heroine. You’re the heroine of our journey and you’ve got 12 chapters in each year of your life.

(26:18)
And whenever you happen to be listening to this podcast, I mean, you might just be finishing chapter one, it might be the, the, the end of January. Or if you’re listening to this in June and you’ve already written the first six chapters in your story for the year already, it doesn’t matter. All that matters is what you choose to do with the rest of the time that you have. Make the most of it. Take care of yourself, set yourself up each year so that you start the volume of your life from an even stronger footing so that when you get to volume 65 in your life chronicles, you’re in an uncommon story of a woman who defied the odds, who had enormous capability and flexibility, who was able to do all the things that she enjoyed physically. ’cause I really would like to read that story.

(27:01)
I’d like to see all of us up on the same shelf together when it came to, you know, the Chronicles of our lives at age 65 and beyond. That’s what I, that’s what I wish for you. That’s what I wish for me. And that’s a big reason behind why I train and why I I make the time. Sometimes I feel like I, I take a lot of time to do food preparation and making the time to exercise it. It can be time consuming and yet it’s a small, really a small time commitment in the greater scheme of my life that adds up to have these great dividends that I can then draw upon when I need them. And, and I hope that you never need to draw upon yours like I had to draw upon mine, but I sure was glad to have them there in place.

(27:45)
So, hey, thanks for listening to my story. Thanks so much for being here and spending some time with me today. Looking forward to hearing your comments and hearing your stories, and you can always leave those over on my show notes page on the betty rocker.com in the podcast section. You can find this episode, leave me a comment, let me know. You can also hit me up on social media anytime. I’m at the Betty Rocker on Instagram and Facebook, and I always love hearing from you. Thanks so much for spending time with me today, Rockstar. As always, I’m Betty Rocker. You are so awesome, flawsome, and amazing. Bye for now.