Muscle
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Muscle Mass & Why it Matters
For starters, muscle helps us move, lift objects, and stay active. It also supports our bones and our skeletal system. Muscle helps us prevent injury and it improves our posture and alignment. There are also less obvious reasons that I would like to discuss. Muscle helps to control your blood sugar. Muscular tissue is very efficient at absorbing sugar from your bloodstream, which helps to regulate your blood glucose levels. Therefore, someone with more muscle can absorb more glucose from their blood than someone who has less muscular mass, even when doing the same activity. Recall that muscle activation has the ability to lower blood glucose independent of insulin.
Another less well known fact about muscle is that it improves brain health. Muscles secrete proteins that travel to the brain to help regulate mood, learning and can protect the brain from injury. In fact, there are studies that are finding associations between low muscle mass and poor cognitive function.
Muscles also keep our bones healthy. Muscles generate force when they contract, pull, push, which creates stress on the bone. And this stress is a stimulus for the bone to rebuild, which helps maintain bone density and bone strength.
Finally, muscle is important for the immune system. For example, muscles produce an essential protein, called Glutamine, which helps the immune system function properly.
I have learned so much about muscle over the past year. It has incredible benefits to our overall health. Some experts tote that muscle is the organ of longevity.
How We’ll Measure Muscle Mass
Your Body Composition Assessment will measure your lean body mass. Lean mass is made up of muscle, organs, connective tissue, blood vessels, and bodily fluid. To estimate your approximate muscle mass, we calculate your Lean Mass Index (LMI). Lean Mass Index takes the lean mass of your body (which is everything minus your bone and body fat) and measures it relative to your height.
How to Build & Maintain Muscle
Now that we have a very good understanding of the importance of muscle, we want to be able to keep these benefits as we age. Building and maintaining muscular mass takes a concerted effort. Sadly, we start to lose muscle as early as in our 30s, and we can lose an average 3-8% of muscle per decade. This loss becomes more pronounced after the age of 60.
Muscle is made of different types of fibers. The muscle fiber that we tend to lose as we age are called our fast-twitch muscles which are also known as type 2 muscle fibers. We use this type of muscle when we sprint or jump.
In order to maintain healthy muscle mass, we need to train our muscles, and specifically our type 2 muscle fibers. If we engage in proper weight lifting, jumping, sprinting and power movements, we have the ability to change the normal trajectory of aging.
We recommend at least two dedicated strength training workouts per week. If you are just starting, this can involve only body weight. Squats, lunges and push ups are a great place to start. If you are more advanced, then we recommend at least two dedicated weight training sessions per week. If possible, adding in jumping exercises, and sprints on the bike/treadmill will help train our fast-twitch muscle fibers.
In order to build muscle mass, you need to consume protein. When we strength train, we increase the rate of muscle breakdown and we need to support muscle synthesis with protein intake. There are several different recommendations for protein intake. The two most common recommendations are 1.6g of protein per kg of body weight and 1g of protein per lb of body weight. We recommend anywhere in this spectrum. For example, for a female who weighs 140 lbs her protein recommendation is 100 g if following the 1.6g of protein per kg recommendation then recommended intake is even higher at 140 g of protein. Depending on your goals and your Benchmark results, we will help you fine tune this recommendation.