Multiple studies show that high protein intake is vital for preserving muscle mass as you age and when you are dieting below maintenance calories. Older individuals often undereat protein and can end up putting themselves at a higher risk of protein deficiency.

Other factors include the possible reduced absorption of protein as you age due to decreased gut function and bacteria. If you have a hard time meeting your protein needs, consider adding protein powder to boost your intake.

Research suggests that elderly individuals can greatly benefit from protein supplementation to ensure they get enough to support muscle maintenance. Suppose you don't eat and drink sufficiently to maintain your body weight balanced with how much energy you expend in day-to-day living, including physical activity.

In that case, you will lose muscle and probably bone. Paying attention to the overall calories you consume can help you maintain your muscle. While eating sufficient protein is essential, and heavy trainers like athletes might need a little more protein than those mentioned above, eating enough overall calories is probably even more critical.

Carbohydrates are essential for providing an anabolic muscle building stimulus in the body. If you don't get enough, you could lose muscle. Refueling after exercise is also essential. Taking in some protein and carbohydrates within an hour of your workout and sufficiently beyond that to refuel will help to ensure muscle maintenance and even growth as you get an insulin spike.

If you're an athlete, you need to determine an ideal weight for your activity, keep a watch on the scales—and other body fat monitors —and adjust your diet and exercise accordingly.

Highly active people will require much more calories than those who are sedentary. The type of training you do also plays a role in muscle maintenance.

As discussed above, weight-bearing exercise is vital. While fantastic for general health and disease prevention, cardiovascular exercise will not go as far in protecting your muscle mass. In fact, too much endurance exercise can lead to muscle loss as the body attempts to become lighter and more efficient to meet demands.

However, adding resistance training to your cardio exercise routine and vice versa can improve your ability to maintain muscle. The type of resistance training you do matters as well.

Focusing on hypertrophy style training, which is the kind that helps build muscle mass, also helps prevent muscle loss, even if you are in a calorie deficit. Lifting weights three or more times per week and training every body part at least twice a week is best.

You'll need to add volume and progressively overload your muscles to continue seeing growth or maintain muscle. Sleep is a time of rebuilding. Hormones like testosterone and human growth hormone set about rebuilding and repairing your body.

Restful sleep helps with this process, so make sure you get it. Relaxation is important too since emotional stress will induce catabolic stress hormones, which means more destruction of muscle if you're not careful.

As well, sleep helps provide enough energy for your workouts and encourages better eating choices. Moreover, recovery time is necessary for proper muscle growth and maintenance. In bodybuilding and weight training, people who don't naturally carry or easily enhance muscle are often called "hard gainers.

People with a lean rather than solid natural build are categorized scientifically as ectomorphs. The more muscled builds are mesomorphs. Those that carry more fat naturally might be endomorphs.

But don't panic, there are many shades in between, and you are not destined to a life of a skinny ectomorph, although ectomorphs are probably never going to be Mr. Universe, steroids aside.

Several factors determine how much muscle you have and how quickly and to what degree you lose it as you age. However, there are ways you can lower the risks of muscle loss by focusing on your diet, exercise, and lifestyle habits.

Muscle is essential for aging in an active, independent, and healthy way. Your chances of high quality of life and pain-free aging are much better if you preserve muscle. If you are concerned about muscle loss, ask your doctor for more advice. McLeod M, Breen L, Hamilton DL, Philp A.

Live strong and prosper: the importance of skeletal muscle strength for healthy ageing. McCormick R, Vasilaki A. Mutations build up over time in the cells, sometimes causing the production of defunct proteins, which makes those rubber bands overstretched or less snappy, Studenski says.

Faulty muscle proteins and mitochondria, along with some other changes with age, have been linked to the impairment of the connection between muscles and the nervous system, called the neuromuscular junction. This junction between motor nerves and muscle tissue is where brain signals are transmitted for muscle contraction and movement.

Issues in communication between nerves and muscles can create weakness and a decline in muscle mass. Changes in hormone levels are also linked to age-related muscle loss.

The gradual decrease in testosterone we experience as we age, for example, can lead to a decrease in the production of muscle proteins. Poor diet and malnutrition also influence muscle loss—generally, appetite and food intake tend to decrease with age.

Though natural aging plays a dominant role in sarcopenia, lack of physical activity also contributes to the loss of muscle mass. As people age, they tend to become less active, Gray says. Just a short break in muscle use can cause a reduction in muscle mass, even in younger people.

Proper diet and physical activity can combat some age-related muscle loss, Gray says. Maintaining muscle comes down to continued movement.

Research over the decades have shown that resistance training in older adults can help to increase muscle mass. Error Email field is required.

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By Mayo Clinic Staff. Related article Strength training: How-to video collection. Thank you for subscribing! Sorry something went wrong with your subscription Please, try again in a couple of minutes Retry. Show references AskMayoExpert. Physical activity adult. Mayo Clinic; Physical Activity Guidelines for Americans.

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Four types of exercise can improve your health and physical activity. National Institute on Aging. Real life benefits of exercise and physical activity.

Brown LE, ed. Types of strength and power training. In: Strength Training.

More on that regularity in the next section. You may already know that glycogen is an all-important storage form of carbohydrates in your muscle, used for energy in both aerobic and anaerobic performance. What you may not know is: Intracellular signaling responsible for the growth and retention of your muscle mass and the proteins that make them up is turned up when more glycogen is stored within the muscles.

If you are falling short of daily carbohydrate needs based on your training demands, you are likely incurring depleted glycogen stores. There are exceptions to this rule in cases of desired weight loss and very low-intensity aerobic type training, but they are few and far between.

Bear in mind that most wearable technology can be very erroneous in calorie burn estimates. One of the most detailed guides available regarding matching carb intake to daily training is the The RP Diet for Endurance caveat: I wrote that book.

Adequate and appropriate intra-workout and near-workout carbohydrate consumption results in the following:. Muscle retention is important to most of us, whether for health or performance reasons.

Maximizing muscle retention is straightforward nutritionally: eat enough protein, ideally including meat and dairy, but if not, ensuring reasonable amino acid profiles of your protein selections; consume protein often daily; match your daily calories in training with your daily carb intake; and do so in large part around and during the time of training.

The saying goes there are two certainties in life: death and taxes. But men should also add loss of muscle mass to the list. Age-related muscle loss, called sarcopenia, is a natural part of aging.

Less muscle means greater weakness and less mobility, both of which may increase your risk of falls and fractures. A report from the American Society for Bone and Mineral Research found that people with sarcopenia had 2.

But just because you lose muscle mass does not mean it is gone forever. Thomas W. Storer, director of the exercise physiology and physical function lab at Harvard-affiliated Brigham and Women's Hospital.

One possible contributor to sarcopenia is the natural decline of testosterone, the hormone that stimulates protein synthesis and muscle growth. Think of testosterone as the fuel for your muscle-building fire.

Some research has shown that supplemental testosterone can add lean body mass—that is, muscle—in older men, but there can be adverse effects. Plus, the FDA has not approved these supplements specifically for increasing muscle mass in men. Therefore, the best means to build muscle mass, no matter your age, is progressive resistance training PRT , says Dr.

With PRT, you gradually amp up your workout volume—weight, reps, and sets—as your strength and endurance improve. This constant challenging builds muscle and keeps you away from plateaus where you stop making gains.

See "Working on a PRT program. Your diet also plays a role in building muscle mass. Protein is the king of muscle food. The body breaks it down into amino acids, which it uses to build muscle.

However, older men often experience a phenomenon called anabolic resistance, which lowers their bodies' ability to break down and synthesize protein.

Therefore, as with PRT, if you are older, you need more. A recent study in the journal Nutrients suggests a daily intake of 1 to 1. For example, a pound man would need about 79 g to g a day.

If possible, divide your protein equally among your daily meals to maximize muscle protein synthesis. This is a high amount compared with the average diet, but there are many ways to get the extra protein you need.

Animal sources meat, eggs, and milk are considered the best, as they provide the proper ratios of all the essential amino acids. Yet, you want to stay away from red and processed meat because of high levels of saturated fat and additives. Instead, opt for healthier choices, such as.

How much protein do you need to maintain muscle? Less activity should mean fewer carbohydrates: "When your body's active, carbohydrates are used for energy along with fat ," says Bachus. When you're inactive, excess carbs are stored as fat. But remember, it's no biggie to gain a bit of fat. Try consuming approximately 15 to 25 grams of carbohydrates at each meal and snack, suggests Bachus.

Try these high-protein, low-carb foods nutritionists love. If you know you're going on vacation or foresee a jam-packed schedule next week, push yourself more this week — if you can. If you work harder than usual, your body will need more time to recover, allowing you to build muscle during your hiatus, says Hooper.

That said, don't break your back this week just because you forsee a break next week. Being so sore you can't walk isn't the best way to feel on vacation.

Plus, taking a break from working out isn't a bad thing. Exercise your imagination on your off days. In a Journal of Neurophysiology study, 29 subjects had a cast placed on their non-dominant arm for four weeks.

Half of the subjects imagined contracting their forearm muscles and flexing their wrists for five seconds without actually doing it , while the other half didn't do the mental imagery exercises.

At the end of the month, those who worked out with their imagination only lost 24 percent of their strength, compared to the 45 percent lost by the group who didn't do the mental exercise.

Manifestation works, folks! Use limited data to select advertising. Create profiles for personalised advertising.

For adults, they encourage strength training for the major muscle groups on two or more days a week. The benefits of strength training increase as you get older, says Fielding. Maintaining strength is essential for healthy aging.

In a recent study, Fielding and other researchers tested a three-month weight-lifting program in older adults who already had difficulty walking. At the end of the study, participants who lifted weights improved at tasks like repeatedly bending their knees. Such movements are essential for activities of daily living.

In contrast, study participants who only stretched at home did not see similar improvements in strength. Ciccolo is studying the effects of strength training on anxiety, depression, and related conditions. His team recently found that strength training could reduce some symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD in both women and men.

Endurance exercise may also help people with these problems, says Ciccolo. But some people might be more interested in strength training than aerobic activity.

How strength training may benefit mental health is still under study. It might help lower certain hormones in the body associated with stress and depression, Ciccolo explains. In addition, helping people get stronger may boost self-esteem and their sense of control over their lives.

Ciccolo is currently running a study to see if strength training can help relieve symptoms of depression in African American men. If you want to get started with strengthening exercises, what should you do? There are also many low- or no-cost classes available.

Look for them at local gyms, recreation centers, senior centers, and community centers. Others will be happy doing all their exercises in their home, by themselves.

See the Wise Choices box for more tips on getting started safely. What Are Frontotemporal Disorders? Easing Depression in Older Adults. Hydrating for Health. What Is Menopause? NIH Office of Communications and Public Liaison Building 31, Room 5B52 Bethesda, MD nihnewsinhealth od.

gov Tel: Editor: Harrison Wein, Ph. Managing Editor: Tianna Hicklin, Ph. Illustrator: Alan Defibaugh. Most of us know that strength training with free weights, weight machines, or resistance bands can help build and maintain muscle mass and strength. What many of us don't know is that strong muscles lead to strong bones.

And strong bones can help minimize the risk of fracture due to osteoporosis. Osteoporosis should be a concern for all of us. An estimated eight million women and two million men in the United States have osteoporosis.

It is now responsible for more than two million fractures each year, and experts expect that number will rise. Hip fractures are usually the most serious. Six out of 10 people who break a hip never fully regain their former level of independence.

Even walking across a room without help may become impossible. As bones grow more fragile and susceptible to fracture, they are more likely to break after even a minor fall or a far less obvious stress, such as bending over to tie a shoelace.