Strength training key to long life? Weak muscles ‘could be the new smoking’ when it comes to healthy aging

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Do you want to feel younger? New research from the University of Michigan suggests you might want to invest in some weights and start a course of strength training. According to a recent study, weak muscles may be just as influential on your long-term health as smoking cigarettes.

Not everyone ages at the same rate. Consider two adults, both in their 60s. While those two people may share the same chronological ageone can be much younger than a biological aging perspective. Aging is influenced by much more than the days crossed out on the calendar; Genetic, environmental and behavioral factors also play a role. Poor lifestyle choices, such as avoiding exercise, an unhealthy diet, and smoking, are thought to accelerate biological development. aging processes. Dealing with serious illness can also age the body at a rapid rate.

In short, your body may be aging at a much faster rate than the date of birth on your driver’s license suggests. Now, for the first time, the UM team reports that muscle weakness marked by grip strength, an indicator of general strength capacity, is related to accelerated biological age. According to the findings, the the weaker your grip strengththe older your biological age will be.

‘Strong evidence for the link between muscle weakness and acceleration in biological age’

The Michigan Medicine team modeled the relationship between biological age and grip strength among 1,274 participants, all of whom were middle-aged or older adults. This was achieved through three “age-speeding clocks” based on DNA methylation, a process that provides a molecular biomarker and estimator of the rate of ageing. Those watches were originally designed from previous studies focused on a variety of ailments including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, physical disability, Alzheimer diseaseinflammation and early mortality.

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Further results revealed that both older men and women show an association between lower grip strength and biological age acceleration in DNA methylation clocks.

“We knew that muscle strength predicts longevity and that frailty is a powerful predictor of disease and mortality, but for the first time we have found strong evidence of a biological link between muscle weakness and actual acceleration of biological life. age,” says the lead author of the study. brand petersonassociate professor of physical medicine and rehabilitation at the University of Michigan, in a college throw. “This suggests that if you maintain muscle strength throughout life, you may be able to protect yourself against many common diseases. age related diseases. We know that smoking, for example, can be a powerful predictor of disease and mortality, but now we know that muscle weakness could be the new of smoking.”

One of the greatest strengths of this project was the eight to 10 years of observation carried out. The results show that lower grip strength predicted faster biological aging measured up to a decade later, according to study co-author Jessica Faul, a research associate professor at the UM Institute for Social Research.

Previous studies have suggested that low grip strength appears to be a strong predictor of negative health events in general. One project reported that it is a better predictor of cardiovascular events, such as myocardial infarction, than systolic blood pressure, which is considered the clinical hallmark for detecting cardiac disorders. Prof. Peterson and his team have even previously discovered a strong association between muscle weakness and chronic disease / mortality across population samples.

This previous work, combined with these latest findings, suggests that there is great potential for clinicians to adopt the use of grip strength as a means of detecting accelerated biological aging. This can help identify those who may be at high future risk for functional decline, chronic disease, and even early mortality.

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“Assessment of grip strength would provide the opportunity to design interventions to delay or prevent the onset or progression of these ‘age-related’ adverse health events,” he adds. “We have been pushing for doctors to start using grip strength in their clinics and only in geriatrics has this type been incorporated. However, not many people use it, although we have seen hundreds of posts showing that grip strength is a very good measure of health.”

Could strength training prevent “inflammation”?

In the future, more research is needed to better understand the association between grip strength and age acceleration, for example, how inflammatory conditions may contribute to age-related weakness and mortality. Previous studies tell us that chronic inflammation in aging, or “inflammation,” is a strong risk factor for mortality in older adults. That same type of inflammation is also linked to lower grip strength, and may serve as a significant predictor on the pathway between lower grip strength and disability/chronic disease multimorbidity.

Furthermore, future studies should focus more on how lifestyle and behavioral factors, such as exercise and diet, can influence both grip strength and age acceleration, adds Professor Peterson.

“Healthy dietary habits are very important, but I believe that regular exercise is the most important thing someone can do to maintain health throughout life,” he concludes. “We can show it with a biomarker like DNA methylation age, and we can also test it with a clinical characteristic like grip strength.”

the to study is published in Journal of Sarcopenia and Muscle Cachexia.