Building Muscle in Older Age

Building muscle is relatively when in your younger years if you know how to do it correctly, but as you grow older building muscle in older age becomes alot more difficult.

It seems that as men and women age they find it increasingly difficult to retain their muscle mass even when training, what is it that causes this?

A team of researchers in Nottingham, England have been looking into the issue of building and retaining muscle as people age and have come up with a scientific reason as to why it gets harder the older you become.

The results show two reasons why building muscle in older age becomes harder, although one reason has a bigger impact than the other.

The first reason, and the one which has less of an impact is that the blood flow to the muscles reduces in age, especially as someone ages over sixty.

The second reason is that as people age their body reduces the use of insulin to stop the muscle breakdown that occurs between meals.

This means two things, the first is that the body of an older person finds it harder to build muscle in the first place and also finds it hard to retain muscle mass once it has got it.

The Science

As we eat our body releases insulin that stops the muscle breakdown that occurs at periods of time between eating and when sleeping. As we age our body is unable to use its insulin hormone so well and is not able stop the muscle breakdown occuring in the body as much.

This information relates mainly to those who are wishing to build muscle in more senior years of around sixty years plus.