In Getting Older
Nutrients that are important to muscles
Try making a list of every physical move you've made today. It probably starts with getting out of bed. But wait, did you stretch before you actually stood up? Did you raise your arm to press a button to call an elevator? Pick up a pen, sit up in your chair, walk to the bathroom? These all go on the list. Now add the physical things you did automatically: breathing, blinking, your heart pumping. How long is the list? More importantly: What do they all have in common?
And paying close attention to that one element throughout our lives can drastically change our quality of life as we age. What is it? It's muscle. Maintaining it is one of the most important things we can do, and doing so doesn't mean hours in the gym. It's much easier than most people realize.
There are over 600 muscles in our bodies. Most of their work goes unseen, so it's easy to take for granted their role in our overall health. Even the most vigilant amongst us often let exercise routines fall by the wayside as work and family life and other priorities eat up our time; we may feel less fit as we age but chalk it up to exactly that: the inevitability of age. And it feels okay-until it's not. After the age of 40, we can lose up to 8 percent of our muscle mass each decade. After the age of 70, that loss can nearly double, up to 15 percent a decade.
