Editor’s Note: In this TEDx talk, doctor and pain specialist Dr. Brenda Lau addresses the often-overlooked “blind spot” in medicine: losing strength as we get older. Drawing from clinical research and her personal experience with osteopenia, she explains why traditional routines stop working and how women’s bodies change early on. Ultimately, she introduces three essential daily questions to help viewers intentionally interrupt sitting, challenge muscles, and nourish their bodies to build lifelong freedom and mobility. (May 8, 2026)
TRANSCRIPT:
A Doctor’s Wake-Up Call
DR. BRENDA LAU: I’m a doctor and a pain specialist. For over 25 years I’ve worked inside the healthcare system treating pain and following guidelines, and yet again and again I’ve seen capable, motivated people lose something medicine never warned them about. Not the years of life. The years of strength.
My mom once told me something that I’ll never forget. She said, “I’m not afraid of dying. I’m afraid of not being strong enough to get up from my chair.” Not dying. Standing up. Moms have a way of seeing further down the road than we do. But that moment stopped me.
It showed to me a blind spot in the way we think about health. Every day I see us put enormous energy in treating disease, and yet we rarely put strength first. And no, this is not a talk about fitness trends or exercise. Strength shows up in mobility, power, balance, mindset. Science shows that building strength changes mood, energy, pain, even brain health as we age.
For me, strength means freedom, the ability to live life with multiple options. And yet strength quietly slips away when the muscles and bones stop receiving the signals that they need. Movement, challenge, nourishment. Those same routines don’t work forever, and many of us weren’t taught that. The truth is, I wasn’t either.
Learning the Hard Way
DR. BRENDA LAU: I learned it the hard way. At 47, I was told I had osteopenia, lower than expected bone density. I remember looking at the scan. How could this be? Me, weak bones.
I’d been exercising for decades, marathons, triathlons, yoga. What I didn’t understand then was that my body was changing. And for women, shifts in hormones, especially estrogen, leads to faster loss of muscle and bone. I missed the signals. I didn’t connect the dots.
So I did what many driven people do. I just tried harder, more exercise, more effort. One short year later, I still lost bone density. I froze. I thought I was doing everything right. I was moving, I was active.
But when this doctor didn’t know what her body needed, this patient kept losing strength. And if someone like me inside the system could miss this, the problem wasn’t effort. It was missing information. And this wasn’t just my blind spot. For a long time, many women and clinicians were not taught how differently and early that women’s bodies changed.
Yet, we were taught that women’s fitness was more cardio and less food. That’s when it dawned on me. I wasn’t failing. I was weakening because I was doing the wrong work for the body I had now. Trying harder wasn’t the solution.
Doing differently is, and for women especially. This is a shift in thinking we cannot afford to put off.
Relearning Women’s Health From Scratch
DR. BRENDA LAU: I promised myself I would figure this out. I wasn’t going to wait for another diagnosis to act. I relearned women’s health from scratch night after night, reading studies, articles, and books. I tested all of this science on myself. Let’s just say for a lot of years, my clinical team heard about it a lot.
I shared with my patients what appeared to work, and we tested these new plans slowly and carefully. Weakness does not have to be a normal part of aging. Research shows that strength responds even at a later age when you give it the right work. And that right work looks different for everyone, but it changes with age. There is no one-size-fits-all way to build strength.
However, from across the research and my own experience, three essentials kept showing up.
First essential, interrupt prolonged sitting. The conveniences of modern life are slowly working against our strength. Office chairs keeping us still. TV shows instead of nature walks. These aren’t our personal failings. This is the environment we’ve created. What matters is movement throughout the day.
Second essential, challenging those muscles and bones. Cardio, including walking, are great for heart health, but they’re often not enough to maintain muscles and bones. Over time, safe and progressive challenge supports strength.
Third essential, eating to build those muscles and bones. They need fuel, especially protein. And as we age, many of us need more than we realize, though that amount varies from person to person.
The Three Questions
DR. BRENDA LAU: So that’s why I stopped giving people more instructions, and I started offering them three questions, questions that we can use every day for our own check-ins. Here they are.
One, did I interrupt my sitting time today? Two, did I safely challenge my muscles and bones? Three, did I eat in a way that builds those muscles and bones?
Look, those questions don’t replace medical care and they look different for everyone. But those yes days add up. What matters is not giving up asking them and getting the help along the way. Medical guidance, skilled healthcare trainers, people who understand pain and progressive recovery. Because strength isn’t built perfectly, it’s built consistently with adaptations over time.
Putting the Questions Into Practice
DR. BRENDA LAU: Once I started asking these three questions, honestly, I couldn’t stop. I asked my friends, my family, my co-workers, my patients, even the grocery store clerks. I asked everyone. And the day I started answering the three questions for myself, I went downstairs to lift weights.
My husband stared at me. He said, “We’ve had this home gym for 13 years, and you’ve just found it?” I said, “Yes.