Skeletal muscle loss: cachexia, sarcopenia, and inactivity

Don’t blame old age for muscle loss. Although it is more difficult to maintain, being sedentary and inactive doesn’t help. Keep active.

FACT: We are living longer. So make sure your body is as efficient as it can be towards the back-end of our life.

Read More: Reduction in lean body mass, and an accompanying increase in fat mass, are among the most striking and consistent changes associated with the advance of age. Skeletal muscle and bone mass are the principal components of lean body mass to decline with age. “Sarcopenia” is age-related loss of muscle mass.

This loss of muscle results in a decrease in strength, metabolic rate, and aerobic capacity and thus, in functional capacity. Newman et al has shown that muscle function (strength), rather than mass, is associated with mortality risk.

Skeletal muscle loss: cachexia, sarcopenia, and inactivity
Am J Clin Nutr April 2010 vol. 91 no. 4 1123S-1127S
http://ajcn.nutrition.org/content/91/4/1123S.full