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Jun 4, 2023

As we age we lose muscle mass. Is this really true when we remain active?

🗣 You have heard this phrase a lot: ‘as you age, you inevitably lose muscle mass’.


📉 Indeed, a plethora of studies have shown that people lose muscle mass as they age. And that age-related muscle loss is really accelerated from age 65-70.


❌ The big caveat in these studies though, is that INACTIVE people are always monitored.


💦 What happens if you keep training your whole life? Can muscle mass loss be blunted, or even prevented?


📄 The study explained in the second and third slide looked at exactly that. Multiple master athletes, who have been doing sports their whole life, were assessed for muscle mass. Interestingly, there were no significant differences between the youngest age group (40-49) and the oldest (70+). This suggests that muscle mass loss can be completely prevented when you keep training. Of course, we cannot say anything about elderly who are 80+ years old.


🤔 Maybe the aforementioned studies were just looking at ‘lifelong physical INACTIVITY, instead of aging per se…


🚲 🏃‍♂️ 🏋️‍♀️ What about performance? Another study looked at the world records sprint (100m) and endurance running (10 000m) across multiple age groups. Here, a steep decrease in performance can be observed from age 75-80. So aging most certainly affects performance.


References:

Wroblewski et al. Phys & Sport Med 2011: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22030953/

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