Aging is inevitable – the years go by and you get older. There’s no stopping time but it is possible to redefine aging. For most of us it’s understood that aging means the body starts to decay, the hard and soft tissues gradually deteriorate and physical activity becomes more difficult to accomplish. We’ve all seen elderly people using walking frames or stooped over a walking stick moving slowly.
Sarcopenia is a word used to mean wasting of muscle that occurs naturally with age. Most people’s bodies lose about 10% of muscle mass each decade once they reach their thirties. This accelerates dramatically once the age of sixty is reached. This muscle wastage has many undesirable effects, among them:
- Trouble with balance and, as a result, a higher chance of falling (a major problem for the elderly)
- Poor recovery from disease or surgery. Muscle provides a storehouse of protein to aid efficient recovery and when it’s absent, recovery is slow or non-existent
- Lack of strength and power resulting in dependence on others to get in and out of the bath or even into and out of bed in some cases
- Osteoporisis – a disease whereby bones become porous and fragile
- Increased fat deposits (as muscle mass decreases, metabolism slows down so fewer daily calories are burned, resulting in greater fat storage)
There are no drugs to stop sarcopenia, the only weapon against it is to maintain muscle mass and the only way to do this is with some form of resistance training, whether it be using your own body weight (as with push-ups, chin-ups, dips or body-weight squats), using free weight and machine weights or doing physical work like digging ditches or loading bricks.
Forever Youthful Sherryl
In our personal training business we are seeing more people over fifty who have realized they need to maintain their muscle mass and who are doing so very successfully with carefully programmed, fun exercises that include good doses of resistance training. There’s no better time than the present to get started and, the good news is, it’s never too late to get started.
