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Grandad, it ain't what you eat, it depends when you eat it - that's how muscles grow!

Michael J. Rennie

The word 'sarcopenia' was coined to identify the condition of loss of skeletal muscle that occurs in wasting diseases and also during ageing. This loss of muscle constitutes a major problem for patients with a wide variety of chronic medical conditions including cancer, cardiovascular, respiratory and renal disease, and when it affects the respiratory muscles it prevents weaning from artificial respiration of patients in intensive care units. In the elderly, the maintenance of muscle strength is a major contributor to the ability to continue to carry out daily physical tasks successfully and safely. Naturally, many physiologists and rehabilitation experts have been drawn to the question of how to prevent the loss in muscle mass and possibly how to reverse it. There have now been over 50 studies carried out in older subjects, of ages up to 97 years! Most of these have demonstrated that resistance exercise can produce substantial increases in muscle strength and power and more limited, but nevertheless significant, increases in muscle mass and muscle fibre cross-sectional area (CSA) (Frontera et al. 1988; Skelton et al. 1995; Young, 1997). Nevertheless, it would make sense to find ways of increasing muscle mass in the elderly, not only because muscle strength and functionality would probably be improved more but also because of the attendant metabolic advantages in having a high lean to fat weight body ratio, including increases in glucose tolerance and the capacity to oxidize fat.