The Proven Way to Prevent and Heal Sarcopenia (Muscle Wasting)
Jimmy Buffett sang about “Wastin’ away again in Margaritaville” but you don’t have to be living in Margaritavilla to experience muscle wasting as you age.
Maybe it’s not as easy to walk up the stairs as it once was.
Maybe you struggle to open jars and twist door knobs or maybe you grow tired more easily and need to give your muscles a break more often.
From the time you were born until you turned around 30, your muscle mass and strength likely increased. After that, most adults start to lose between 3 and 8 percent of their muscle mass each decade.
Severe loss of muscle mass due to aging is called sarcopenia.
A brief introduction to sarcopenia
Your muscles are made up of thousands of tiny fibers. Contractions within these fibers are what drive movement and help you function. As you get older, your body produces fewer and smaller muscle fibers, decreasing your muscle size and strength.
Other age-related changes in your body can also contribute to sarcopenia. For example, your body may struggle to produce sufficient quantities of certain hormones. Lower concentrations of growth hormone, testosterone, and insulin-like growth factor can affect muscle mass. Your body may also struggle to break down enough of the proteins that your muscles need to grow.
Certain lifestyle choices, such as not exercising enough or eating enough protein, can also affect your muscles. According to Contemporary Clinical Trials, around one-third of older adults do not eat enough protein to conserve muscle mass.
This decrease in muscle affects everyday tasks. You may struggle to keep your balance, carry groceries, or open windows due to pain or fatigue. But avoiding physical activity will only further shrink your muscles.
Sarcopenia increases the risk of falling and developing other conditions, such as osteoporosis, high blood pressure, and coronary heart disease. It also makes daily activities, such as eating and dressing and undressing more difficult to complete independently.
Sarcopenia can affect up to 13 percent of adults between the ages of 60 and 70 and 50 percent of adults over the age of 80. These numbers and risks make it important to prevent sarcopenia or screen and treat it. One way of doing this is by measuring your grip strength.
How does grip strength relate to sarcopenia?
Grip strength may not seem that important, but it’s a great indicator of overall health — sometimes more so than blood pressure or body mass index. In a study from the British Medical Journal, researchers found that an 11 pound decrease in grip strength correlated with a greater risk of cardiovascular death, heart attack, and stroke. Poor grip strength has also been associated with mortality in older adults.
Grip strength is not only easy to measure, but it’s also sensitive. This makes it a great way to detect small changes and monitor progress.
To measure grip strength, you’ll need a hand-grip dynamometer. When you squeeze the dynamometer’s handle as hard as you can, you’ll get a reading of your grip strength.
This measurement can indicate your overall strength or be used to diagnose sarcopenia.
The Journal of the American Geriatric Society found that hand grip measurements of at least 72.6 pounds in men and 44 pounds in women were associated with better mobility.
Finding the solution to sarcopenia
The risks and outcomes associated with sarcopenia make it important to prevent it, or, if you think you have the condition, to get diagnosed and treat it. The best way of doing all of these is exercise. If you’re new to exercise or want to avoid injury, working with a physical therapist or personal trainer is a great idea.
However, if you’re like most people, motivating yourself to exercise is a challenge. One way of dealing with this, and making exercise fun and engaging, is exergaming.
Exergaming, or a combination of exercise and video games, adds rewards and social interaction to exercise. Some games already on the market, like Just Dance, Wii Fit, and EA Sports Active, are popular with teenagers and young adults.
As people get older, exercise may be harder to do and there may be a greater risk of falls. In addition, older people often have less motivation to exercise. Exergames are a way to make exercise more fun, so that people are motivated to exercise. Exergaming products such as Peloton (www.onepeloton.ca) are good at motivating exercise in younger people but are not targeted at older people who may have some degree of frailty, have balance problems, or be recovering from stroke. Centivizer, a startup founded by the Interactive Media Lab within the University of Toronto, offers 2RaceWithMe (www.2RaceWithMe) an exergaming solution targeted for older adults. In this case the motivation to exercise is provided by scenic videos that only play when the person is exercising with hand and/or foot pedals. When people start using 2RaceWithMe, a text message is sent to family members giving them a chance to set up a video call and talk to their loved one while she or he is exercising. The possibility of social interaction thus acts as an additional motivation to exercise.
Sarcopenia introduces many challenges in life, even in the simplest of activities like peeling an orange. The frailty that goes with sarcopenia, not only reduces quality of life and the ability to carry out activities of daily living, but it also increases risk of poor health outcomes and mortality. Therefore, it is important to prevent it and minimize its impact.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), advises older adults to perform strength-training exercises at least 2 days every week. This should include all the major muscle groups, such as the legs, back, and chest.
If you’re not quite there yet, don’t worry. Even 10 minutes of exercise a day can have an impact.
Disclaimer: This article is an information resource only and is not to be used for diagnostic or treatment purposes. You should always consult your health care provider before making any health care decisions.
