Fitness School
Do you know the right answer?.
Question number 37 in our School of Fitness.
Yes, it is once again time for you to put your thinking cap on before you proceed without hesitation through the hallway of healthy fit wonders and science :).
You already know that keeping fit and lifting your weekly weights and doing your daily cardio is nothing but a rejuvenating choice. It's good for your strength, duh.. It is wondrously good for your harty heart health, and it aids your cognitive and creative processes. It scientifically speaking lowers depression and tardy drowsiness. And if you have been keeping up with me over the years, you also know that keeping fit on a regular weekly basis also lowers your physical age by quite a noticeable margin too.
But even small ordinary things like taking a daily walk carries with it a huge life long health and fitness impact.
My Question:.
What happens with our skeletal lean muscle mass for people above 70 years of age if they take a few thousand steps more or less per day for 2 weeks time?.
Read on to reveal just how big the impact of that tiny change can be below the break.
2050AD.the selfish
choices of humanity
[ Oceans run the risk of having more total weight of plastic than fish.]

Make up your mind, and once you have made your pick click the "And the Correct Answer is" label down below to reveal the right one.
1.
Reducing daily steps from 6000 to roughly 1500 steps per day lowered skeletal muscle mass with roughly 400g in just 2 weeks in healthy 70+ year olds (and roughly the same kind of impact will happen in other age groups too).
2.
The part above regarding the daily step count is 100% correct.
And on top of that, lifting weights and doing cardio during cancer treatment has been proven in multiple studies last few years to combat both the substantial biological aging that happens during cancer treatments, as well as the general drowsiness that patients can experience years after a successful treatment. And best of all, lifting challenging weights offsets the cognitive decline in both neural capacity as well as actual gray matter mass. And cardiovascular health greatly improves in people that keep healthy fit through their lifespan no matter if you are doing cardio and or just lifting weights.
Add to this that people that lift challenging weights on a weekly basis end up with healthier joints and skeletal mass, and no matter point in their respective lifespan, people that lift weights will hold on to a substantially higher fat-free body mass, ie: muscle mass. Which in itself is a tremendous aid for a healthy lifespan, you see the more capable your muscle mass is, the better your everyday balance will be, and your skeletal system itself will much less prone to injuries no matter if we are talking about your neck and spine or your thigh bones, hips, legs, and arms.
More lean muscle mass also provides you with more daily energy and life lust, lower amounts of depression and tiredness. A higher sexual drive.
And in general a lot less body fat accumulation over the years. As if this is not enough, your entire body will also become a much more capable body when it comes down to how it actually use up the food and nutrition that you do consume.
But more than anything, lifting challenging weights keeps you healthier.
All life long.
Even your blood vessels and cells end up sturdier, healthier and more fit. And one such hidden benefit of working out, no matter your age, is the maintained ability to flush out damaged cells. And the accumulation of damaged cells over the course of our life is one of the biggest drivers of "age", so being able to maintain healthier cells by working out in a challenging way is truly a rejuvenating task and remedy all by itself.
2018´s been a huge year for uncovering fitness-related health benefits. Study after study has shown up to peel off new and old layers in our knowledge and understanding for how profoundly we shape our own life long health right in the now and for decades to come with the fitness & food choices we make or skip.
We have for instance already uncovered in previous questions, how you will achieve as much as a 70% reduced risk for cardiovascular mortality if you lift weights on a regular weekly basis. And prior to that we´ve talked about cancer treatments and how people that start or maintain their fitness plan during treatment will completely hold off the huge biological aging that cancer treatments otherwise give rise too.
We have last few years seen several studies reveal how the physical mass of our brain increases with weight lifting while sedentary choices will make it shrink. Other studies have shown us how people end up much more creative and energized if they work out compared to how drowsy people feel when they make sedentary choices. In other words, making it clear that people that feel too tired to start going to the gym are making themselves even more tired by not working out.
But not every study has to be brand new, so before I ended up writing this Q and A, I decided to go back in time a few years and see if I could find something else that would mesh well with recent studies and help us showcase the huge benefit of daily physical activity.
The end result was that I found this study from 2013 which showcased how people will drop 400g of lean skeletal muscle mass in just 2 weeks time just from reducing their daily step count.
Hence this fitness school question from 'Norse view'.
However.
It is important to make note of one thing.
While the volume of our physical fitness activities does matter, the health & fitness outcome is not just about volume.
Be it the number of steps you walk per day or the act of showing up at the gym and lift "any" weight. People that do not just show up to train, but also take it one step further by actually challenging themselves in the gym eventually reap much more health and fitness benefits.
And this simple cause & effect got nothing to do with age or gender.
So, do not forget the intensity & challenge of your fitness time too.
Like with food, the fitness and health outcome from our physical activities is about quality as much as the amount.
And for elderly people, the sad truth is that quite a lot of elderly gym goers simply put do not challenge themselves hard enough to get the very real benefits they are capable of getting.
> Part of the blame for that comes down to how a lot of gym trainers and coaches, pt´s and physical therapists are too afraid to tell elderly people that they too have to actually strain their muscles and heart to get the very real health benefits they desire.
The relevant study regarding daily step counts and muscle. "Two Weeks of Reduced Activity Decreases Leg Lean Mass and Induces Anabolic Resistance of Myofibrillar Protein Synthesis was published in Healthy Elderly" 2013;98:2604–2612., and you can find the link down below.
Quote
" Alterations in muscle protein metabolism underlie age-related muscle atrophy. During periods of muscle disuse, muscle protein synthesis is blunted, and muscle atrophy occurs in young and old.
Keep on grinding people, and stay healthy fit.
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