“So many older people, they just sit around all day long and they don’t get any exercise. Their muscles atrophy, and they lose their strength, their energy and vitality by inactivity.”
~ Jack LaLanne, (1914–2011) American fitness and nutrition guru; motivational speaker
By Carter Trent
Muscles play a vital role in your life. After all, you use your muscles to walk, cook, engage in physical activities, and talk. Did you know your muscles also help to stave off disease? Research published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine in 2022 confirmed muscle-strengthening exercises reduced the risk of premature death by 10% to 17%. This includes a lower risk of dying from cancer and heart disease—the top two leading causes of death in the U.S.—as well as type 2 diabetes.
While you might associate muscles with the brawny bulges of bodybuilders, or as the mundane means to perform your daily tasks, there’s a much bigger picture. First, let’s clarify the types of muscles most relevant to this exploration. Your human body houses three muscle types: skeletal, cardiac, and smooth muscles. Cardiac muscles are in your heart, pumping blood. Smooth muscles are in various parts of your body, including the gastrointestinal tract and bladder, automatically executing necessary functions, such as digestion. Skeletal muscles are the ones you control, and the star of the show in this discussion. They attach to your skeleton, hence the name. All references to muscles in this article will be referring to skeletal muscle.
These muscles provide you with locomotion, and so much more. Over the past few decades, science unearthed a deeper understanding of the muscle’s role. We now know muscles work in concert with other organs to assist your body in maintaining a balanced state, called homeostasis. Homeostasis, from the Greek words for “same” and “steady,” is the process used by all living things to maintain the stable internal environment needed to survive. To achieve this, your muscles help to regulate body temperature, store nutrients, and support joints.
As part of maintaining this balance, your muscles communicate with other parts of the body, including your brain, liver, and bones. This communication happens through the muscle’s secretion of myokines, a class of proteins that act as chemical messengers to other areas of your body. Myokines also play a role in other body functions. For example, during exercise, myokines manage your muscles’ use of glucose, a form of sugar serving as a source of energy for your body. They also provide anti-inflammatory effects capable of reducing the inflammation associated with rheumatic diseases, such as arthritis, and infections. In addition, studies suggest myokines can curb cancer. Myokines control cell proliferation, an important tool against cancer, which is the uncontrolled growth and spread of abnormal cells in the body. In lab tests, myokines were shown to stop the growth of breast cancer cells.
Muscle mass, which is the amount of muscle in your body, is another way your muscles protect your health. Even if your goal isn’t to possess a Herculean physique, it’s ideal to maintain your muscle mass, which is achieved through diet and physical activity. Your muscle mass plays a role in reducing your risk of type 2 diabetes. Studies show if your muscle mass declines, your body’s ability to process the hormone insulin drops, potentially resulting in insulin resistance. Insulin helps your body use glucose, and also controls the level of glucose in your blood. If your body’s insulin resistance persists over time, it can lead to type 2 diabetes. Risk factors for insulin resistance include obesity, and a sedentary lifestyle, two elements that also contribute to muscle mass loss.
However, studies show if you increase muscle mass, insulin resistance can be reversed. This is because your body stores excess glucose in your muscles, and when you perform muscle-strengthening exercises, not only does your muscle mass increase, your muscles use the stored glucose, called glycogen, then stockpile more for later when you’re in recovery. This cycle of glucose use and storage helps to improve your body’s ability to process insulin.
Building muscle mass: Protein is the building block needed for muscle growth. Without protein, your muscles lack the necessary fuel to increase muscle mass. Skeletal muscle is the largest organ in your body, so it holds the largest pool of proteins. Proteins are in every cell of your body, and form the basic component of your hair, skin, eyes, and body organs. Proteins are also involved in the growth and repair of your body. This includes the growth and maintenance of muscle tissue as part of a process called muscle protein turnover, which is how proteins aid in building muscle.
During the muscle protein turnover process, your muscles are routinely synthesizing and breaking down protein, and this process determines your muscle mass. Protein turnover is what helps children grow muscles. But after reaching the fourth decade of life, the body begins losing muscle mass as the efficiency of the protein turnover process erodes. This muscle loss is called sarcopenia, and for women, research suggests the hormonal changes related to menopause can accelerate muscle decline. The reduction in muscle mass continues bit by bit as you age, with as much as 50% of your muscle mass gone by the time you reach your 80s. Sarcopenia is why older people suffer from physical frailty, as the loss of muscle mass makes it difficult to move. This leads to the increased likelihood of fatigue, and injury from falling.
Sarcopenia is also associated with osteoporosis, a disease that weakens your bones, leaving them easier to break. Several scientific studies show the development of sarcopenia contributes to osteoporosis. For example, postmenopausal women with sarcopenia were 13 times more likely to develop osteoporosis than those without sarcopenia. The connection between sarcopenia and osteoporosis exists because your muscles don’t just connect to bones, the two dynamically interact with each other to jointly respond to growth, injury, and executing motor functions.
High-Quality Protein Is Important
Muscle loss isn’t a foregone conclusion. You can take action to regain and retain muscle mass. One step you can take has to do with your diet. Research confirms the Mediterranean diet, which gets its name based on the eating patterns of people in Mediterranean countries, reduces sarcopenia. Reasons contributing to this include a high amount of omega-3 fatty acids, and a general decrease of inflammation.
From International Journal of Women’s Health, “Sarcopenia in Menopausal Women: Current Perspectives”:
“The potential explanation is that Mediterranean diet has positive effect on oxidative stress, inflammation and insulin resistance, which are risk factors for muscle catabolism.”
Whatever type of diet you choose to eat, awareness of protein consumption is critical. Because your muscles need protein for maintenance, repair, and growth of muscle mass, be sure you’re consuming enough protein. When you think of food high in protein, your first thought may be meat. Certainly, meat is a good source of protein, and it’s wise to stay away from factory-farmed meat. This type of industrially-processed meat is laden with chemicals, such as antibiotics injected into the animal, and lacks the level of nutrients found in responsibly-sourced meat, such as organic, grass-fed, and grass-finished beef.
You can get protein from non-meat sources as well. These include pastured eggs, organic whole yogurt, organic whole milk, and beans. Raw milk is a good choice because it not only contains protein, but also a variety of vitamins, calcium, probiotics, and enzymes undamaged by heat pasteurization. Scientific research shows raw milk can reduce asthma, allergies and eczema, and producers in North America and Europe have proven raw milk can be made safely and hygienically.
How much protein do you need? The Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academies of Sciences Engineering, and Medicine, which sets recommended daily nutritional intake for the U.S., advises 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of weight. This means the average adult male, 19 years of age and older, and weighing 70 kilograms, or about 154 pounds, would eat 56 grams of protein per day. Women weighing 57.5 kilograms, or about 127 pounds, would consume 46 grams. Protein requirements for pregnant and breastfeeding women jump to 71 grams per day.
Here are some examples of protein content in food to meet your daily requirement: A 3-ounce, cooked organic chicken breast offers 26 grams of protein; a cup of plain organic yogurt has 12 grams; a half cup of organic black beans includes 8 grams, and a 3-ounce cut of grass-fed/finished steak provides 25 grams of protein. However, many experts in fields of nutrition and holistic health believe the Food and Nutrition Board’s recommended protein intake is not enough given how important protein is to your body. According to the International Sports Sciences Association, if you follow the government’s recommended amount of protein:
“… you’ll fall short. This protein requirement… is just 10 percent of your daily calorie intake. Most of your calories would come from carbs and fat with this plan. Technically, it’s enough for anyone who is sedentary, but it’s far from ideal.”
The European Food Safety Authority also recommends higher levels of protein based on life stage. For example, a 150-pound adult should eat 58 grams of protein, but after age 65, should increase protein consumption to 70 grams. Paul Saladino, M.D., physician and authority on the carnivore diet, suggests consuming at least one pound of meat for every 100 pounds you weigh. So for a sedentary 154-pound adult male and 127-pound female, that’s at least 154 and 127 grams, respectively, of protein per day, more than double the recommended amounts.
Annette Bosworth, M.D., a physician who espouses a ketogenic diet, which restricts carbohydrate consumption to transition your body from reliance on glucose to burning fat primarily, authored a case report where an adult female patient consumed between 65 and 75 grams of protein daily, far more than the Food and Nutrition Board’s recommended amount. Signs you’re not eating enough protein include feeling unusually tired or weak, having wounds that are slow to heal, experiencing edema, or noticing your hair is dry, weak, and prone to breakage.
Your protein needs depend on different factors, such as age and activity level. As you grow older, your body’s protein turnover efficiency declines and sarcopenia sets in, therefore, you tend to need more protein. For children, since their bodies are growing, they also need more protein per pound of body weight compared to adults. The U.S. Department of Agriculture provides a useful calculator to help you gauge your daily nutrient recommendations based on some of these factors.
The other step you can take is to move your body. Aerobic workouts, such as walking, exercise your muscles, but resistance and strength training are better for growing and maintaining muscle mass. These types of exercises target the muscles specifically, and research shows this type of training generates greater muscle strength improvement over aerobic activity. One approach is to lift weights, and using a technique of slow, controlled lifting movements helps minimize the risk of injury, while delivering the same muscle mass results as weight lifting with quick, explosive movements. Before beginning a new exercise routine, it can be helpful to consult with a holistic practitioner or personal trainer, to ensure your workout makes sense for your specific fitness condition.
Dr. Thomas W. Storer, director of the Exercise Physiology and Physical Performance Laboratory at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, explains the dynamics of a resistance training program:
“[It] should be tailored to the individual with the goals being progression and improvement. It should focus on individual elements like specific exercises, load, repetitions, and rest periods, and should challenge but not overwhelm.”
Transport Yourself
You don’t need to hit the gym to build and retain muscle mass. You can incorporate a home workout by performing gentle strength and resistance training wherever you can fit it into your schedule, and progressively increase the difficulty, or number of repetitions over time. Start where you are, given your physical and time limitations, and steadily work up from there. Gradually increase the intensity of your workout as your strength and endurance improve.
This approach can work well for a range of fitness levels. For instance, a study involving thousands of people 60 years of age and older showed a progressive approach to resistance training improved muscle functionality without pain, even for those suffering from osteoarthritis. For exercising at home, you can use your own body weight against gravity, such as with pushups and squats. Start with a low number of repetitions, an amount you know you can handle, and steadily increase as you see improvement in your body.
A great exercise to build muscle mass is swimming, since you’re moving your body against the force of water. Start with a number of laps you know you can handle (or simply splash around and move your body in water), rest in between each as needed, and ratchet up from there. What type of swimming supports muscle growth? All kinds! From Tracy Ward, psychophysicist in “Does swimming build muscle?”
“All swimming strokes give the body’s main muscle groups a good workout, from the abs, back, forearms, shoulders, hamstrings and glutes. But mixing up your strokes will further target specific muscle groups, says Tracy.”
Another type of muscle-building exercise incorporates resistance bands. Resistance bands are akin to giant rubber bands, and they possess the advantages of being lightweight, useful for a variety of exercises, relatively affordable, and easy to transport. Start out with stationary exercises, then progress to incorporating movement.
If you’re exercising with others, don’t compare your progress to theirs, as it can be demotivating. Everyone has different fitness goals, and there are many elements that differentiate how your body responds to exercise. For instance, biological factors, such as testosterone level and genetics, affect how you grow muscle mass. Ultimately, the key is consistency. Doing a small amount of exercise daily will create results over the long-term, and prove safer for you with regards to injury prevention, compared to sporadic, intense workouts. Start with exercises that are easy to do. Small wins help motivate you to keep going. If you like, gradually build up the intensity of your workouts. After all, “you’re only one workout away from a good mood.”
Be sure to do warm ups and cool downs before and after exercise. Warm ups simply need to be a few minutes of stretching to get blood flowing in your muscles, and reduce the risk of injury. In your cool down, hold a stretch for up to 60 seconds in order to keep your muscles pliable. Building and maintaining muscle mass through exercise, along with eating food that delivers the needed nutrients for your body, will not only assist you in warding off disease, you’ll find everyday activities become easier as well. Regardless of your age, or amount of muscle you may have lost from leading a sedentary lifestyle or aging, your body will recover. Simple tasks, such as carrying groceries and walking up stairs, will become less taxing, and give you a sense of independence and empowerment.
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