Losing Muscle Strength As You Age? Read This!

Let’s Twist Again comes on the radio in the living room and your torso and hips rotate like it was still the swinging 60’s.

A sudden onset of pain shoots through your legs as your calf muscles spasm.

You freeze mid-dance and lift your leg gingerly off the ground.

Now off-balance, you hobble over to the nearest sofa to lie down.

Your calves are still tight and now you know you can’t enjoy the rest of your day.

For now, you’ll put a pain relief patch on it so you can get through the day.

But in the next few days, you’re going to look into supplements you can take to get stronger and feel more in control over your body.

You realize that you miss the old you, and these days you’re feeling weak, it’s not just dancing that saps your energy.

You take a simple inventory or your day to day and realize you’re not doing all these things you used to do.

You’re not bending down and gardening. You’re not standing in the kitchen all-day cooking. You’re not golfing with your retirement buddies…

So what can you do about it?

Stop Losing 8% Muscle Mass Every Year After 40

Your muscles are essential for your everyday activities

Did you know, skeletal muscle accounts for about 30% to 50% of body weight^1,2,3? Muscle plays an important structural role as a source of strength, and is required for both movement and balance⁴.

How many muscles do you need day-to-day⁵?

• 34 muscles to type a thank you email
• 42 muscles to smile at your grandchild
• 80 muscles to open a jar of cookies
• 180 muscles to dance the twist
• 200 muscles to walk in the park
• 240 muscles to carry your weekly groceries

Are you losing strength as you age?

A healthy person could lose up to 8% muscle mass every decade after 40 years old.^6,7,8,9 You may already be aware of the detriments of bone density loss, but you also need to know that muscle loss may reduce your quality of life as you age.

Healthy older adults may experience reduced strength, energy, or levels of activity. Immobilized and recovering patients may experience decreased mobility, immunity, and wound healing, as well as increased risk of infections, weakness, and time to recovery¹⁰.

Muscle loss can be caused by¹¹:

• Natural aging process
• Lack of physical activity (sedentary lifestyle or extended bed rest)
• Illness
• Malnutrition (or not eating the right nutrients)

What can you do about muscle loss?

Knowing more will help us live a healthier life. There are two key parts:

1. Get Exercise

• Start doing resistance exercises. Adults aged older than 75 have displayed a significant ability to increase their muscle mass and strength in response to resistance exercise training¹². Research shows that 1 to 2 resistance workouts every week can improve muscle strength¹³.
• Regular physical activity of any kind, that gets the heart pumping is shown to benefit one’s health¹⁴. Aerobic exercise, including walking enhances blood flow and supply of nutrients to the muscles¹⁵.

2. Get Good Nutrition

• Eat high-quality protein. The amino acids in the protein we eat are the building blocks of muscle. The amino acid, leucine (where HMB originates from) is particularly good at stimulating muscle growth¹⁶.
• Eat your Omega-3. These essential fatty acids can boost many aspects of health, from muscle health maintenance to positive moods¹⁷. Inflammation is what causes muscle breakdown and omega-3s have anti-inflammatory properties¹⁸.
• Maintain your Vitamin D. Getting adequate vitamin D helps with muscle protein synthesis and fights inflammation, leading to better muscle strength and balance¹⁹.

Include HMB, an essential ingredient in to support tissue building and help regain strength

HMB is an active metabolite of the amino acid leucine that helps counteract muscle loss. Although leucine is found in food, HMB is difficult to get from diet alone. Only about 0.5% to 5% of dietary leucine is converted to HMB. It is also known that levels of HMB in the body decrease with age ²⁰.

You would need to eat 1.5g of HMB everyday, which equals to: 50 eggs, 7 chicken breasts, 11 beef tenderloins, 10 cups of soybean, 5475 avocados, 6749 servings of cooked asparagus, 12009 servings of cooked cauliflower²¹.

With more everyday strength, you can aspire to live a fuller life with freedom, passion, flexibility, ambition and fashion just as if you stayed young and vibrant.

“The good news is that muscle loss and loss
of strength can be slowed considerably in
most cases and even reversed in some,
regardless of age or fitness level.”

— Dr Melina, board-certified physician nutrition specialist

Use Your Muscles to Power Your Life

Whether it’s a Sunday morning and you’re making pancakes in the kitchen or it’s your beautiful granddaughter’s 18th birthday, you find yourself dancing your socks off wherever you go.

It’s hard to find a song, old or new that you don’t enjoy shaking your arms and legs to.

Now that you have greater strength, you realise how much you’ve taken the ability to move freely for granted.

Muscle health is important for our everyday strength. You don’t have to lose 8% every decade after 40 if you do something about it. And you can. You‘ll need the right nutrition to preserve and build healthy muscles for a fuller life.

Embrace strength for life with Ensure Gold! Breakthrough nutrition to improve your strength in 8 weeks! New and improved Ensure Gold is now even better with a new unique combo of HMB & Triple Protein Blend. Along with Calcium, Omega-3 and 28 vitamins and minerals, Ensure Gold is scientifically proven complete nutrition to help improve muscle health in as early as 8 weeks for your everyday strength.

Don’t miss out on the opportunity to enjoy everyday strength. You have what it takes to fuel your body with the exercise and nutrition it needs! Show your muscles some love and they will love you back.

REFERENCES:

¹ Keller K et al. Muscles Ligaments Tendons J 2013
² Koopman R et al. J Appl Physiol (1985) 2009
³ Janssen I et al. J Appl Physiol 2000
⁴ 1. Argilés JM et al. J Am Med Dir Assoc 2016. 2. Keller K et al. Muscles Ligaments Tendons J 2013. 3. Koopman R et al. J Appl Physiol (1985) 2009. 4. Janssen I et al. J Appl Physiol 2000.
⁵https://medium.com/the-fuel657-journal/how-many-muscles-does-it-take-to-6cbb3a4dd589
⁶ Baier S, et al. JPEN J Parenter Enteral Nutr. 2009;33(1):71-82.
⁷ Flakoll P, et al. Nutrition. 2004;20(5):445-451
⁸ Grimby G, et al. Acta Physiol Scand. 1982;115(1):125-134
⁹ Janssen I, et al. J Appl Physiol. 2000;89(1):81-88.
¹⁰ Argilés JM et al. J Am Med Dir Assoc 2016. 2. Flakoll P et al. Nutrition 2004. 3. Baier S et al. JPEN J Parenter Enteral Nutr 2009. 4. Janssen I et al. J Appl Physiol 2000. 5. Siparsky PN et al. Sports Health 2014
¹¹ 1. Landi F et al. Eur Geriatr Med 2016. 2. Argilés JM et al. J Am Med Dir Assoc 2016
¹²https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10522-016-9637-9
¹³https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10522-016-9637-9
¹⁴https://edition.cnn.com/2018/03/06/health/muscle-age-exercise-jampolis/index.html
¹⁵https://edition.cnn.com/2018/03/06/health/muscle-age-exercise-jampolis/index.html
¹⁶http://www.nutritionnews.abbott/strength-muscle/hmb-and-boomers.html
¹⁷http://www.eatingwell.com/article/275991/how-to-eat-and-exercise-to-prevent-age-related-muscle-loss-from-sarcopenia/
¹⁸http://www.eatingwell.com/article/275991/how-to-eat-and-exercise-to-prevent-age-related-muscle-loss-from-sarcopenia/
¹⁹http://www.eatingwell.com/article/275991/how-to-eat-and-exercise-to-prevent-age-related-muscle-loss-from-sarcopenia/
²⁰ 1. Nissen SL et al. J Nutr Biochem 1997. 2. Kuryan R et al. Exp Gerontol 2016. 3. Walker D et al. J Chromatogr 2017
²¹ 1. Nissen SL et al. J Nutr Biochem 1997. 2. Kuryan R et al. Exp Gerontol 2016. 3. Walker D et al. J Chromatogr 2017

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