Aging naturally leads to a loss of muscle mass, often resulting in weakness, reduced mobility, and increased risk of falls and fractures. However, muscle loss isn’t inevitable—older adults can build lean body mass with the right exercise and diet strategies.
Therefore, contrary to what you may believe, building muscle isn’t just for the young, nor do you have to accept dramatic muscle loss as inevitable. To answer the question: Can Older Folks Build More Skeletal Muscle? Yes, absolutely, they can through a targeted combination of exercise and diet.
Why Muscle Mass Declines with Age
According to findings from the Baltimore Longitudinal Study of Aging, muscles tend to grow from birth until they peak at around 30-35 years old. From there, our muscle mass tends to slowly decline. Once we hit 65 (for women) or 70 (for men), the decline becomes more rapid.
The loss of muscle mass might affect your aesthetics and your general fitness. However, sarcopenia (age-related muscle loss) is especially important to mitigate because your muscle strength is often directly related to your bone health. The more muscle you have, the more support your bones have, which is especially important when considering common bone conditions among older adults like osteoarthritis. In fact, sarcopenia is also often linked to issues like falls and increased risks of bone fractures.
Strategies For Building Lean Muscle at Any Age
The good news is that, though your body might tend towards a natural decline in muscle mass and function as you age, there are plenty of steps that you can take to slow down the regression. You can even build lean muscle mass in your older years with the right diet and exercise regimens.
Embrace strength training
Resistance training is the most popular form of exercise for building muscle, and for good reason. When you do exercises under resistance (for example, weightlifting), your muscles are subject to significant amounts of stress and damage. When paired with the right diet and recovery processes, your immune system can begin to repair your muscles so that they grow back even bigger and stronger than they were before.
Strength training is one of the most effective habits to incorporate into your daily routine if you want to build lean body mass as an older adult. Studies have found that strength training can help older adults increase their muscle strength and mass, and the majority of the research recommend doing these workouts 3 or 4 times weekly.
A caveat here: if you’re new to strength training (or have not done it in a long time),it’s a good idea to work with a fitness professional like a personal trainer. These professionals can help guide you through your workout routines, perfecting your form and developing an effective workout schedule to help you build muscle while protecting you from potential injury.
Winning combination for building muscle : diet and strength training
Your diet is the other big piece of the puzzle for muscle growth. While doing resistance training starts the process, you can’t grow muscle without eating the right nutrients necessary to repair and rebuild.
Getting enough protein is especially important here. Protein is often referred to as the nutritional “building block” of your muscle tissue since it actually makes up its structure, so you’re going to need plenty of it to help your muscles recover from your strength training workouts.
Older people are especially likely to benefit from eating more protein. So how much protein should you be eating overall? According to the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) for protein, it’s a modest 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram body weight. Although, some studies have indicated greater intakes of 1.0-1.6 g/kg of body weight may help promote muscle strength and size.
As a registered dietitian, I agree recent studies that indicate older adults can benefit by including higher amounts of protein in their diet because they are losing skeletal muscle at a higher rate and they bodies don’t absorb protein as well. According to Dr. Lyons and other research, a good rule of thumb is to consume ~1 gram of protein per pound of your lean body weight or ideal body weight (IBW). For example: I am 5’7”, therefore, my IBW is 135 pounds. Thus, my goal is to consume 135 grams of protein per day. It’s highly individualized, because the exact amount of protein you should eat is based on your current health status, activity level and other factors.
Use nutritional supplements if necessary
Another big reason that older adults experience gradual muscle loss is that they tend to be at higher risk for nutrition insufficiencies. In certain cases, it might be helpful to add nutritional supplements to your diet to help bridge any nutritional gaps that aren’t being filled by food alone.
For example, leucine is an amino acid that is necessary for muscle growth, and researchers have found that leucine supplementation may help elderly people with sarcopenia put on muscle mass. Additionally, if you aren’t getting enough protein from your diet, protein supplementation may help you build muscle when paired with the right strength-training regimen.
Again, make sure to talk with your doctor before starting any supplements. They can help you identify any specific insufficiencies in your diet and help you come up with a targeted supplementation plan.
You don’t need to accept lower lean muscle mass despite your age. Elderly people are perfectly capable of building more muscle through diet and exercise, which can have a world of positive impacts on your health, independence, and overall vitality.
Source Cited: InBody: Can Older People Build Lean Body Mass?; June 4 2024
