Saving Muscle

How to stay strong and healthy as you age...


Once you hit 40, you start to lose muscle. And that won't just make it harder to lift your grandchildren or carry your groceries in the years ahead.

"Muscle loss slows down our metabolic rate, makes it harder for us to control our weight, weakens our bones, and leaves us more susceptible to diabetes," says Miriam Nelson of Tufts University in Boston.

It also makes our years show.

"What makes us look older, more than anything else, is losing muscle and gaining body fat as we age," says Nelson.

Remarkably, when it comes to shrinking muscles, you can get a second chance. Just two months of strength-building exercises can reverse two decades of a typical person's muscle loss.

A mother in her 50s doesn't-go skiing or hiking with her children because she no longer has me strength to keep up with them. An older couple gives up freezing leftovers because they're afraid their legs will give way going down the stairs to the basement refrigerator.

Researchers call it sarcopenia (pronounced SAR-co-PEEN-yuh)--the loss of muscle tissue as we age.

"Unfortunately, sarcopenia hasn't reached the public's radar screen the way osteoporosis has," says Timothy Doherty, Canada Research Chair in Neuromuscular Function in Health, Aging, and Disease at the University of Western Ontario.

People know that they need to keep their bones strong, says Doherty. "But if I tell someone they have sarcopenia and that it's a part of aging, they'll say, 'Well, I'm not going to worry about it.'"

They should. An estimated 45 percent of U.S. adults 65 and older suffer from age-related muscle wasting. And it's not just a matter of losing the strength they had in their 20s. Losing strength can limit your life and land you in a nursing home. But muscle loss takes a toll on your health in other ways:

* Decreased metabolism. Your muscles burn most of the calories your body uses, and muscle burns calories at a higher rate than fat tissue does.

So the less muscle you have, the fewer calories you burn, and the more calories your body stores as fat. (If you eat less food as you age, you won't gain weight, but you'll still replace muscle with fat.)

"And an increase in body fat puts you at greater risk for chronic conditions like cancer and heart disease," says the National Institute on Aging's Chhanda Dutta.

* Muscle marbling. Less muscle means more fat is deposited in muscle cells. "Marbling may be desirable for the taste of steak," says Dutta, "but when it happens to your own muscles, it's associated with insulin resistance."

And the risk of diabetes and heart disease rises in people who become less sensitive to insulin.

* Weaker bones. "Muscles put stresses and strains on bones that make them stronger," says Dutta. That's why weight-bearing exercises help prevent bone loss. But less muscle means less healthy stress, and that translates into weaker bones.

* Poorer balance. Muscles are crucial for maintaining balance. In a study that tracked 800 European men aged 50 to 85 for seven years, those who had lost the most muscle with age were also the most likely to suffer falls.

Source: Nutrition Action Health Letter Vol.34/No 3 April 2007


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