As we age, our diet and lifestyle can cause our digestive system to become sluggish, producing less digestive acid and causing us to absorb less of the nutrients in the food we eat. When we digest more poorly we are ‘mal-absorbing’ the nutrients needed for overall energy, immune system function and muscle health. Essentially, we become malnourished.
When our body detects a lack of nutrients needed to run, it taps its own reserves, drawing on the protein stored in our muscles. This is the most common reason why we lose muscle mass with age. But this loss of muscle-mass is preventable. The article – 6 Things You Didn’t Know About Muscles and Aging, fby Rehaat Hegazi, M.D. – shares interesting insights on how to you retain your strength and muscle mass as you age.