Keep Your Muscles Healthy, Even as You Age
10 Anti-Aging Foods to Support Your 40s-and-Beyond Body Prevention.
Maybe you’re already feeling the effects of gravity. You weigh less than you did in your 20s, and if you haven’t lost a lot of weight lately, maybe you’re starting to notice muscle loss, because you’re not lifting enough. That’s common. Osteoporosis is on the rise, too. No matter your age, losing 10 percent to 30 percent of your body weight is an effective weight loss strategy.
If you notice muscle loss or have trouble standing up after exercise, a new analysis of existing studies shows that simply mixing in healthy fat (which has been shown to provide lean tissue with supportive lipid molecules that keep muscles healthy) may improve your resilience to harmful muscle loss and stave off a “time bomb” of osteoporosis and other metabolic problems down the road. The study, published in Cell Metabolism, found that adding solid fats to a diet boosted the chemical levels of growth factors, which are essential for muscle maintenance.
On your own, experts generally suggest eating at least two daily grams of healthy fat—legumes, nuts, and olive oil are particularly good sources—as well as fish, yogurt, and a number of plant-based, low-fat dairy products.
“Adding unsaturated fats can help maintain the integrity of the matrix,” says Mark Mathis, M.D., a geriatrician and associate professor of medicine at University of California, San Francisco and chairman of the Veterans Affairs Chronic Heart Failure Consortium. “The matrices [include proteins, amino acids, and lipids] prevent the breakdown of muscle fibers and muscle tissue.”
Often referred to as a “second skin,” this matrix is made up of fibrous tissues, which are naturally protecting the bones. The area just below your skin contains cartilage, fat, muscle, and connective tissue, and these multifaceted structures have muscles (think: when the skin feels tight, this area sends a message to the body that you’re in trouble), which send a signal to your brain that you’re getting older, says Ayala W, F.A.S.P., medical director of the Santa Monica Rehabilitation Center in Santa Monica, California.
As a result, your body wants to manufacture more of these vital fibers and stores excess fat as a way to protect these materials from injury. But, before long, your body begins to accumulate excess fat as it loses muscle. More weight is put on top of already-thin muscles and, in the process, you build more fat on your belly, explains Glenn Harper, Ph.D., founder of the Latin American Research Institute in Montreal, Quebec.
This storage of excess fat can occur for a variety of reasons, the most common of which is a hormonal imbalance in which hormone levels rise but insulin levels fall. This puts extra strain on your muscles, causing blood sugar spikes and diabetes. Once you’ve already piled on pounds, Harper says, your metabolism will take a slight hit due to these hormonal changes.
Those are a few of the many reasons to stay as healthy as possible throughout your 40s and beyond.
“And if you’re already getting old, we recommend you eat foods like fish, nuts, seeds, yogurt, and vegetables that are lower in saturated fats and high in fiber,” Mathis adds.
