The Stronger After 40 Newsletter is here!
The Live Better Letter Preventing Sarcopenia, The Epidemic That Disables By Dr. Joe Arnould Almost all American adults realize now that obesity, the accumulation of excessive body fat, is a relentlessly rising epidemic that leads to many life-limiting diseases. In contrast, very few of us are yet aware of sarcopenia, an excessive loss of muscle mass throughout adulthood, an equally insidious degenerative process that causes as much premature disability and disease as obesity. As early as the 1970s, researchers had determined that an average American adult was gaining 1½ pounds of fat per year and, simultaneously, losing approximately ½ pound of lean body mass, primarily muscle tissue. In the thirty years since, research and public attention have been focused almost exclusively upon obesity, probably because fat weight gains are visibly more obvious than are muscle mass losses. As a result of intensive research, we now have expanded knowledge of obesity and its severely detrimental health consequences, such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease, strokes, and cancer. In spite of this knowledge, however, Americans are still becoming unhealthfully fat with increasing frequency. A major reason for this rising epidemic is that we have failed to understand that sarcopenia is one of its major causes. What is Sarcopenia? The word sarcopenia is derived from the Greek words sarco, meaning flesh or muscle, and penia meaning lack of or deficiency. Hence, sarcopenia is a gradual wasting of muscle tissue that for most Americans begins shortly after age 20 and continues for the rest of life. By age 75, a typical American has lost twenty to thirty pounds of the total muscle he or she had at age 25. An individual whose body undergoes this degree of atrophy no longer has sufficient muscle mass to maintain good health or to perform the essential physical acts of his or her life.Why Does Sarcopenia Occur? During the past 25 years, studies of the causes, effects, and prevention of sarcopenia have been ongoing at the Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University. Research there has shown that some muscle loss in adults can be attributed to normal aspects of aging, such as the gradual decline in the amounts of testosterone and growth hormone that our bodies produce as we age. However, by far the greatest amount of muscle loss in adults occurs because of insufficient physical exercise. What is more, these studies demonstrate conclusively that adults of all ages can regain muscle mass if they engage themselves in vigorous physical activity. In one famous study, a group of nursing home residents aged 88 to 96 showed significant muscle mass and strength gains after a four month strength training program. The conclusion: sarcopenia is not a normal part of the aging process; rather, it is the accelerated loss of muscle due to insufficient physical activity. A brief sketch of history reveals why sarcopenia became an epidemic in the last half of the 20th century and continues to proliferate in the 21st. From the origins of our species, human beings have had to exert themselves physically in order to survive. Although the development of agriculture, domestication of animals, and invention of airtight pottery allowed our ancestors to become farmers and escape the rigors of nomadic life, daily physical exertion was still the norm. Even after the Industrial Revolution, most people had to perform hard physical work nearly every day. Then came the 20th Century in which the physical demands of daily life were rapidly replaced by automation. Within a few generations, most people in developed civilizations, especially in the United States, no longer had to perform any demanding physical work in order to survive. Unfortunately, this is precisely what most of us do every day: almost nothing that requires vigorous physical exertion. However, although we can prosper financially without exerting ourselves physically in contemporary civilization, our bodies still require the stimulation of physical exertion to become and remain healthy. We have virtually the same bodies as our nomadic ancestors. Challenging physical activity is a primary way in which our bodies renew themselves each day. Our cardiovascular systems become more efficient if we take a brisk walk every day. Our muscular and skeletal systems become stronger if we contract and stretch our muscles vigorously and regularly. In short, the old saying "Use it or lose it" is absolutely true. If we do not challenge our muscles regularly throughout our adult lives, they will shrivel up, we will be disabled from participating in the activities we enjoy most, and sarcopenia will dominate us. Why is Sarcopenia Significant? For several reasons, sarcopenia is a serious threat to our health, both individually and collectively. First, a typical American adult who loses fifteen or twenty pounds of muscle by age 55 or 60 no longer has sufficient total muscle mass to sustain the needs of the other organ systems of his or her body. For example, because our muscles are always physiologically active and generate heat, they are essential to controlling body temperature. If you lose a significant amount of muscle, your ability to stay warm is greatly diminished. This is why frail residents of nursing homes cannot tolerate cool temperatures or air conditioning. A second example of an essential function of muscle tissue is to help in the regulation of blood sugar levels. The primary sites for the uptake of insulin, the hormone that regulates our blood sugar levels, is in our muscles. A steep decline in muscle mass diminishes one’s sensitivity to insulin. This triggers a demand for increased insulin production which, in turn, causes a premature degeneration of the cells in the pancreas that secrete this hormone. This degeneration leads to adult-onset diabetes. Another major consequence of sarcopenia is the acceleration of obesity. Because muscle tissue is always metabolically active, even while we are at rest, each pound of muscle we have burns calories every day, primarily from our fat stores. Although, physiologists are still not certain how much energy each pound of muscle uses at rest daily, it is probably at least 10 kilocalories. Therefore, if you lose ten pounds of muscle mass by age 45, as a typical American does, your basal metabolic rate (BMR), the rate at which your body burns calories each day, declines by approximately 100 calories. If you do not increase your exercise activity or decrease your food consumption by an equivalent amount day after day and year after year, you will store most of this unused energy as fat. In this way, sarcopenia plays a major role in the American obesity epidemic. As tragic as the preceding consequences of sarcopenia are, there is another even more detrimental result of muscle wasting due to physical inactivity: functional disability. If you lose fifteen or twenty-five pounds of muscle as you age, you will experience an accelerated decline in your ability to perform the required and desired physical acts of your daily life. Much sooner than you should, you will lose the ability to walk up and down stairs, to get into and out of your car, and to get up and down from a toilet without assistance. Sarcopenia is the most important cause of premature frailty and disability. If instead you exercise daily throughout adulthood to gain and retain your muscle mass and strength, you will approach your personal potential to be active and independent for as long in your life as possible. Beyond individual motives for maintaining our muscle mass as we age, there are socioeconomic reasons why each of us should do our best to conquer the preventable disease of sarcopenia. By building and maintaining our strength and health continuously, we will be able to take care of ourselves and live independently in our own homes for as long as possible. Not only will we enjoy these additional years of freedom, we will require less of the intensive types of expensive institutional care that are necessary for those of us who are disabled. This will conserve the finite amount of healthcare services and dollars available to all of us. At present, the cost of treating the preventable conditions of sarcopenia, obesity, and the diseases they precipitate are overwhelming our healthcare system. Even as the richest nation in the world, if 2/3 of our adult population is obese or overweight and afflicted with sarcopenia and/or diabetes, we will not be able to afford adequate healthcare for all of our citizens who need it. Although more than 40 million people in the US are without health insurance, we do not have a health insurance crises. What we really have is a health crisis, as evidenced by the twin epidemics of obesity and sarcopenia. How Can Sarcopenia Be Prevented? This is the easy part. Studies performed at Tufts over the past two decades have demonstrated conclusively that a vigorous muscle-building exercise program can not only prevent the loss of ½ pound of muscle per year, but also reverse some or all of the losses from previous years of inactivity. In other words, sarcopenia is an epidemic that can be reversed by engaging in a well-organized and well-executed strength training program. An investment of 30 to 60 minutes in vigorous exercise of all types every day can allow each of us to approach our individual potential for health excellence. As well, it will allow our society to devote more of our limited healthcare resources to those of us who are afflicted with less preventable diseases. Let’s do it! Dr. Josef Arnould is the author of Stronger After 40: A Comprehensive Guide to Strength Training for Adults. For more information, please visit www.StrongerAfter40.com.
4/16/2007 2:09:08 PM
A Recent News Release - May 2006:
"We Can Conquer the Health Insurance Crisis...
...if we are willing to admit what the true cause is and if we are willing to correct it." So says Dr. Josef Arnould, author of Stronger After 40, a newly released book on exercise healthcare.
Forty million Americans have no health insurance, millions more have inadequate coverage, and Medicare—our only current form of national health insurance—is headed into a deficit so deep that the financial prosperity of our nation is imperiled. "But," states Dr. Arnould, "the primary cause is not greedy insurance companies, chintzy employers, or inept government. The cause is us. We have allowed ourselves to become so severely unhealthy that the extensive medical services we now require are more expensive than even the richest nation in the world can afford. Our present health insurance problem is merely a result. The crisis is our poor health."
The strongest evidence that we are severely unhealthy is the prevalence of obesity. Two out of three American adults are obese or significantly overweight, a ratio that has been rising for decades. Secondly, we suffer from sarcopenia—the premature loss of muscle mass and strength due to insufficient physical exertion—which accelerates obesity and causes massive physical disability. As a result of these two disease processes, a typical adult loses about 1/2 pound of muscle and gains 1 1/2 pounds of fat each year. Between the ages of 25 and 55, an average American loses 15 pounds of muscle and gains 45 pounds of fat. The combined effect to these two diseases is devastating. Obesity causes and/or complicates many other deadly diseases—such as diabetes, heart disease, strokes, and cancer—which are usually disabling and always expensive to treat. Sarcopenia not only increases the rate of obesity, it destroys our functional health—the ability to perform the necessary and desired physical acts of our lives. Due to sarcopenia, many of us who are only in our 50s have become highly dependent upon others to help us dress, bathe, clean our homes, and walk.
Ironically, it is well-known that obesity and sarcopenia are preventable and reversible for most people who exercise vigorously and regularly and who eat nutritious foods. Unfortunately, thus far a majority of us have not been willing to take these two steps toward excellent health. Most of us have been counting on the discovery of a new miracle drug or another genetic breakthrough to save our health and make unlimited health insurance affordable again. The reality is that no matter how many drug and genetic advances are made in coming decades, they will be very expensive to achieve and they will not provide complete health. If we do not exercise more vigorously and eat more nutritiously than we do at present, no scientific miracle and no form of health insurance will meet our basic health needs, let alone enable us to attain the health excellence we all desire. On the other hand, if a greater percentage of us begin to exercise daily and to eat well, we can reverse the rates of obesity and sarcopenia, reduce our dependence upon expensive medical care, become healthier and more independent citizens, and be able to afford insurance coverage for those health conditions that cannot easily be prevented.
Enter Stronger After 40, in which Dr. Arnould lays out a comprehensive plan to rebuild muscle mass and strength, condition the cardiovascular system, and eat nutritiously to reverse the epidemics of obesity and sarcopenia. Rather than a mere hypothesis, this program is based upon the actual adult exercise system that Dr. Arnould and his colleagues have developed and implemented over the past two decades in their clinic in Northampton, Massachusetts. Stronger After 40 not only contains more than 400 pages of detailed directions and pictures of exercises, but also another 200 pages of essential information for every adult who wants to exercise safely and effectively to achieve excellent health for life. More than any other book in the health and fitness field, this work helps us to understand how profoundly our health is dependent upon the stimulation of exercise, how we can enjoy exercise so much that we will want to continue to do it throughout life, and how we can conquer the current health crisis in order to make healthcare services and health insurance available to everyone.
Stronger After 40 can be ordered from the Strength for Life® Health and Fitness Center, 225R King Street, Northampton, MA 01060: call (413) 586-4400; fax (413) 584-2221; or online here. The price is $69.95 plus $5 shipping per book.
Dr. Josef Arnould has practiced chiropractic in Northampton, Massachusetts for more than 20 years. He has devoted himself to teaching patients and others how to exercise effectively and enjoyably in order to fulfill their needs and desires. Seven days each week he can be located in the early morning as he enjoys exercising with his fellow and sister trainees.
Book Statistics |
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| Title: | Stronger After 40 |
| Subtitle: | Strength Training As Healthcare for Women and Men in the 21st Century |
| Author: | Josef Arnould, D.C. |
| ISBN: | 0-9753188-0-2 |
| LCCN: | 2005909968 |
| Category: | Health and Fitness |
| Length: | 620 Pages |
| Retail Price: | $69.95 |
| Binding: | 8.5 x 11 trade hardbound |
| Illustrations: | Original photographs and anatomical drawings |
