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April 4, 2005
Build Muscle Mass with Effective Interval Workouts
Your age doesn't have to dictate your level of fitness or your muscle mass. Sure, if you don't challenge your muscles they will shrink. Without effective exercise, you lose about 3 pounds of muscle every decade after age 30, but you can maintain 100 percent of your youthful muscle mass if you do the right exercises.
Why bother? Because healthy muscle is essential. Your muscle mass is intimately connected to your metabolism in many ways:
Muscle helps you fight fatigue, sexual dysfunction, chronic illness, sagging skin, and bone fractures.
Muscles help increase your metabolic rate, which leaves you less susceptible to fat gain.
Muscles provide energy by storing glycogen.
Conditioned muscles strengthen the immune system, decreasing your risk of developing disease.
Muscles help maintain glucose balance.
Muscle allows you to perform the activities of daily living. Loss of muscle is a major cause of nursing home institutionalization among elderly Americans.
Many people fail to appreciate the continuing need for muscle. If you believe that once you’ve reached your 60s, 70s or beyond muscle is no longer important, think again! An ongoing study known as the Evergreen Project is studying the effects of muscle on the aging process. The study includes men and women between the ages of 65 and 94. The researchers have already found that those participants with greater muscle mass have better mental function, fewer chronic illnesses, and live longer.
To read more about this topic order Al Sears MD’s The Doctor’s Heart Cure today.
Posted by james at April 4, 2005 4:43 AM