From Emergency Medicine to Preventive Care: Why Muscle Health Protects Your Brain and Body

Dr. Siobhan Newman shares insights from 30 years in emergency medicine and how witnessing preventable tragedies led her to embrace Emsculpt Neo as a powerful tool for functional wellness, neuroprotection, and healthspan optimization.

In this article:

• Lessons from the ER: The Crisis We Can Prevent
• A Solution I Didn’t Expect
• Why the Brain-Muscle Connection Matters
• Cellular Medicine: What’s Really Happening During Treatment
• Who Benefits from This Approach

Three Decades in the Trenches

For over thirty years, the hospital emergency department has been my second home. Since graduating from Chicago Medical School in 1994, I’ve encountered a wide range of human experiences in a world that’s far from predictable. I’ve seen the triumphs of saving lives, the tragedies of preventable decline, and the quiet resilience of patients facing unthinkable challenges.

Places I’ve worked at have kept sandwiches and warm blankets on hand, knowing that sometimes what a person needs most isn’t a prescription but human kindness. The pandemic magnified every crack in the system, testing our limits. Through it all, compassion remained constant.

But among all the cases, the heart attacks, the strokes, the traumas, there’s one pattern that’s continued to trouble me: the elderly patient with a hip fracture who may never truly recover.

The Crisis I Couldn’t Ignore

The statistics are devastating: Approximately 7% of elderly hip fracture patients die within 30 days, up to 30% within one year. Most survivors never regain full independence. I’ve seen hip fractures hundreds of times; different faces, same trajectory. By the time someone arrives in my ER, we’re managing the end result of a process that began years earlier with gradual muscle loss, declining balance, and weakening core strength.

1 in 3 senior adults fall each year due to loss of mobility and balance. Those who maintain muscle strength have up to 38% decreased chance of fracture and functional limitations.

A Solution I Didn’t Expect

After years of managing these crises, I asked myself: what if we could intervene before the fall? What if we could rebuild muscle strength, balance, and brain-muscle communication years earlier?

This realization transformed my practice. I opened Newman MD LifeCare with a singular mission; address the root causes of age-related decline before it becomes irreversible. I knew that exercise boosts cellular repair, but many of the patients who needed it most couldn’t handle the required intensity. That’s when I discovered Emsculpt Neo.

What drew me to this technology wasn’t the body contouring aspect, it was the FDA clearance for functional wellness applications. This wasn’t about aesthetics; it was about delivering intense muscle building and peripheral nerve stimulation to patients who couldn’t achieve it any other way.

Emsculpt Neo combines High-Intensity Focused Electromagnetic energy and radiofrequency to deliver up to 20,000 supramaximal muscle contractions in just 30 minutes. These contractions exceed 100% of maximum voluntary capacity. More importantly, these contractions trigger the same cellular transformation systems that make high-intensity muscle exercise so powerful for healthspan.

Why the Brain-Muscle Connection Matters

In my ER career, I’ve noticed something often overlooked: many patients who fall aren’t just weak, they’ve lost the neurological connection between their brain and muscles.

The Neuropathy Problem: Approximately 50% of diabetic patients develop peripheral neuropathy, losing not just sensation but balance and proprioception, your brain’s ability to sense where your body is in space. When nerves can’t communicate from feet to brain, even getting up at night becomes a fall risk. 

The Cellular Energy Crisis: But the problem runs deeper. As we age, our cellular power plants, the mitochondria, start to fail. This energy crisis happens years before symptoms appear. When brain neurons lack adequate energy, they can’t process sensory information or coordinate muscle responses effectively, creating a vicious cycle: brain energy deficits impair coordination leading to reduced activity which accelerates muscle loss and further brain decline.

The Solution: This is where Emsculpt Neo’’s dual mechanism becomes crucial. It’s FDA-cleared specifically for peripheral nerve stimulation in patients with neuropathy, helping restore damaged communication pathways. Simultaneously, the intense muscle contractions trigger cellular changes that support brain energy metabolism and release protective molecules that travel to the brain.

Beyond Falls: Who Else Benefits

While elderly patients at risk for falls represent perhaps the most urgent application, multiple patient populations need this intervention:

Postpartum women with severe back pain, unable to lift their babies, struggling with pelvic floor dysfunction. Research shows 85% reported feeling more youthful and 70% experienced less back discomfort after treatment.

Adults with chronic pain are caught in a vicious cycle where pain prevents exercise, lack of exercise weakens muscles, and weak muscles create more pain. Studies show 93% reported the treated area felt better, with 75% experiencing reduced pain.

Patients with mobility limitations from arthritis or chronic conditions who need muscle strengthening but physically cannot perform traditional exercises.

Diabetic patients with neuropathy experiencing pain, balance issues, and increased fall risk.

Sarcopenic patients who have experienced significant bone and muscle loss due to aging or chronic disease. Emsculpt Neo shows a 25% increase in muscle mass in the treated areas.

The Foundation: Stronger Muscles, Better Balance

Before diving into the sophisticated cellular mechanisms, let’s address the most direct benefit: Emsculpt Neo builds stronger muscles where they matter most for functional health.

Core strength prevents falls by keeping you upright and stable. Leg strength improves mobility, with patients seeing a 46% increase in walking speed. This direct muscle strengthening is the foundation. But what makes Emsculpt Neo remarkable isn’t just that it builds muscle, it’s what happens at the cellular level while building that muscle.

Cellular Medicine: What’s Really Happening During Treatment

The 20,000 supramaximal contractions delivered in each 30-minute session aren’t just exercising your muscles, they’re triggering profound cellular transformations:

Building New Cellular Power Plants: The intense muscle contractions signal your cells to build new mitochondria, the energy factories inside every cell. More efficient mitochondria mean sustained energy and metabolic transformation affecting everything from physical endurance to cognitive clarity.

The Lactate Effect: Contractions trigger lactate production that crosses into your brain, providing neuronal fuel and triggering BDNF production, what neuroscientists call “miracle-gro for the brain”. Research demonstrates that lactate links exercise to synaptic protection, even in Alzheimer’s disease models. 

The Metabolic Reset: Your body has two master switches controlling cellular energy and healthspan. Think of them as the “cleanup crew” (AMPK) and the “building crew” (mTOR). As we age, these switches can get dysregulated, leading to cellular debris buildup and energy decline.

Exercise Benefits for Those Who Can’t Exercise: Zone 2 training requires 150 minutes weekly. Emsculpt Neo delivers these cellular benefits in 30-minute sessions, making the same pathways elite athletes use accessible to those with injury, disability, or other limitations. 

Nerve Restoration for Better Balance: For patients with neuropathy the peripheral nerve stimulation that Emsculpt Neo provides, helps restore the nerve-muscle communication pathways that neuropathy damages, potentially improving coordination and reducing fall risk.

The Clinical Evidence

The research on Emsculpt Neo for functional wellness shows real-world improvements:

For Aging Adults and Fall Prevention:

• 68% reported being less likely to fall
• 30% improvement in balance for patients over 60
• 46% increase in walking speed
• 93% felt their core was stronger

For Postpartum Women:

• 85% reported feeling more youthful
• 70% reported less back discomfort
• Significant core strength improvement

For Pain and Neuropathy:

• 93% reported treated area felt better
• 77% reported reduced discomfort
• 75% reported reduced pain
• 91% experienced no pain during sessions despite their conditions

Who Benefits

I recommend Emsculpt Neo for:

• Older adults (60+) concerned about falls, balance, and maintaining independence
• Postpartum women rebuilding core strength 
• Individuals with sarcopenia experiencing age-related muscle loss
• Those with chronic pain trapped in the exercise-pain cycle
• Diabetic patients with neuropathy experiencing pain, balance issues, and fall risk
• People with joint limitations who cannot perform traditional high-intensity exercise
• Anyone on GLP-1 medications wanting to preserve muscle mass during weight loss
• Individuals interested in longevity medicine and healthspan optimization

The Protocol

A typical protocol involves four 30-minute sessions weekly. Treatments are available for abdomen, legs, arms, buttocks, and back, tailored to specific functional goals. FDA-indicated for functional wellness including muscle spasm relaxation, prevention of disuse atrophy, increasing blood circulation, muscle re-education, peripheral nerve stimulation, and maintaining range of motion.

Investing in Your Healthspan

After 30 years managing crises, I’ve learned the most powerful medicine is delivered months and years earlier. The most exciting frontier in preventive medicine is cellular health optimization which addresses disease at the mitochondrial level before symptoms ever appear.

By maintaining robust cellular function through treatments like Emsculpt Neo, you’re investing in your healthspan, not just your aesthetic appearance. This is precision preventive medicine; supporting the cellular foundations that keep you energized, sharp, and resilient as you age.

Emsculpt Neo isn’t just body contouring, it’s cellular medicine. Each 30-minute session triggers the same deep cellular renewal that happens during high-intensity exercise; building new mitochondria, releasing protective molecules that benefit your brain, and activating your body’s natural cellular maintenance systems.

Maybe it’s time to Rethink Aging, not as an inevitable decline, but as an opportunity to optimize cellular function, protect brain-muscle communication, and maintain the independence and vitality that define quality of life.

Did you know?

Cellular energy decline can begin 10-20 years before symptoms of neurodegenerative conditions appear? By addressing mitochondrial health proactively through muscle building, you’re investing in your healthspan and supporting the cellular foundations that help prevent dementia or cognitive decline.

References:

1. Duncan, D. I. (2023). Reduction of Sarcopenia Using HIFEM and RF. American Journal of Biomedical Science & Research, 18(3).
2. Duncan, D., Kent, D. E., & Appelbaum, E. (2023). Quality of Life and Core Muscle Strength in Elderly Patients. Journal of Geriatric Medicine and Gerontology, 9, 151.
3. McCoy, J. D., et al. (2023). Core Muscle Strength in Postpartum Women. Journal of Women’s Health Care, 12(8), 672.
4. Park, J., Kim, J., & Mikami, T. (2021). Exercise-induced lactate release mediates mitochondrial biogenesis. Frontiers in Physiology, 12, 736905.
5. Han, H., et al. (2025). Lactate links exercise to synaptic protection in Alzheimer’s disease models. BMC Medicine, 23, 331.
6. Herzig, S., & Shaw, R. J. (2018). AMPK: Guardian of Metabolism and Mitochondrial Homeostasis. Nature Reviews Molecular Cell Biology, 19(2), 121-135.
7. Savelieff, M. G., et al. (2025). The Global and Regional Burden of Diabetic Peripheral Neuropathy. Nature Reviews Neurology, 21(1), 17-31.
8. Pfeifer, C. E., et al. (2022). Are Flexibility and Muscle-Strengthening Activities Associated with Functional Limitation? Sports Medicine and Health Science, 4(2), 95-100.

For more information about Emsculpt NEO, Healthy Aging, Weight Loss, and Muscle Therapy, visit our website or schedule a consultation with Dr. Newman.