Regular Exercise Helps You Maintain Lean Muscle Mass

Did you know that the loss of lean muscle mass and bone density usually associated with old age is caused more by inactivity and poor diet than aging?

Our bodies need certain amounts of nutrients, movement and physical stress to keep bones and muscles healthy.

We all know that moderate exercise is good for the body and mind. Still, finding the time to add a half-hour walk, jog or weight-training session to our already jam-packed schedules, particularly during the holidays, can discourage even the extremely well-organized.

But take heart - it’s never too late to start.

A study of light weight training at the Hebrew Rehabilitation Center for the Aged in Boston, a chronic-care hospital with more than 700 patients, showed that people aged 87 to 96 can triple their leg strength and increase their leg muscle mass by 10 percent in just eight weeks. With stronger and faster legs, study participants became less reliant on walkers, which improved their self-confidence.

The study demonstrates that loss of muscle mass, decreased strength and the resulting frailty has less to do with age than lifestyle. At any time of life, moderate amounts of regular exercise can help increase your muscle mass, strength, bone density and metabolic rate, and reduce your percentage of body fat.

One of the well-known effects of losing lean muscle mass from inactivity is osteoporosis. Next year, more than 1 million people will break or fracture a bone. A lot of attention has been targeted toward increasing calcium intake to battle osteoporosis, but another, often-overlooked remedy is exercise.

According to William Evans, the author of “Biomarkers” (Simon & Schuster, 1991), “the rate of bone mineral loss increases 50-fold during prolonged bed rest. However, when bed-rested patients are made to stand for some time each day, even if they don’t walk, their accelerated bone calcium loss stops. Apparently, the stress that gravity exerts on bones helps maintain mineral content.”

After menopause, when the body’s estrogen production drops, women tend to lose bone density about one-third faster than men. Estrogen helps the body secrete a hormone, called calcitonin, that slows the breakdown of bone. That’s why many physicians recommend estrogen replacement therapy.

As well as being the major nutritional building block of bone, the body uses calcium to regulate muscle contraction and relaxation and enzyme activation, and aid in blood clotting.

When blood calcium levels fall too low, the body will turn to calcium stored in bones. If adequate calcium - 500 to 1,200 milligrams daily - is not supplied in the diet, bone will be lost faster. Foods that are high in calcium include milk, yogurt, cottage cheese, cheese, whole fish with edible bones (such as sardines), figs and dark leafy vegetables.

Vitamin D works with calcium to maintain muscle and enhance bone formation and maintenance. It informs your intestines to absorb more calcium and your kidneys to excrete less, reducing the body’s need to take calcium from bones.

Obtaining the recommended daily allowance of 400 IU (international units) of Vitamin D can be challenging. Since Vitamin D is activated by sunlight, people who exercise tend to have more of it in their blood, possibly because they’re more likely to be outdoors.

Exposing your hands and face to sunlight for 10 minutes between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m., two to three times a week, can be adequate. But the cold winter months and the threat of skin cancer in summer may reduce your exposure to the sun.

Vitamin D is found in a few food sources, including egg yolks and dark-fleshed fish such as tuna, salmon and sardines. It’s also added to some breads and cereals, and to fortified milk - although not everybody wants to drink four cups of milk a day to get the recommended daily allowance.

Because Vitamin D is fat-soluble - meaning amounts above the body’s needs are stored in fat cells - it can be toxic to take supplements of more than 1,000 IU for children and 2,000 IU for adults over a year’s time.

To obtain adequate amounts of vitamin D, eat whole eggs occasionally (if your cholesterol level is normal), eat fish on a regular basis and take a 400 IU supplement (usually found in a one-a-day vitamin) if you don’t drink milk.

It’s never too late to start increasing your bone density and adding lean muscle (although you should talk to your doctor before beginning an exercise program). If people between the ages of 87 and 96 can do it, so can you.

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The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Craig T. Hunt The Spokesman-Review