It is scary. Sarcopenia is a word that comes from Greek and means ‘poverty of flesh’. For our purpose, I’ll define as a loss of muscle as it seen with some diseases but it is most commonly associated with aging.
Research shows that everybody will experience a certain degree of sarcopenia as we get older; however, the degree of this loss of muscle is not pre-determined and is largely influenced by our lifestyle choices.
I hate to bring it up again but, as in many cases, the answer is diet and exercise. And when I talk of exercise, I talk of resistance training. The amount of resistance used must be sufficient to fatigue a muscle within about 10 to 12 repetitions. Thus, a 3-pound dumbbell, flung around for 50 repetitions, is not enough. Pick up a 10-pound dumbbell instead and only use it 10 times.
Sarcopenia is also not a phenomenon that applies to women alone. Men are just as likely, if not more so, to experience this loss of muscle as they age.
How does diet enter the picture? For a muscle to grow in size (this is called hypertrophy), the body needs to have sufficient protein available. For the longest time, the amount was defined by the following formula: 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of bodyweight. For the metrically challenged, this means 0.36 grams per pound of bodyweight. It appears that this formula needs to be revised upwards as we get older to about 1.0 to 1.5 grams per kg of bodyweight (0.45 grams to 0.7 grams per pound of bodyweight).
How would you know that you have lost muscle? An indication would be that tasks requiring strength are simply more challenging to accomplish. If it feels that a gallon of milk has gotten a lot heavier, you have probably lost muscle. To found out more about it, you can get a body composition test. There are several methods; I personally use our machine called Futrex that uses near-infrared technology. Other methods are calipers or bioelectric impedance. There are fancier ways to do it but they are usually not easily accessible and tend to be very expensive.
What if you have a perfect BMI? Is everything okay? Not necessarily. If you are one of those lucky people who have maintained their weight since the age of 20, you may still have lost muscle. In fact, it is possible that you have perfect weight but – underneath it all – you have very little muscle and a lot of body fat. By the same token, very muscular people can have a BMI that classifies them as overweight by those standards but may have perfect body composition.
The bottom line: know your body composition to be sure. Go to the gym and get re-acquainted with resistance training if you have slacked and don’t let that sarcopenia bite you.
