Stuff You Should Know - What's sarcopenia and what can you do about it?

Episode Date: August 18, 2009

Sarcopenia is a form of muscle loss and coordination associated with aging. Luckily, a little extra effort can prevent its onset. Tune in to learn more about sarcopenia -- and how to prevent it -- in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Start your journey at toyota.com slash let's go places. Brought to you by the reinvented 2012 Camry. It's ready for you. Welcome to Stuff You Should Know from HowStuffWorks.com. Everybody loves Altoids, the little mints that come in tents. Well, once the mints are gone, you can do some really neat things with the leftover tents. People have made empty three players, cameras, even stoves.

Check out HowStuffWorks.com slash Tenevators to find out more. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark, with me as always is Charles Bryant. I don't even know why I say that. Chuck, I should just go with Josh and Chuck here. No, you get your thing. This is a stupid intro, Chuck. Let's start over.

You say that every week. Hey and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Chuck Bryant. This is Stuff You Should Know. Thanks for listening to us. Thank you. And even hardier things would go out if people actually paid for this, but still.

No, people like free. Yeah, good for them. Well, yeah, we're not charging for it. No. Fear not, everyone. I'm just saying. Right. And you know what?

Think about that before you write in and tell us we're idiots. Yeah. We'll give you your money back. Did you ever see that Simpsons where Bart goes off on that Itchy and Scratchy fan? No. Or he's actually talking about the Simpsons, the guys like, I feel like they owe me something as a loyal fan. I think it was comic book guy he goes off on.

Oh, yeah. And he goes, oh, really? They owe you something for years and years of free programming and entertainment that they provided you with no charge. That's what happens though, you know, people take ownership and I do the same thing we all do. It's nice to be owned. It's like lost sucks now.

How could you do that? Does it suck? I've never paid any attention to it. No, actually, I think this past season was a return to form, but the previous season was a little lame. It happens. Moving on. Moving on to sarcopenia.

Speaking of aging, aging television shows. Yes. We could also discuss aging human beings. Very nice, Josh. That was, that was clumsy. That got delivered by a drunk pizza guy. Let's dish on sarcopenia. Okay.

I just like that name. It's a good name. It is. So Chuck, you know, there are some obvious signs of aging as we progress in our years, especially it seems like these days, once you start to hit the mid to late seventies, right? All of a sudden, bam, you're like half your height, right, stooped over your rib cage is sunken in like the guy from the, um, unforgiven Metallica video, right, uh, sagging skin on

the face. These are the signs of age and, and you just kind of take this for granted. I know I didn't tell, I wrote this article, but it turns out that a lot of this stuff can be prevented. Yeah. And a lot of these signs of aging are sarcopenia, which is age related muscle loss, right? And we just want to say out there, if you are under 40, like many of our listeners probably are, listen up, cause it will happen to you too.

And you can remember this one day and, and use it, or you can advise your parents and grandparents. Yeah. Well, actually the whole reason this came up was because I was, um, talking to my dad about it. Oh, right. He just turned 71 on July 4th. And, um, he's starting to, he lost a bunch of weight.

He's looking like Mr. Bert Reynolds these days, um, except makeup a lot actually only Mac though, only the good stuff, right? Um, and he's, but he's, his muscles are starting to atrophy because he's losing a bunch of weight and he's advancing in age, but he's not exercising as much. So I said, you know what, you're at risk for sarcopenia and I'm going to look up this article I wrote and you were sitting next to me and you said, are we podcasting on that this week? And I said, yes we are.

So here we are everyone. That's how it happens. This is the back story. People always wonder how we pick. That's how we pick sometimes. Yeah. There's no reason, um, also because we do have a fairly young listener ship. Yeah.

This can be prevented most easily by starting young. Yeah. Starting young. Yeah. So let's talk about sarcopenia. Let's talk about muscle loss. First, let's talk about muscle, Chuck. Protein.

Yeah. Yes. Muscle mass is protein basically. The end. The end. And, uh, I like here how you said that in the article that the body seeks a stasis. So what you want is that balance between, uh, production and usage of that protein. Right.

You don't want to overproduce. The body seeks stasis in many, many ways. Well, yeah, that's, that's the, that's the, yeah, that's, that's the, the, the level that it's seeking at all times with everything. Right. Equilibrium. Equilibrium, buddy. It's a beautiful thing.

So Chuck, um, muscle is obviously produced in the body. We don't just, you know, go buy a length of muscle and insert it where we want it. One day. Right. Yeah. Um, we, we actually can produce our own, um, through non-essential proteins. These are proteins that the body produces on its own. Right.

And then, uh, we have essential proteins that we need to build muscle with. And we derive these by, you know, jumping on gazelles and eating their throats out. Right. Or just eating peanut butter and things like that that contain a lot of protein to an efficient tearing the throat out of peanut butter. Right. So we got to tear the throat as something to get muscle. Right.

And then, um, we're going to take our proteins. You're right. Right. You might have already said that. I think I did. But it doesn't matter, buddy. Um, so we take this protein, uh, and, and the stuff we produce, it's called synthesis. And the stuff we use, the non, the essential proteins, that's, uh, metabolism, right?

Yes. Um, and we, we never really lose our ability to metabolize proteins as we age, but we do tend to lose our ability to synthesize our own. Right. Uh, this is where you want to get into hormones, correct? Yeah. You were just setting me up all day long, buddy. Uh, insulin like growth hormone, IGF one.

Yeah. Testosterone. Yeah. And growth hormone. Yeah. They all, uh, play a role in the production of the protein, Josh. Did you know that? I did.

I wrote this article. Well, anyway, the, the point is these hormones, hormones, you know, are the, uh, chemical messengers in our body. Uh-huh. They do all sorts of crazy stuff. Josh just wrote about, um, whether or not you can get pregnant while your breastfeeding and hormones are amazing. And by the way, I know everything there is to know about the, about the menstrual cycle.

I know everything. I'll ask me any question later. I'll tell you. Menarche. Menarche. Uh, the problem, Josh, is that the, uh, the pro, these hormones decline as we age. Right. So the, the, um, the protein production is, aren't get, it's not getting the, the signals

that it used to. Right. So non-essential protein production slips, leaving only essential production, or I'm sorry, essential proteins that you ingest. And I think you, you indicated that, uh, as we get older, we actually need more protein. So that's kind of like a one-two punch. Right. And we don't necessarily get more protein once you, once you establish a diet, right

in your lifetime, right, you usually kind of stick to it, especially in your seventies. Right. I mean, people may, you know, kind of, uh, come to understand their bodies. I can't remember how Douglas Copeland put it in generation X. I think aware of your body. Right. People become aware of their bodies, uh, later in life. So they may change their diet some, but generally your, your protein intake will remain the

same even though you need it more. So you've got hormone decline and a protein deficiency. So that's two of the three actually we didn't even mention the third yet. Well, this is the most, this is the most vital one, motor unit restructuring. Right. So we've got these three things, hormone decline, protein deficiency and motor unit restructuring, which we were about to get into. And all of a sudden you've got sarcopenia.

Exactly. You're stooped over, your face is sagging. Yep. Again, you look like the old guy from the unforgiven video. Yeah. You're walking slow. What is the unforgiven video? You know that Metallica song?

Unforgiven? Yeah. Sort of. It came out post good Metallica. Yeah. Before horrible Metallica. Okay. So you're in the middle ground after ride the lightning before, whatever the Lollapalooza

tour. Yeah. Okay. When they started wearing eyeliner and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. When they cut their hair. So we've got, we've got sarcopenia, but we haven't really talked about that motor unit restructuring.

This is the most important factor. Right. Right. So. Let me tell you what a motor unit is. Yes. Okay. So Josh, there are things called motor neurons and they command the muscle fibers to.

Voluntary muscle fibers. Voluntary muscle fibers to do things. Right. So that's a motor unit as those two things together. Right. The muscle fibers they command and the neurons, the muscle fibers and the neurons that command them. Yes.

That's a motor unit. Right. And again, it's a strictly voluntary muscle we're talking about. Yeah. So the neuron gets a command from the brain. I think in the article I used the example of raise right arm. And punch Chuck in the neck. I would never do that.

Okay. I'd say shut up brain. So the brain sends a signal to the neurons involved in raising your right arm. And they fire and contract the muscles. Intervation. Which is what's going on. Like you're lifting your arm. It's really a bunch of muscles contracting.

Yeah. And when I think about it like that, I think about like little tiny like pirates like pulling on the. The. The. Poisting the sail. Sure. Like that.

Like he. Po. He. Po. He. There you have it. It's called innovation. Technically.

When the muscle fibers are caused to contract from the neurons right now raising your arm. That would be pretty much probably exclusively the result of slow twitch neurons. Yeah. We need to explain the difference here. There's two kinds of neurons fast twitch and they're slow twitch FT and ST and fast hitch fast twitch fast twitch fast twitch. I like fast twitch fast twitch. That's really hard to say is like Irish wristwatch.

Yeah. Exactly. It's very specialized because they command like only fast movements like when you run or like I twitches your eyelids. Yeah. Like really precise movement, but there aren't as many of them because they only command a certain, you know, limited number of functions. Right.

Well, one one fast switch neuron will command say just a few muscle fibers because it has to be precise. Right. So it can't be concerned with a whole bunch at once. Right. So your hand is the mass. I think the way I put it in the article was the fast twitch neurons are kind of agile like a tightrope walker.

Yeah. Yeah. Where slow twitch are like bulls in China shops. Right. They're just kind of big and dumb and lumbering and brewery, you know. Exactly. So the slow twitch neuron is going to raise your arm. Right.

Because it's just a bunch of just muscle fiber that isn't really involved in anything precise. Big collutes. Big collutes. Right. So the problem is that the FT, the fast switch ones, they die off as you age first. Right. They're the first to go. So what happens is if there, if a group of muscle fibers are no longer commanded by a

neuron, they're at risk of atrophying, right, which is muscle death, right? So then all of a sudden you have muscle loss. To prevent this, the body has a pretty cool system. This is very cool. So out of nowhere, the closest slow twitch neuron, that's the one that's closest to the dead fast twitch neuron, will take over, will attach itself and take command. In place of the fast twitch. Right.

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Right. So that is the restructuring. That's motor unit restructuring. Right. One of it is, you know, if a loss of coordination, a loss of quick reaction, it's less precise. Right. So that's part of that, that lack of balance that happens as you age is actually the result of muscle loss.

Exactly. And that's part three of the, what you call the perfect storm that can increase the onset of sarcopenia. Right. And when this happens, especially along the spine, the muscle fibers along the spine, there's motor unit restructuring or just straight up neuron death, that's, that's what gives us our stoop posture because to stand upright, it requires muscles going heave ho. Yeah.

Yeah. Right. And when you lose it, you end up being stooped over. So these all put together all these signs of age, the loss of the intercostal muscles between the ribs, stoop, posture, sagging skin. It's called senile sarcopenia. Yep. And this is the most preventable type of sarcopenia.

That's the good thing. sarcopenia from disease, there's some other much less preventable forms of sarcopenia. You said environmental conditions can? Sure, like basically if you lay down in a highway tunnel for several years and just inhale carbon monoxide constantly, sarcopenia will be among the various maladies that develop. Right, well the good news though like you said is that this can be prevented and this is the message that you need to talk to your parents and grandparents about and what people like me need to remember very

soon as I am aging. Right, and there's an easy solution to this. Yeah, weights. Weights, resistance training. Yeah, so for a long time doctors, well they still do, but physicians have, or the medical establishment has always recommended something like, I think 30 minutes of exercise a day. Yeah, it's all about cardio usually. Cardio, like walking, running, swimming, getting the heart going. And yeah, you need to do that, but that has little to no effect on sarcopenia, but resistance training does. And they've done a bunch of studies on this. I found out this was one of those articles, Chuck, where I wrote it and

there's just so much awesome information out there. It's just a really interesting article to write despite when it was assigned to me and I found out what sarcopenia was. I was like, you got to be kidding me. Right, why would I be writing this? Yeah, me of all people. I need to write about whiskey, but there's been a bunch of studies that have turned up some really surprising results, right? So there was one that I came across that put a group of elderly people aged 78 to 84. Yeah, this is pretty impressive. On resistance training. And by resistance training, we're talking about, oh, I don't know, you know, where you lift

weights with your legs by just like flexing them outward. I can't remember. I don't know what it's called. You're not a good guy. Or like bringing your, I've done it before. Those machines probably, I doubt if they recommend that the elderly go in there and start hitting the bench press. No, as a matter of fact, they recommend that the elderly not try this first by themselves. They need, at the very least, the advice of somebody who knows what they're talking about at the gym, who works at the gym. If not a personal trainer, you want to talk to your doctor first if you're elderly. But the point here is that if you are

elderly and you are developing sarcopenia, it can actually be reversed by resistance training. Yeah. So like these signs of aging can be reversed. This study that had 78 to 84 year olds, they put them on a resistance training program and they saw an increase of protein synthesis. Remember, that's the stuff that we, that's the ability with loses we get older. Right. The increase was 182 percent. That's unreal. I love that one. That's huge. Yeah. Because normally there's like increases and whenever you look at a study, it's like, oh, there's a 2% change. Yeah. That's significant. Mark difference. This is enormously

significant. Yeah. Right. So just by doing weights, we can synthesize proteins. Right. Yeah. Can I tell them about the other one? Please do. The USDA did this one and they said that the elderly participants who did resistance training for 45 minutes, three times a week, saw for 12, over a three month span, saw an average increase of 32% muscle fiber and 30% increase in strength. Yeah. And that's huge, man. That's a 45 minutes, three times a week. Yeah. 12 weeks. It's nothing. No, not much. And if you're 70 or 80. What else are you doing? You're not working. Yeah. Hit the gym. Yeah. Wapner command you. Should we talk about

astronauts? Well, this, yeah, I was hoping we get to this. The whole reason that we know that resistance training works is thanks to our friends at NASA. This is weird, man. What happens is astronauts have a similar existence as elderly because it's very sedentary. They're in a space shuttle and there's not much room. They're weightless. They're just hanging around drinking tang doing nothing. Exactly. They never did nothing for nobody. Here's the interesting thing, Joshers. What? And I know you know this. They have an opposite effect. They're slow twitch. Well, weightlessness. Weightlessness does. Yeah. Not just if

you're an astronaut, but yeah. You're doomed. Being weightless. The fast twitch ones actually, the slow twitch ones die off first and the fast twitch ones pick up the slack. Right. Rather than down here on earth where the fast twitch dies off first and then slow twitch picks up the slack. And I've heard of this. I didn't know the science behind it, but I had heard that if you're weightless in space, like these people that are up there for like a year at the space station are coming back and like tearing calf muscles like. Yeah. That's the result of it. It's not a loss of coordination, but a very easily torn

muscles because the little precise fast twitch neurons are not used to controlling like these huge, you know, they don't do the heave-ho that well. That's crazy, man. Yeah. So they have to work this all out if we're going to live. So we figured it out. You know, an outer space one day. Yeah. And I think the last point is, is yes, you're supposed to do cardio. You're supposed to do the 30 minutes of walking every day to stay alive and all that. But the point is, is you can't walk if you can't stand up straight, right? You can't walk away your sarcopenia. So you want to, you want to do the resistance training first. You want

to start on that. You want to start that regimen first and then move into walking. Yeah. And again, if you're 12 years old and you're listening to us, you have no idea how this applies to you. But my friends, it does. Right. Sarah? Sarah, our amazing 11 year old fan. No, she's 12 now. She's 12. That's right. This does apply to you. Just as it applies to Chuck and I. And let's go hit the gym, buddy. Let's do it. Yeah. You mean Arnie. So Chuck, if anybody wants to, I, this is one of those articles where it'd be good to kind of print out and have around. Yeah. To refer to, I think. Sort of science. Plus there's some really good links on the lots more

information page to give you more information. Lots more information. You can find that article by typing in sarcopenia. That's S-A-R-C-O-P-E-N-I-A in the handy toolbar at howstuffworks.com. And before we do listener mail, Chuck, let's do a little plug. Yeah. We haven't plugged ourselves in a long, long time. We're not big on tooting our own horns. No. So we're going to plug our blog, which we haven't done in a while. And you can go to the howstuffworks.com website. Yeah. Go to the blogs. You'll see it over on the right side, the blogs of how stuff work. Yep. There's a, there's a lot of people at blogs. We have seven,

eight, nine now. Yeah. They're all really great. They are. We have our Tracy, our colleague Tracy Wilson writes fan stuff. It's all about geekdom. Yep. Katie does the history stuff blog. Yeah. Stuff you missed in history class, I should say. Scott's over there with auto stuff. Uh-huh. Science. We've got the whole shebang. Stricklin' in the gang with tech stuff. The brain does one. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, you can find all of them at the blogs at howstuffworks.com. And I think it's blogs.howstuffworks.com. Right. Or the home page. Should we plug the webcast here? Definitely. We haven't plugged this in a long time because we were not too sure of

ourselves at first with the webcast, but we do a week. Are we, are we now? Oh yeah. When did that happen? I think it's good. Okay. Uh, we do a webcast every Wednesday at one o'clock Eastern Standard Time. And it's, it's live. It's live video. Right. Without a net. And it's pretty clear that it's live when you see us stumble through certain things. What? Not, not this week or last week. The week before we actually started over like five minutes into it. Did we? It, remember? It got so out of hand. We're just like, let's just start over. I don't even remember. It was, wow. It's a lot of fun though. And it's a little different than the show. It's a

little more news oriented. We talk about current events and we don't cannibalize the podcast. No, not at all. So it's, it's fun. And you can watch that on our blog actually. Yeah. So that's our webcast in the blog, which means plug time is over. Yeah. And that means listener mail. That's right. Josh, I'm just going to call this. It made me feel good. And it's from Omaha. That's a great title. Always think of these on the fly. You understand. Dear Josh and Chuck, I've been meaning to write you and the history stuff, gals, for a long time now for helping me survive horrendous, long international plane trips for work. I save up a bunch of podcasts and listen to them

to keep out the noise of strangers exchanging small talk and baby screaming and to take my mind off my anxiety and work. However, now I really have something to thank you for. Friday I got back from a trip to Brazil during which I listened to the podcast on Toxo and other parasites prevalent in Brazil. Lovely. Yeah. And the next day I had to put my beloved bunny of nine years to sleep. It's awful. Is that related to Toxo plasma? Not at all. I have been heartbroken. It's very sad. Yesterday, driving home from work, I played a couple of your podcasts I hadn't listened to on my trip and found myself laughing out loud. It was amazing. I hadn't felt like laughing or even smiling for days. And you

two cheered me up more than I thought was possible. Awesome. Sure, you didn't save my life or anything like you did with the hypermiling woman, but you certainly helped my emotional state. For that, I thank you. Keep up the great humor. I'm sure it helps people more than you know. This is from Brim in Omaha, Nebraska. Brim? Yeah. Awesome. BRM. Awesome name. That's a last name or a nickname or something. She had a different name than that. She can't say it on the air. Oh, I got you. You know, we don't say full names. Did you give her that nickname? No, no, no. That's how she signed it, but then her full name was there as well. That's fantastic. Yeah, it made me feel good. Well, if you have

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