Muscle Mass: A Cornerstone for Achieving Longevity
In your quest for a longer, healthier life, the significance of muscle mass cannot be overstated. It’s not just about looking fit or enhancing physical strength; muscle mass plays a pivotal role in your overall health and longevity.
We’ve recently spoken with Dr. Howard Luks, on our podcast ‘Move Without Limits’. Dr. Luks is a board-certified orthopedic surgeon with a specialization in sports medicine. He’s also the author of ‘Longevity… Simplified: Living a Longer, Healthier Life Shouldn’t Be Complicated’. In this article, he helps us unpick the crucial connection between muscle mass and living a long, vibrant life.
Muscle Mass: Key Takeaways
Sarcopenia, or the loss of muscle mass, starts as early as our mid-30s and accelerates after 50, affecting our ability to perform daily activities and increasing the risk of falls and disability as we age.
Muscle mass is crucial for metabolic health, as it stores glucose and helps regulate blood sugar levels, preventing conditions such as type 2 diabetes and reducing the risk of other health issues related to poor metabolic health.
Consistent, simple strength training is essential for combating muscle mass loss and improving overall health.
Exercise and physical activity are key to maintaining joint health and managing pain, contrary to fears that exercise might worsen conditions like arthritis or cause injury.
Education and empowerment about the role of muscle mass in longevity and health are vital, helping individuals to understand the importance of maintaining muscle mass through exercise and dispelling myths about exercise-related injuries.
What Happens to Our Muscles as We Age? The Battle Against Sarcopenia
Aging is a process that none of us should ignore, yet one to which few of us pay little attention. Sure, we notice the aging lines appearing on our face, the extra fatigue we feel during and after exercise, and the way it becomes so difficult to shift a little excess weight from our middles. But do we seek to understand what is happening to us? If we did, would we be able to avert some of the harshest realities of aging?
One of the most dramatic effects of getting older is a loss of muscle mass, which we call sarcopenia. There has been a huge amount of research conducted into this phenomenon (one of our favorites is ‘Sarcopenia in older adults’, by Jeremy D. Watson). What we know is that:
Loss of muscle mass begins as early as our mid-30s, when we lose 3% to 8% of muscle mass
It continues into our 40s
In our 50s, loss of muscle mass accelerates
This isn’t genetics. It happens to all of us.
How Bad Can Loss of Muscle Mass Be?
How bad can loss of muscle mass be?
The answer is disastrous. It affects our overall health in multitude of ways. Muscle mass is critical in our ability to live our daily lives – carrying packages, lifting a spouse’s suitcase, walking up and down stairs… we rely on our muscles all day, every day. Even in the middle of the night, when we wake to have a pee. Without working muscles, we wouldn’t be able to get out of bed, never mind make it to the bathroom!
Joking aside, a loss of muscle mass will be debilitating.
“If you’re a gardener, you’re going to carry mulch to the backyard,” Dr. Luks says. “It’s 40 pounds. How long do you want to be able to do that? These are the activities that I think about when I determine how I’m going to train – what I’m going to do, and want to do.”
Here’s a sobering fact:
After the age of 60, falls account for a major cause of death and disability. Because with age, people rest and get weaker, lose more muscle, and have a lower baseline, making it incredibly difficult to prevent and protect themselves from a fall.
Why Muscle Mass Matters for Metabolic Health
Muscle mass serves as a critical regulator of our metabolic health. It stores glucose, which in excess can lead to health issues such as type 2 diabetes. “Muscle stores glucose, glucose is toxic, which is why it is regulated,” explains a study. Proper glucose regulation prevents it from being stored as fat around the organs, which can cause inflammation and exacerbate sarcopenia.
“Glucose is pretty toxic, which is why it’s so heavily regulated in our body,” Dr. Luks explains. “The two organs in which glucose is stored are the liver and the muscles. Muscle mass is obviously a lot larger in size than our liver.
“A lot of people have heard about insulin resistance, or type 2 diabetes. This is insulin resistance to an extreme.
“When we take in glucose via drink or food, we process it. We absorb it. Then our body needs to move it into the muscle. It’s not a passive activity: we have insulin that triggers a receptor on the muscle cell, and that receptor opens this channel and allows the glucose in.
“People who are sedentary and have poor health have insulin resistance – meaning it’s going to take more insulin to push that sugar into the muscle cell.
“Eventually, that insulin just stops working very well. And it can’t function. So, we have a lot of trouble pushing the glucose into the muscle cells, so the glucose stays in our bloodstream. Our blood sugar rises.
“When this happens, it can lead to all sorts of health issues, including heart conditions, chronic kidney diseases, poor vision, hearing, and poor mental health among others.”
No wonder physicians are really coming round to recommending strength training to build up muscle mass in their diabetic patients.
In short, a loss of muscle mass is a major cause of poor metabolic health. This, in turn, has numerous ‘downstream’ effects. One of these is that it makes sarcopenia worse. Once the process has started, it’s easy to find ourselves on a downward spiral of muscle loss.
How Can I Combat Muscle Loss?
Contrary to (misinformed) popular belief, combatting muscle mass loss doesn’t require fancy supplements or trendy diets.
“Instagram shows all the fancy exercises, the fads, the pills, and the supplements,” Dr. Luks observes. “But people just need very simple, consistent strength training – and strength training that actually makes you stronger, not just doing it the same way that you did three years ago.”
So, a warning here: much of the exercises that you watch on Instagram and other social media are ‘performative’. They’re not helpful.
Reload – A New Perspective on Pain, Aging, and Exercise
If you get pain in, say, your knee, it’s likely that you’ll be referred for an MRI scan. This will show that you’ve torn muscles or tendons, and you’ll be told to stop exercising, and rest. Dr. Luks shares our view on this when he says these are often age-appropriate changes. He’s got a great analogy, too:
“If you wore a pair of jeans for 15 years and you look down at the knee, and there’s a little hole there because you felt a breeze, are you going to say you tore your jeans? No. You’re going to say they wore out. On the other hand, if you’re walking by a construction project and you snag those jeans on a piece of metal and you rip a hole in them, you’re going to say you tore your jeans.
“Tears imply trauma or injury. Yet frequently there isn't, right? The majority of joint pain that you see in your clinic is not precipitated by injury. Sometimes it is, but the majority of the time it’s not. But a lot of people curtail their activities by things that they read on their MRI report.”
At Reload, the focus is on education and empowerment. Many clients arrive with concerns that exercise might exacerbate their pain or conditions. By dispelling myths and fears, we can encourage more individuals to embrace physical activity as a means to support their muscle mass and overall health.
The lesson? If you’re active and worried that you’re going to make your joint worse, or perhaps make the arthritis worse because of weight training or running, you’re wrong. It will not. Because most of the time, joint pain is not caused by injury – and running does not cause arthritis.
The Bottom Line
There is no doubt, muscle mass is key to living a longer and more active life. Through consistent exercise and a deeper understanding of the science behind muscle mass, you can take proactive steps toward improving your quality of life as you age.
Dr. Luks’s insights and the latest research offer a blueprint for incorporating muscle strength into your longevity strategy, reminding us that maintaining muscle mass is within reach for everyone dedicated to a healthier future.
Where do you start?
You’re just a click away from the answer. Book a comprehensive 90-minute body evaluation with Reload today.
