As adults grow older they lose the muscles that they had when they were younger, because their muscles shrink. Previous research has shown that seniors are less efficient at building muscle from food compared with the way they did when they were younger. Smaller, weaker muscles means less strength, but they also increase the probability of falling injuries that have a very negative impact on senior living. If that were not bad enough, recent research in England at the University of Nottingham has discovered more bad news that hinders seniors’ muscle building efforts. It turns out that the mechanism that blocks the breakdown of muscles does not work very effectively in folks over 65 years of age.
This discovery was made during a comparison study between 25-year-olds and folks in their late 60’s. The young people’s muscles were able to stop the muscle breakdown and the older folks’ muscles were not. The researchers also discovered that the older folks had a lower blood flow in their legs than the younger folks. One conclusion that the researchers drew from this finding was that the rate at which nutrients and hormones are supplied is lower for the older folks which may explain the cause of the declining muscles. The researchers performed a follow-up study in which the older folks performed at least three exercise sessions a week for 20 weeks. Instituting this weight training exercise for seniors was enough to increase the blood flow to the legs of the seniors until it was identical to the younger group. By increasing the blood flow to the legs of the seniors their muscle wasting was reversed.