Updated: How to lose a decades worth of muscle mass in 14 days and why you shouldn't do it.

Have you ever heard about sarcopenia? It means poverty of flesh or poverty of strength.

Not a great thing to be thinking about - but i originally wrote about this Ted Talk nearly 10 years ago and now that i am 50 - i am revisiting it as something i need to pay more and more attention to.

Why?

Well.......

After the age of 30 we lose between 3-8% of our muscle mass per decade.

This picture shows how a cross section of a person's thigh can look as we age - young versus old. The white bit in the middle is bone, the dark area around it is the muscle , and the white area around it is fatty tissue (or not muscle!)

You can you see the musculature of the 40 year old versus the 74 year old inactive person are drastically different. But then look below that - the 74 year old athlete - and you can see it doesn't have to be.

Now we also know there can be muscle mass lost in certain disease processes - but there are also common problems that are caused by a decrease in muscle mass.

A simple example of this is that with muscle loss comes a loss of balance and an increased incidence of falls. Some studies have shown a very strong correlation between things like foot strength and fall rates. One research article found that the difference in toe strength predicted increased incidence of falls - with the "non fallers" having 20 percent greater toe strength then the fallers! - (great article written by Tom Michaud - see his website Human locomotion)

What perhaps is even more shocking is the slide below - that the increased risk of death in the weakest third of the population once over 60 is more than double that of the strongest third.

Which begs the question - Which third would you rather be in?

Now most of us think as we age that we are past our best and that perhaps we can't change it. It is a common thought and we are all guilty of thinking we are stuck in our ways.

Well thankfully that is baloney - and you most definitely can.

Starting with simple things like an increase in incidental exercise throughout your day can be a good start (eg the 10000 steps we here about) - but it alone isn't the answer.

Dr Brendan Egan - the presenter of this talk gives an example of whereby some college students were restricted to 2000 steps per day for 14 days and there muscle mass was measured before and after.

These were young healthy males in their 20’s.

They lost 5% of their muscle mass within 14 days!!!

An elderly person over 70 that is immobilised over a period of 10 days was shown to lose 10% of their muscle mass - In 10 Days!!!!!!!

More than a decade's loss within 10 days.

No wonder people can feel so weak after a period of illness - even if it is just a bad flu.

So at least doing the 10000 steps a day is a good start.

But walking by itself doesn't cut it - you need to actually increase the demands on your body so that the muscles have to adapt to the new stimulus and grow.

But all is not lost.

And that's the bit i want you to think about.

So many times i see patients with back pain that have been so limited by their pain and restriction that they have become terribly deconditioned.

Muscles are just not working like they should and it is sad to see the limitation this puts on their lifestyle.

I am sure you have all seen it happen to people you know or love.

People, sometimes quite young, unable to easily get themselves out of a chair let alone off the floor. And sometimes this is not because it is painful - but because there is absolutely no strength in their muscles.

And it is easy to think that this isn’t happening to you or I.

But in most cases it is.

I know it was happening to me - and so i changed things. But then as the years went on i got slack again. It happens, but things like this talk or article are the types of reminders we all sometimes need.

I know i did.

So now is the time to at first make small and then slowly larger commitments to moving better and building strength and function - and the change in what you can do will be worth it.

It doesn't have to be difficult and it doesn't have to involve gym memberships - but it does take an effort.

This final example from the talk is of an 85 year old who did 12 weeks of training that concentrated on the quadricep muscles. The individual shown increased his muscle mass by over 40 % and strength by over 55% - all in 12 weeks.

You can visually see the difference in the cross section of the thigh shown on the left of the slide below.

So what else can you do other than walking?

Well the good news is that simple body weight resistance exercise can be a fantastic place to start.

This can be simple things like lunges, squats onto a chair, step ups and even the old favourite pushups.

Studies of people over 60 who did 3 x per week of 30 minutes of bodyweight exercise for 12 weeks had a 3% increase in muscle mass.

I mentioned before the name Tom Michaud. His website called Human Locomotion has some fascinating articles on a wide range of health topics - including fall prevention protocols - but he also has an article directly linked to this topic with some straight forward exercise suggestions he calls the "sarcopenia workout" - the link to the article is here. https://www.humanlocomotion.com/five-simple-exercises-to-prevent-age-related-muscle-loss/

I hope you have found this as interesting as i did - and then put something in place to make sure you end up in the strongest third......

Andrew Blyth

Body and Spine Solutions Orange

In the meantime watch the Ted Talk below -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LkXwfTsqQgQ

Dr Brendan Egan is a University College Dublin (UCD) lecturer in sport and exercise science in the UCD School of Public Health, Physiotherapy and Population Science, whose TEDxUCD 2014 talk is entitled 'Muscle Matters'.