In this special issue focused on the leading edge of scientific research into all things muscle, one key fact stuck out as I read through the interesting stories it contains. One of this issue's feature articles, “How Muscles Age, and How Exercise Can Slow It,” begins with researchers Gillian Butler-Browne, Vincent Mouly, Anne Bigot, and Capucine Trollet writing, “To you readers over age 30, we’ve got some bad news for you. Chances are good you’ve already begun losing muscle.”
This is a reality that my 40+-year-old body registered long before I read that passage. Nonetheless, seeing it spelled out in front of my face drove home the depressing point all the way to the depths of my withering sarcomeres. Butler-Browne and her coauthors do give us a ray of hope, detailing exercise’s ability to halt or reverse this trend, even in people older than 70.
This gradual wearing down of ...
