Make a muscle
Old people—especially really old people in their upper 90s—who seem otherwise healthy, can become highly debilitated due to a mysterious wasting that happens to a great many of them as they approach advanced old age. It’s called sarcopenia, and although resistance training helps improve the situation, even active people experience it.
We all lose muscle as we get on in years. Many of us, after so many years of trying to lose weight and become trimmer, find that we suddenly start to waste away for no good reason, and gaining weight becomes the goal, especially muscle mass.
It happened to my mother when she hit 95 or so. Suddenly, after having maintained a healthy robust weight for most of her life, and seeming fairly strong, she lost ten pounds in a month or two. She wasn’t eating less, it was just that her body couldn’t use her food in the same way as before, and she suddenly became a bit thin. Then her weight stabilized for about six months, and then there was another sudden ten-pound drop.
It happened in increments like that. She didn’t seem to have any diseases, and she continued to eat, but in the last few months of her life—at 98—she lost her appetite, too. And that was that. Basically, she wasted away, and there was nothing to be done to reverse it, although many things were tried. It was as though her body didn’t want to take in sustenance any longer; it had had enough.
Note that I say it was her body that decided. What about her? What about her mind, her will? Many people suggested to me that she had made a conscious decision and that she didn’t want to live anymore. But knowing my mother as well as I did, and talking to her and observing her, it didn’t seem that way at all to me. Her body seemed to give up, not her.
I’ve seen it happen to other very old people I know, some of them relatives (although not related to my mother). For example, the first sign of it in my mother-in-law was when she had trouble getting out of a chair; her quadriceps just weren’t strong enough any more. She was only in her early 80s, and this was a woman who until just a few years earlier had either played tennis or jogged almost every day.
What happened? Her husband (my father-in-law) became ill with cancer, and during the two years between his diagnosis and his death she gave up all her exercise in order to keep him company and take care of him. Their main activity during that time was to watch TV together and talk, he in a recliner and she lying on a sofa near him.
It was very loving of her. But it contributed to a precipitous decline of her body, one that continued slowly but surely until her own death about eight years later, bedridden.
And so I read with interest the news that researchers may be on the way to discovering the key to keeping our muscles from wasting as we age:
We found that the body’s fuel gauge, AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK), is vital to slow muscle wasting with aging,” said Gregory Steinberg, the study’s senior author and professor of medicine at the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine…
“Mice lacking AMPK in their muscle developed much greater muscle weakness than we would have expected to see in a middle-aged mouse,” said Steinberg. “Instead these mice, which were the equivalent of being just 50 years old, had muscles like that of an inactive 100-year-old.”…
Despite the importance of maintaining muscle function and strength as we age, there is currently no treatment besides exercise. With an aging population, age-related muscle wasting and loss of muscle strength is a growing issue that shortens lives and creates a significant financial burden on the Canadian health care system.
And then there’s people like Jim Arrington. I’m not keen on bodybuilding as a sport, but this guy is extremely impressive, although he’s really a mere child at 82 in terms of the sort of extreme old age I’ve been talking about:
[NOTE: Arrington seems to have a bit of trouble walking. Maybe some sort of joint problem, perhaps arthritis, or a back problem? He also has something I’ve noticed in a lot of bodybuilders: disproportionately small calves. I don’t know if that’s because the calves are very hard to build up, or because the other muscles are so enormously developed that their calves look smaller in comparison.
As an ex-ballet-dancer, I have to say that disproportionately small calves are not my problem. That’s true for most dancers; ballet is one thing that really really builds strong calf muscles, and they tend to last a while after the dancer has hung up her pointe shoes.]
Calves don’t seem to respond to body building like other muscles. You either have them or you don’t. It takes a huge amount of effort to make them grow. Most guys don’t bother since we all know that it’s the biceps curls that gets the girls. . .
I once wrote a paper on this kind of thing and why it happens and why, despite the theories/wishful thinking of the left, we will never live to 200…
the 10 cent elevator pitch would be:
because life always has a start, and the end date of yoru life is unknown, there is infinitely more knowlege stored in youth. like a story that starts over and over again, the start is what gets refined more than the end… this brings about the subject of another paper, a mathematical description of evolutionary principal that lays out “beneficience sorting”. that is, life tries to evolve the better things to the proper time in life to be most beneficient, favoring younger till the tide turns on beneficience, and having bad occur later… pushing it off past death… the problem is that we live long enough that now we live to experience these things pushed off till later…
its some incredible work.
but no one is interested…
they took my money away to make room for women, so i did not go to college after going to bronx science a year early and having a 175+ IQ, which today means nothing too.
so the desk full of designs, papers, and so on will be in the trash soon… my aspergers prohibits my abilty to earn tnough to be seen in normal peoples eyes as having worth to even be listened to.
ok.. now for the negative people to chime in on me that its too long, cant be right, stop whining, etc…
enjoy…
My wife, who was a ballerina in her youth, has very prominent calves. She has maintained her beautiful shapely legs as she approaches 69.
One of the best uses of $500 I ever invested was working with a trainer following yet another neck/nerve injury. I was concerned about re-injury in going back to my exercise routine. This particular woman has an amazing gift of assessing issues and providing exercises that meet needs and avoid problems. In working w/her I discovered something named “clumsy child syndrome”, a problem I apparently have had for life. My parents enrolled me in ballet at a young age because I was always falling or walking into walls! I was very active and therefore had perpetual scabs on my knees; jump rope, bike riding, ice-skating, ballet, tennis, etc etc. Well at age 51, working with Hiam, I found out balance is something that can be worked on and improved upon. The exercises she gave me, not only help me in the area of maintaining muscle mass and weight control, but have contributed to improving my balance. I firmly believe that if I had not discovered this, the possibility of bone-damaging problems in my old age would be very likely. As it is, I took a terrible fall in my office last Friday while playing with my dog, smashing my tailbone to the floor, followed by the back of my head hitting the ground. Amazingly, I am only suffering from a bruised tailbone. For a person with neck/nerve problems stemming from a childhood diving injury, it is miraculous. Hiam’s exercises (plus Thank you, God) I believe kept me from harm.
Good news! “Calves don’t seem to respond to body building like other muscles. You either have them or you don’t.”
Now if I could just get the rest of my body to fall in line with my shapely calves.
Bovine or cetacean calves??
Something similar happened to my late mother in the last year of her life, she rather suddenly got thin
Neo said:
” Arrington seems to have a bit of trouble walking. Maybe some sort of joint problem, perhaps arthritis, or a back problem?”
The clumsy wide gait suggests a neurological problem. Peripheral neuropathy with decreased sensation and proprioception is very common in elderly people. If that is the problem, the fact that he has managed to overcome the disability enough to display the superb physique for age is a tribute to his courage and perseverance.
The calves are normally used to accelerate or de accelerate the body, in a vertical or horizontal vector. As such, H2H fighters and dancers would get more use out of that than isolation training would.
What is the number of one legged piston squats from a sitting crouch, at these MuscleBeaches?
Things like walking up and down hills, hiking through broken terrain up and down elevation, also utilizes small control muscles in the legs that people normally don’t use. Except maybe in horse riding, which is something that has also fallen out of the survival trick bag of humanity.
Attitude and unity of spirit mind and body, plus dna and diet are what matters. My maternal grandmother lived to be 108, she died in her sleep 2 nights after her last birthday.
I have noticed that serious cyclists seem to have well developed calves.
“Arrington seems to have a bit of trouble walking. Maybe some sort of joint problem, perhaps arthritis, or a back problem?”
My guess would be the Speedo is putting way too much pressure on his 82 year-old nuts.
In any case, I’m sure Mr. Arrington is no stranger to moderate hormone supplements in addition to his rigorous exercise routine and strict diet.
Good for Jim Arrington. The discipline required to look like that at 82 is enormous. My last body building show was at age 67 and I was not as ripped as he is. Since I’m 82 and far from ever looking that good again, I’m quite envious.
As to muscle wasting. It is true that exercise is the best medicine found yet. Two years ago I read “Starting Strength” by Mark Rippetoe. Unlike other popular exercise protocols, Starting Strength is a training system — a long-term process designed for getting stronger over time, not a random collection of exercises that just make you hot, sweaty, sore, confused, and tired today. It also does not get you ripped and defined. The object is to force your body to adapt to gradually increasing weight. Amazingly, it will adapt, if you go slow and eat enough. As you age being stronger gives you a reserve of muscle against the eventual dreaded muscle wasting.
All that said, I’m sure that each person reaches a point where inherited genes reach their limit. So, strength training is not going to allow you to live longer – only more functionally for your later years. At least that’s the belief, and I’m giving it my best shot.
My grandfather lost his sight and ability to read at 85. Reading was his passion. Although he was healthy for his age, he died within six months. It seemed that he willed himself to depart this life. So, mental attitude may well play a part in ultimate longevity.
I have some doubts about bodybuilders. The various drugs, diets, and supplements used to manage pain and build muscles cause me to question… much. I have known three, very well, well enough to see into their world. If they are competitive, they dope… one way or another. Some of it is worse, some better, but on the margins. This guy? I suspect he has just found a formula that hasn’t killed him. Yet.
Raise your heels off the floor at the end of your overhead presses!
Professional cyclists have large calves because they claw the pedals around by flexing their ankles, instead of just pumping down.
Funny, just the other day at the gym, the guys who are dating ballet dancers were commenting on their disproportinately . . . .
Ira:
I always ask my dates to feel my calves 🙂 .