Sarcopenia of Aging: Loss of Muscle Size and Strength

Aging causes you to lose strength, no matter how much you exercise.

Muscles are made up of hundreds of thousands of individual fibers, like a rope is made up of many strands. Each muscle fiber is innervated by a single motor nerve. With aging you lose motor nerves, and with each loss of a nerve, you also lose the corresponding muscle fiber that it innervates.

Thus, for example, the vastus medialis muscle in the front of your thigh contains about 800,000 muscle fibers when you are 20, but by age 60, it probably has only about 250,000 fibers. However, after a muscle fiber loses its primary nerve, other nerves covering other fibers can move over to stimulate that fiber in addition to stimulating their own primary muscle fibers. A regular exercise program can help to slow the loss of muscle fibers and improve mobility [1].

After age 40, people lose an average of eight percent of their muscle size per decade and by age 70, the rate of muscle loss nearly doubles to 15 percent per decade, markedly increasing risk for disability and disease [2]. After age 65, up to 50 percent of North Americans suffer from sarcopenia that is significant enough to limit their daily activities [3]. The people who lose the most muscle are usually the ones who die earliest. They are also most at risk for falls and broken bones.

Sarcopenia Linked to Inflammation

Recent research suggests that one cause of sarcopenia may be inflammation. Older people who suffer from severe sarcopenia are far more likely to have high levels of the markers of inflammation, measured with blood tests such as CRP, SED rate and adiponectin. [4] Sarcopenia of aging is found with other conditions associated with inflammation, including:
• having excess body fat [5]
• eating a pro-inflammatory diet that raises blood sugar levels [6]
• being diabetic [7]
• having low vitamin D levels [8]
• not exercising
• having any chronic disease

Your immune system helps to heal wounds and to protect you from infections, but it is supposed to dampen down after an infection has passed or an injury has healed. If your immune system stays overactive, it can use the same cells and chemicals to attack your own tissues, which is called inflammation.

It can punch holes in arteries to start forming plaques that can lead to heart attacks, it can damage the genetic material in cells to increase risk for cancers, and it can accelerate the loss of nerves to cause debilitating muscle weakness. An overactive immune system can cause muscle cells to break down through loss of energy-producing mitochondria and increased cell death [9].

If inflammation is a major cause of sarcopenia, treatment should include exercise, which decreases inflammation by dampening down your immune system. Competitive masters athletes, 40 to 80 years old, who train four to five times per week, lose far less muscle size or strength than their non-exercising peers [10]. Eighty-year-old men who still compete in sports have been found to have more muscle fibers than inactive younger men [11]. At this time the most effective way to decrease the rate at which you lose muscle size and function is to exercise regularly.

Inactivity Causes Rapid Loss of Muscle Size and Strength

If you inactivate a leg by putting it in a cast, you lose a significant amount of muscle size in just four days [12]. Prolonged periods of inactivity due to bed rest, injured nerves, casting or even decreasing the force of gravity cause loss of muscle tissue which leads to insulin resistance, higher blood sugar levels and increased risk for diabetes [13].

Muscles are made up primarily of two types of fibers: fast twitch fibers that primarily govern strength and speed, and slow twitch fibers that primarily govern endurance. Inactivity and aging both cause a far greater loss of the fast twitch muscle fibers that govern strength and speed [14], which explains why you lose strength and speed with aging long before you lose endurance.

My Recommendations

If you are not already doing strength-training exercise, first check with your doctor to make sure you do not have any condition that may be harmed by exercise. Then join a gym and ask for instructions on how to use the weight-training machines. You gain strength and increase muscle size by exercising intensely enough to damage the Z-lines in muscle fibers and when the Z-lines heal, the muscle is stronger and larger.

You get z-line damage whether you lift and lower a heavy weight a few times or lift and lower a much lighter weight many more times. Resistance exercise can increase muscle size and strength in older people [15], but with aging you need to work much longer to gain the amount of strength that a younger person would get with the same program [16].

Since lifting lighter weights many times is less likely to cause injuries, I recommend lifting lighter weights with more repetitions. End the workout immediately if you feel severe pain or if you have pain that does not go away as soon as you stop lifting the weight.

Other anti-inflammatory lifestyle habits include:

• following an anti-inflammatory diet that includes lots of vegetables, nuts, beans, whole grains and other seeds, and restricts sugar- added foods, all sugared drinks, meat from mammals, processed meats and fried foods
• maintaining a healthful weight
• avoiding smoke and alcohol
• keeping blood levels of hydroxy vitamin D above 20 ng/mL

Republished from DrMirkin.com

References

[1] (Physiol Rev, Jan 1, 2019;99(1):427-511)

[2] (Am J Epidemiol, 1998;147(8):755-763; Nutr Rev, May 2003;61(5 Pt 1):157-67; Muscles Ligaments Tendons J, Oct-Dec, 2013;3(4):346-350).

[3] (J. Am. Geriatr. Soc, 2004;52:80-85).

[4] (Aging Clinical and Experimental Research, August 2017;29(4):745-752)

[5] (J Gerontology A Biol Sci Med Sci, 2011;66:888-895; Curr Gerontol Geriatr Res, 2012;2012:216185)

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Comments (22)

  • Avatar

    Jerry Krause

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    Hi PSi Readers,

    This article may be correct about the problem of sugar but I consider this a ‘quality of life issue’ and I am not going to give up cookies and ice cream. If I were fat I would have a different opinion. And I will never begin to lift weights because I consider running an exercise that appeals to me. And to warmup to stretch before running I did sit-ups and pushups. Yes, exercise is essential for health but the exercise should always be FUN.

    Have a good day, Jerry

    Reply

  • Avatar

    Mark Tapley

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    There is an easy and surprisingly accurate method developed by a Brazilian Dr. to check your fitness. Sit down flat on the floor, then get up on your feet without using your hands, arms, elbows. If you can do this no matter what your age, you are practically guaranteed 5 more years. Next year do it again-five more years. If you can’t then you need begin resistance training.

    There is no need to waste time and money at a gym (unless you just like too). You can pick up a set of dumbbells pretty cheap. It is also good to have Pull up bar in the back yard or you can get one that hangs over an entrance. Older adults only need to work out twice per week if they do hard sessions of weight bearing exercise. Concentrate mostly on the upper body one day and on the core on the other day for ap. an hour and a half. You will benefit a lot if in between these workouts if you add in a 40 minute kettle bell session also. Kettle bell will enhance the dumbbell work since they are used in a centrifugal manner. As an example, do the Turkish get up. Lying on the floor extend one hand all the way up with 35 or 44 lb. kettle bell. Get up on your feet while continuing to hold bell all the way up. Then while the bell still held all the way up, go back to a lying position. Now do the other arm…

    Avoid all fruit juices (mostly sugar). Eat very little fruit because they are also just packages of sugar. Forget about cereals and whole grain. Much of this junk is not even digested properly and has very little food value. Never eat or cook with seed (vegetable oils) as that is the no. 1 cause of heart attacks and stroke (next to the safe and highly effective vaccines). Do not focus on running (especially long distances) as it pounds the joints, if prolonged is hard on the heart, and does very little for building or retaining muscle, which is your longevity organ. Just take a look at the typical long distance runner. An emaciated example of what not to do. After each session of resistance training, go do a sprint and run as hard as you can for about a hundred yards. Then repeat once. That is all the aerobics you need. concentrate on a high protein, high saturated fat diet with very little carbohydrate. If you do these things consistently you will avoid spiking insulin which leads to the metabolic syndrome and is the root cause of practically all common diseases.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDVvQFgkP44
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y6U728AZnV0

    Reply

  • Avatar

    Jerry Krause

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    Hi Mark,

    You, or Howdy, introduced to me the idea that my ancestors moved to the US in about 1850 because of the teachings of Karl Marx. Whom I did not know anything about beside the name. I have just read (https://www.britannica.com/biography/Karl-Marx).

    I ask: in your opinion, is this historical review (biography) fairly accurate?

    Have a good day, Jerry

    Reply

    • Avatar

      Howdy

      |

      Want to call a truce Jerry?

      “You, or Howdy, introduced to me the idea that my ancestors moved to the US in about 1850 ”
      Wasn’t me.

      Reply

      • Avatar

        Jerry Krause

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        Hi Howdy,

        “Want to call a truce Jerry?” Yes, yes!!! I initially did not understand your question, but I pondered it I finally saw that I had been attributing to you much that Mark had said. Just as I had just done. I now remember that you had attempted to correct me in considering you had said you were anarchist where as it had been Mark that wrote that he was. Sorry. Sorry I will now read what you write through new eyes.

        Have a good day, Jerry

        Reply

        • Avatar

          Howdy

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          ““Want to call a truce Jerry?” Yes, yes!!!”
          Then I hope this post finds you well. Let it be so. 🙂

          Reply

    • Avatar

      Mark Tapley

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      Hello Jerry:
      Lots of Europeans (including my mother’s family) came over in the 1840′-50’s due to the revolts against the monarchies led by the forerunners of today’s Zionist network. The article you posted is a typical cover story on Marx (Moses Mordecai Levy). Although Marx is always portrayed as a radical of the working class, nothing could be farther from the truth. His uncle and lifelong supporter was Lyon Philips, founder of the giant industrial conglomerate. His mother was the daughter of a wealthy textile manufacture and his father was descended from wealthy rabbis. They were cousins of the Rothschilds. Marx wife Jenny Westphalen was from double royalty being a direct descendant of the Crypto Jew Stuarts of Scotland and from Prussian nobility on the other. She would have never married anyone who was not very wealthy. Nor would she have married Marx unless she herself was a crypto Jew. All of this and more is in the video I link but lots of people will not pull up a video.

      Marx job was to keep the proletariat (workers) divided and weak and at odds with both the bourgeoise (middle class) and to weaken the monarchies in order to establish “democracy” or a country run by Jews. Notice that Marx never spent any time in prison. This is because of his elite connections. Marx rival Bakunin who was actually trying to unite the workers, however spent most of his in prison. Marx was a disciple of the founder of Zionism Rabbi Moses Hess. Communism, as outlined in Marx manifesto is really just a theoretical abstraction or a sales pitch used as propaganda for the useful idiots. Its real purpose is to hand all power over to the government (elite). The first of the ten planks is ” The abolition of all private property.” The other nine planks are really just a means to accomplish the first one. The Zionists know that once property rights are lost, all other rights will follow.

      The First Zionist Convention in 1897 conducted by Rothschild from man Herzl predicted the take over of the eastern kingdom (Russia), the establishment of the bridgehead in Palestine and their operative Hitler used to prevent the Zionist Jew leaders greatest fear, the assimilation of the Jewish (Khazar) masses. Hitler not only kept them segregated but enabled the Havara agreement with the Jewish leaders that was used to bring the best educated and trained Jews (German Jews) into Palestine where no one would have otherwise gone and therefore secure this strategic area, initially aided by Stalin and soon joined by the U.S. beginning with Truman. This is just one aspect. I have covered the Anglo Zionists before and commented earlier today on PSI in reference to the financial aspect of the syndicate led by the banking cartel and their affiliates at Black Rock – Vanguard. Much of the topics presented on the PSI site, deal with various aspects of the fake virus, phony climate change, or the WEF (founded by Zionist front man Kissinger) and the “Great reset” or 4th industrial revolution. All of these are just tools in the criminal syndicate’s bag that lead directly back to Marx and the Zionist elite’s and their manifesto.

      Reply

      • Avatar

        Jerry Krause

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        HI Mark,

        How is it that you cannot directly answer my question simply by stating yes, it is generally accurate or by stating no, it is not generally accurate because of specifically X, Y, or Z??? For what you wrote seemed a lot like what you have written several times before and offers me no evidence that you even read a portion of what I linked.

        Have a good day, Jerry

        Reply

        • Avatar

          Mark Tapley

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          Hello Jerry:
          I have always found that many issues cannot be addressed properly with simple yes nor no answers but require more analysis and explanation. However in your case there will be none concise or otherwise from this point on.

          Reply

  • Avatar

    Jerry Krause

    |

    Hi Mark and PSI Readers,

    I have one more question today. Have you (either one) ever visited this website (https://fever.byrd.osu.edu/#current/wind/surface/level/overlay=temp/orthographic=-82.98,39.98,335)?

    A reason I ask is that May 12 there was a large region (hundreds of miles long) windstorm of up to 100mph which occurred and blew down a large sturdy barn which my father had built in 1948, or so, which had withstood a similar large region windstorm of 100mph winds in the early 1950s, which I witnessed. The problem, according to my sister-in-law, who reported this to me, was it had been obvious that the new owners of this barn had not maintained it.

    Because I have had this linked website on my computer screen as a commonly visited site, I looked at the wind and temperature near the earth’s surface which was being observed during this recent wind storm (in eastern South Dakota only about 30 mile west of the Minnesota border at very near 45N latitude).

    You maybe have noticed that I like to review historical quotes: Chemists have long recognized that Sir Author Conan Doyle, the creator of Sherlock Holmes mysteries, had a significant scientific background. Two of his quotes were: “It is a capital mistake to theorize before you have all the evidence; it biases the judgment.” and “The temptation of form premature theories upon insufficient data is the bane of our profession.”

    In the 1950a there was not a lot of meteorological data which existed which does now exist in May 2022 at websites like that I have linked. So the purpose of this comment is to inform one of what you may not be aware. For I have read little evidence that PSI authors and commenters refer to websites such as this which I have just shared.

    Have a good day, Jerry

    Reply

    • Avatar

      Mark Tapley

      |

      The continental U.S. has probably the most variable weather on the planet. It has always been this way. The MSM hypes weather incidents such as hurricanes and tornadoes up as if they are getting more frequent and more severe. This is done in order to induce fear and propagandize about the phony climate change so that the “Green Energy” fraud will be accepted. The most deadly natural disaster in the country was the Galveston Hurricane of 1900. I have also talked to survivors of Betsy and Camille. One of them said there was nothing left where his house had been but the cement steps. His neighbor replied, he didn’t even have those left.

      Reply

  • Avatar

    Squidly

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    I am confused. The article begins by saying how aging makes you weak, no matter how much you exercise, but then goes on to suggest you do strength training?

    Sorry, I don’t agree with this article. Granted, I am not “old” yet (only 59), but I can absolutely assure you I can get stronger. I go through periods of atrophy and strengthening all the time. I am currently in a strengthening phase now (because it is summer, doing more active work, playing golf, working out more, bowling, etc…) .. I will be twice as strong by end of summer. Then I will atrophy during the winter if I don’t continue to exercise and work out. Then I will strengthen again next spring and summer. Sure, I don’t do this quite as well as I did when I was younger (slower recovery) but I can still do it. To suggest that I cannot is just stupid. I have had 70-80 year old friends who have done strength training and exercise and became significantly stronger despite being of such age.

    Reply

    • Avatar

      Lit

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      Most of that strength increase is neural adaptation. When you begin lifting weights you experience massive strength gains in a short period of time, with only small increases in muscle size. This comes from nerves learning to fire properly and utilize more of the muscle fibres. With consistent lifting and progressive overload you can definitely build muscle at any age, but it takes time. Every session should have the goal “harder than last time”, either heavier weigth or more repetitions. Short term(weeks, a couple of months) strength gains builds very little muscle. In a year a beginner can add maybe 5-10 pounds of muscle, but that takes focused weight lifting at least 3 times a week complemented with a well balanced diet high in protein and carbohydrates.

      Reply

  • Avatar

    Howdy

    |

    “Aging causes you to lose strength, no matter how much you exercise.”
    Arnold Schwarzenegger doesn’t agree, and age is just a number.

    Ahem!
    “Sarcopenia is the loss of muscle mass specifically related to aging. It’s normal to lose some muscle mass as you age. However, sarcopenia describes severe muscle loss that strays from the norm.”
    https://www.healthline.com/health/sarcopenia

    I have more if needed.

    Reply

    • Avatar

      Mark Tapley

      |

      Hello Howdy and Squidly:

      I think what the article is referring to is that eventually if nothing else gets you, sarcopenia will. If you live long enough (the Bible says we are allotted ap.120 years) muscle loss will terminate everyone. Age is just a number. A very Big number. Steroid Junky and Zionist pimp “get your vaccine” Schwarzenegger has had 3 or four heart surgeries (common effect from massive androgen use) along with cancer and kidney failure. Here is a good video explaining muscle development and protein.
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lw9iJPaUwVs

      Reply

    • Avatar

      Lit

      |

      But Arnold is on the juice. Testosterone is a game changer and decreasing testosterone is the major cause of muscle loss in aging men. There´s a direct correlation between the concentration of testosterone in your blood and the contractile tissue your body can maintain. Testosterone replacement therapy will make a +50 year male feel like a teenager in weeks. But once you start you´ll have to pin yourself in the buttcheeks for the rest of your life to keep your well-being and muscles. Exogenous testosterone shuts down your endogenous production, and the older you are the less likely it is to start up again if you quit.

      Reply

    • Avatar

      Mark Tapley

      |

      Hello Howdy:
      Here is the first paragraph of the article you posted:
      Blog / Longevity
      Sarcopenia: Muscle Loss and Its Impact on Longevity
      Howard J. Luks, MD
      Updated January 23, 2022
      Sarcopenia is the loss of skeletal muscle mass which occurs as we age. We can start losing muscle mass in our 30s, and the process continues relentlessly and accelerates after 50. Like loss of bone mass (osteopenia), we experience specific changes as we enter into new decades of our lives that ultimately signal a slowing down in general physiological function. While these changes are preprogrammed into us… they do not need to be our reality– if we pay attention now.

      This process of muscle los is inevitable (emphasize the word relentlessly) as the system gradually shuts down. As the last sentence states, this senescent effect Is programmed in at conception. The last part “they do not need to be our reality” is just contradictory statement alluding to the fact that this process although inevitable can be slowed down. We can restore some muscle with exercise in old age and even create new capillaries but we are programed to die from the moment of conception and sarcopenia is the ultimate nail in the coffin if other systems don’t fail first.

      Reply

  • Avatar

    Howddy

    |

    Hi Mark,
    I would have answered sooner but the spammers are in control, so manual sorting is the order of the day for replies.

    “but we are programed to die from the moment of conception and sarcopenia is the ultimate nail in the coffin if other systems don’t fail first.”
    Not my belief.

    “There isn’t a single known cause for sarcopenia related to age.”
    This is why I posted the extra links regarding testosterone etc. I do not believe accelerated frailty by design, is a given.

    Here’s another: Hypogonadism – Insufficient levels of sex hormones can have a serious impact on health
    https://www.verywellhealth.com/hypogonadism-signs-symptoms-and-complications-5191935

    Reply

  • Avatar

    Howdy

    |

    The last I’ll post but related, and valid. The idea of these, and previous links is to trigger research, not take the links at face value alone.

    Hypogondism in young bodybuilders
    https://juicedmuscle.com/jmblog/content/hypogondism-young-bodybuilders

    Athletic amenorrhea: energy deficit or psychogenic challenge?
    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2941235/

    We need to listen to women more often and take their pain seriously
    https://www.bellybelly.com.au/conception/ovulation-pain/

    Six Tips to Keep Your Prostate Healthy – Talking About Men’s Health
    https://thehealthylot.com/six-tips-to-keep-your-prostate-healthy-talking-about-mens-health/

    Reply

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