Most people know cardiovascular exercise is critical for long term health, but don’t realize the benefits of maintaining your muscle. With new evidence about the benefits of retaining your muscle mass for longevity, it is a good reminder that keeping fit has many benefits. Not only is muscle is critical for health, but it helps to maintain your metabolism, regulate blood sugar, and increase mobility.
The importance of muscle to maintain independence and your quality of life cannot be understated.
Losing muscle increases the risk of falls, the leading cause of hospitalizations, and fractures. Less muscle mass slows recovery from illness or injury. These consequences are not only personal, but they also increase the demand on the healthcare system and caregivers.
New evidence on the benefits of exercise
Researchers from Duke NUS Medical School have found a switch that helps to explain why exercise keeps muscle younger. They found that being active reduces the levels of a gene called DEAF1.
Exercise contributes to muscle repair in older muscles while decreasing the levels of DEAF1. Staying active maintains the muscle’s natural repair systems and helps to maintain function throughout our lifespan.
Exercise tells muscles to ‘clean up and reset.’ Lowering DEAF1 helps older muscles regain strength and balance, almost like hitting the rewind button. With millions of older adults at risk of muscle decline, understanding DEAF1 could lead to new ways to protect muscles and improve quality of life.
What this means for you
This is not only about age related changes, because the DEAF1 gene has an influence on muscle stem cells that help muscles repair and regenerate. These stem cells lose effectiveness with age and DEAF1 seems to make recovery more difficult. This research could eventually help those recovering from illness, injury or chronic diseases like cancer, if researchers can reproduce the exercise effects of lowering DEAF1 which could help people maintain muscle strength even when they can’t exercise.
But I wouldn’t wait for a pill to solve ageing. As Assistant Professor Tang Hong-Wen from the Cancer and Stem Cell Biology Program at Duke-NUS, the study’s lead author, says:
Exercise can reverse this process, correcting the imbalance. Physical activity activates certain proteins which lower DEAF1 levels, bringing the growth pathway back into balance. This allows aging muscles to clear out damaged proteins, rebuild themselves properly, and help them stay stronger and more resilient.
What to do now
Maintain your muscle mass.
I have extensive resources about staying strong as you age, including the video below, and this research once again proves that it makes a difference. Resistance training is the best way to increase muscle mass and beginning with a program of body weight exercises is a good place to start.
It is never too late to start and any type of exercise is better than nothing. What are you waiting for? Get moving to improve longevity.
Change your mind, change your health,
Shayla
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