The Age-Well Project

Change the way you age

Get our posts direct to your inbox

  • About The Age-Well Project
  • Books
    • Our Books
    • Reviews
    • References
  • Blog
  • Recipes
    • Recipes By Ingredient
    • Breakfast
    • Dessert
    • Dinner
    • Drinks
    • Family
    • On The Go
    • Soups and Salads
    • Treats and Snacks
  • Contact
  • Events
  • Press

GOOD NEWS FOR OLD MUSCLES

February 2, 2019 3 Comments


If any of you have children or grandchildren (especially teens) who aren’t getting enough exercise (think Fortnight, social media, Netflix box sets… you get the gist), today’s post is the fuel you need to turn the wifi off. It also offers hope to anyone temporarily bedbound, injured or in a sedentary job.

And so I’m dedicating this post to my sister-in-law, who fell off her bike last year and sustained multiple broken bones. Indeed, her injuries were so severe, her surgeon said there was a 40% chance she’d need her leg amputated. With her long-term prognosis still unclear, she hasn’t yet ruled out having an amputation. Unable to move for several months, she’s now hopping around on crutches and life is looking a little brighter. It’ll be another year before she can walk again, but I hope this latest research gives her – and others in the same position – a new thread of hope.

Until recently we’ve been told that our muscles die if we don’t use them. ‘Use it or lose it’ was the phrase bandied around by scientists who thought that when muscles shrunk and atrophied from inactivity, the myonuclei – the cell centres that build muscle fibres – were also lost forever.

Not so. According to a new report in Frontiers in Physiology, the cells – the myonuclei – we gain from exercise stick around, even when our muscles shrink through lack of use. They effectively hibernate, but as soon as we start exercising again, they spring into action, enabling greater and faster muscle growth. The report’s author, Professor Schwartz, says this allows us to ‘bank’ muscle growth potential (ideally in our teens but it’s never too late) that can prevent frailty in our old age.

Apparently our biggest cells are in our muscles, where they’re fused tightly together in a special type of tissue called syncytium. The fusing here is so dense the cells behave more like a huge single cell.
‘Heart, bone and even placenta are built on these networks of cells’ says Professor Schwartz. ‘But by far our biggest cells – and biggest syncytia – are our muscles.’

When our muscles grow (through exercise), new nuclei are produced from stem cells to meet the extra demand. Prof Schwartz’s studies, carried out on rodents and insects, suggest these new cells are never lost. Not even after our muscles begin to die, either through inactivity or through a process known as sarcopenia, the natural loss of muscle as we age. This indicates that once a nucleus has been acquired by a muscle fibre, it belongs to the muscle syncytium, possibly forever. Which may explain the phenomenon of ‘muscle memory’, a term coined by scientists who discovered that it was much easier to reacquire muscle fitness than to achieve it in the first place.

Prof Schwartz wants to rewrite the old adage as ‘Use it or lose it – until you use it again.’ This is great news for my sister-in-law who spent her teenage years walking, cycling and playing hockey on a clifftop hockey pitch in biting winds.

But it’s also a wake-up call to all of us with children living increasingly screen-bound, sedentary lives. And that’s before I start ranting about all the children who prefer sitting in a car to walking, and schools who don’t offer enough exercise in the curriculum.

My teens won’t take it from me, so I’ll be quoting Prof Schwartz to them: ‘The discovery that myonuclei are retained indefinitely emphasizes the importance of exercise in early life. During adolescence, muscle growth is enhanced by hormones, nutrition and a robust pool of stem cells, making it an ideal period for individuals to “bank” myonuclei that can be drawn upon to remain active in old age.’

No recipe this week: I’m too busy laying down muscle for the future.

Annabel

  • Conditions: Bones
« WHY GUM DISEASE IS LINKED TO ALZHEIMER’S, AND HOW TO REDUCE YOUR RISK
DO YOU KNOW HOW TO REDUCE DEMENTIA RISK? »

Comments

  1. Lisa Dart says

    February 2, 2019 at 2:01 pm

    And don’t forget the extra pleasure that always helps healing of every kind seeing people you love! And if they are running as Sas and Hugo are here, why, I reckon that kickstarts every muscle including the heart’s!

    Reply
    • Annabel Abbs says

      February 2, 2019 at 8:13 pm

      Indeed, very important!

      Reply
    • Annabel Abbs says

      February 15, 2019 at 3:33 pm

      Yes, don’t they look adorable? And so happy… quite cheers me up!

      Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • Twitter

Welcome to The Age-Well Project

Welcome to The Age-Well Project!
Here you’ll find easy changes for a longer, happier life. We’ve immersed ourselves in the science of longevity and distilled the research to make it work in our everyday lives. You can change the way you age: here’s how.

Favourite Posts

WHY I’VE THROWN OUT ALL MY BEAUTY PRODUCTS (nearly…)

Why Alzheimer’s Is A Women’s Issue

HOW HAVING A DOG CHANGED MY LIFE

GREEN SPACE IS GOOD FOR YOUR HEALTH

SUGAR, CHOCOLATE, SADNESS AND BRAIN-BOOSTING BISCUITS

WHY ‘INFLAMM-AGEING’ COULD START IN THE GUT AND HARISSA-ROASTED VEGETABLE SALAD

POLYAMINES – THE NEW SECRET WEAPON FOR AGEING WELL & MOROCCAN SPINACH AND CHICKPEAS.

THINNING AGEING HAIR – WARM CHICKEN LIVER SALAD

About The Age Well Project

This site is for anyone who wants to make the second half of their life as healthy, happy and disease-free as possible. Sign up to get the latest research on ageing – and delicious recipes to match – direct to your inbox.

agewellproject

⭐️Change the way you age
📚The Age-Well Project + Age-Well Plan ⭐️Get tips & recipes on our blog - sign up ⬇️

The Age-Well Project blog
We all want plenty of ‘energy’ but what does t We all want plenty of ‘energy’ but what does that mean?

We’ve got the low down over the blog - what is energy and how we get more?!? 

We’re covering:

🥗The nutrition we need to fuel our mitochondria (the ‘batteries’ of our cells)

⚡️The ‘good stress’ (hormesis) that creates more energy 

🧘‍♀️The importance of breath work 

😴Why we need to rest 

and 

👩‍🍳A whole load of great recipes 

It’s all on the blog - link in bio 

#agewell #ageingwell #agingwell #longevity #womenover50 #postmenopause #fitover50 #over50 #over50blogger #energy #mitochondria #hormesis #breathwork #wimhof #hypoxictraining #hypoxia #pranayama #wakefulrest #rest #womenwhowalk #selfcare #healthyrecipes
We spend a lot of time suggesting that you get up We spend a lot of time suggesting that you get up and move 🏃‍♀️🚶‍♀️💃 But we were fascinated by recent research into the power of ‘wakeful rest’, particularly if we rock while we do it. 

It seems Granny and her rocking chair were right all along - rockers sleep better. Hammocks are great too, as Annabel is demonstrating here!

And students who take some time to rest after learning something new consolidate their new knowledge better than people who go to sleep, or just get on with their lives. And it seems ten minutes of down-time is enough to deeply embed new memories.

So now we’re rocking and resting! There’s more on the blog - link in bio

#agewell #ageingwell #agingwell #healthblog #longevity #longevityblog #healthyageing #healthyaging #fitover50 #postmenopause #healthyeating #rest #hammock #rockingchair #powernap #memories #dementia #alzheimers
We are delighted to announce that Annabel now has We are delighted to announce that Annabel now has a regular column in @psychologiesmagazine with her first column in the July issue (out now) on the joys of following a river. Grab a copy and find out why following a river was the walk of choice for our female ancestors … 

#agewell #walk #walking
A bottle of beer a day can improve our microbiome A bottle of beer a day can improve our microbiome according to new research published by the @amerchemsociety.  Four weeks of a daily lager (alcoholic or non-alcoholic) improved intestinal health without impacting weight, the researchers speculate that the additional bacteria produced by fermentation might positively interact with the polyphenols contained in lager to enrich the gut. Good news for beer drinkers!  We’re fans of alcohol free beers, particularly on hot days… like this dainty bottle from @brewdogofficial 

#agewell
Isn’t she ageing well?! Yes, yes, we know our Qu Isn’t she ageing well?! Yes, yes, we know our Queen has incredible advantages when it comes to longevity: palaces, retinues of staff, the country’s best doctors…. but there are longevity lessons we can all learn from Her Majesty as we head into the Platinum Jubilee bank holiday weekend 🇬🇧👑🇬🇧

So a trumpet voluntary, please, for our right royal Age-Well celebration….

It’s all on the blog - link in bio 

#agewell #ageingwell #agingwell #healthblog #longevity #longevityblog #jubilee #platinumjubilee #nonagenarian #healthyageing #healthyaging #fitover50 #postmenopause #senseofpurpose #healthyeating #dopaminedressing #queenelizabeth 

📷 @theroyalfamily
Load More... Follow on Instagram

Contact Us

For any enquiries please email theagewellproject@gmail.com.

Copyright © 2022 The Age-Well Project