All health authorities agree:sport is extremely beneficial for health. However, the focus is generally on fitness and aerobic type training, forgetting to remember the crucial importance of muscle strengthening (RM). In recent years, several studies have shown the many benefits of muscle work, even during small daily exercises.
Our muscle strength peaks during our 30s and then slowly declines. Eventually, it may drop to the point that we are unable to get up from our chairs or climb the stairs. But it's not just older people who would benefit from improving their strength. We're discovering unexpected benefits in building muscle for all adults that go far beyond just strength.
Building muscle could add years of life and protect against certain malignancies. Having stronger muscles seems to decrease the risk of contracting cardiovascular diseases, type 2 diabetes and cancer. There is even some evidence that it can improve memory and prevent cognitive decline.
Its importance is so great that the latest UK government guidelines for physical activity emphasize muscle building over conventional workouts. “This is an urgent message that needs to get across. People need to know that building muscle is important at any age says Stuart Gray, who studies metabolic diseases at the University of Glasgow.
Age-related muscle loss happens to everyone. Around the age of 30, we begin to lose up to 5% of our muscle mass each decade, and this accelerates by age 70. This effect was first brought to light by Irwin Rosenberg of Tufts University in Massachusetts in 1988 after attending a meeting on aging. In his notes on the meeting, he wrote “no decline with age is more dramatic or potentially more functionally significant than the decline in lean body mass. Why didn't we give it more attention? »
Over time, the types of fibers in our muscles change, with "type 2" fibers, which help us withstand heavy loads for short periods of time, slowly being replaced by more "type 1" fibers which are more effective over long periods of time, but less able to carry weights. Our muscles also stop using protein as efficiently and are therefore less able to repair themselves.
These age-related changes have many causes, including altered levels of hormones such as testosterone and a reorganization of brain cells that control movement. The best evidence comes from studies of the exercise habits of large numbers of people. One showed that lifting weights for less than an hour per week reduced the risk of heart attack and stroke by up to 70%, independent of any fitness training.
Another study of 100,000 women found that those who did at least one hour of strength training a week significantly reduced their risk of type 2 diabetes. And people with better grip strength — an indicator of overall muscle strength — have a lower risk of cardiovascular disease and cancer and are at a reduced risk of premature death from any cause.
One of the reasons why stronger muscles keep us healthier is that they help prevent the effects of instability, falls and movement problems, thus improving well-being. For example, when geriatric center residents perform a series of six resistance exercises, twice a week for 14 weeks, they not only increase their overall strength by 60%, but also improve their ability to live independently by having the power to cope with daily activities such as going to the bathroom.
Muscle also plays an important role in regulating glucose levels in the body. With the help of insulin, it absorbs glucose from the blood and stores it as glycogen. Bigger muscles mean a greater store of glucose and more cells that transport and remove glucose from the body, which helps prevent type 2 diabetes, in which blood sugar levels get too high.
Having bigger muscles is also linked to better survival rates for people with cancer, likely because the disease decreases muscle mass. Another surprising benefit of building muscle is how it burns calories, even after you finish exercising. Strength training increases your basal metabolic rate — the amount of energy your body burns at rest — in two ways.
First, larger muscles require more energy to fuel their tissue maintenance. So simply having more muscle mass uses more calories. Second, in the short term, lifting weights causes tiny tears in your tissues that require a relatively large amount of energy to reshape. This increased energy demand can last for three days after a workout.
Let’s take the example of two 20-minute resistance training sessions per week. Each session requires approximately 200 extra calories to complete, but over the next three days an extra 100 calories per day will be used to help repair muscle. During the month, the two training sessions per week consumed an additional 5000 calories without even having to leave the house.
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All of this is helpful if you want to reduce body fat, a factor associated with lower cholesterol, lower blood pressure, and improved insulin sensitivity and glucose control, all of which help reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. This is one of the reasons why getting stronger protects you from heart attacks. Likewise, our bones begin to break down as we age, losing mass and making us more prone to fractures.
They are constantly being broken down by cells called osteoclasts and rebuilt with osteoblasts. Building muscle puts stress on bones, triggering osteoblast activity and inhibiting osteoclasts, helping us maintain and even build denser bones. This significantly reduces the risk of osteoporosis, which causes an estimated 1.66 million hip fractures worldwide each year.
Several studies show that people with better grip strength—thus better overall body strength—score better on memory and reaction time tests, as well as assessments of verbal and spatial abilities. This means that grip strength can be used as a marker of cognitive decline. There seems to be something special about strength training in particular, rather than exercise in general.
For example, older women who lifted weights once a week for a year showed significant improvements in cognitive tests of attention, compared to women who completed balance and toning classes. The underlying mechanisms are not fully understood, but RM appears to trigger the release of several chemicals in the brain, including one called BDNF, which support the health of neurons, helping them to communicate, grow and resist brain-related decline. age.
The American College of Sports Medicine advocates that adults should perform strength exercises on all major muscle groups — legs, hips, back, abdomen, chest, shoulders and arms — at least twice a week. According to Gill:"If you exercise a particular group of muscles until it is tired, it doesn't matter how much weight or how many times you lift it. The benefits for a non-athlete are broadly the same whether you lift a light weight 20 times or a heavy weight five times .
Gill's group is evaluating whether small amounts of daily exercise can make a difference to health. “The idea is that if you can do 1 minute of each exercise a day, do push-ups on Monday, squat on Tuesday, then that’s a very easy way to incorporate resistance exercise into your week. Aerobic and strength exercise seem to improve our health in slightly different ways, and most studies indicate that a little of both is better than either all the way .
Small exercises inserted into the daily routine can make a big difference, without the need for equipment. “You can do push-ups on the floor at home, or against the kitchen counter or the wall. You can do squats to strengthen your legs in front of the TV, and lift shopping bags .
