A British researcher won a prize for work that may help reverse the muscle loss that leaves many senior citizens with too-thin limbs.
The Blue Riband Award was presented in Dublin, Ireland, by The Physiological Society to Beth Phillips for confirming leg blood flow in the elderly slowed after eating, but weight-training helped reduce this effect.
She found that three sessions a week over 20 weeks ‘rejuvenated’ the leg blood flow responses of the older people. They became identical to those in the young,
Michael Rennie, who worked with Dr. Emilie Wilkes, Phillips and colleagues at the University of Nottingham in England, said in a statement.
The researchers traced muscle breakdown to the double whammy
of not building enough muscle using food protein and of not shutting down insulin production after meals. They linked both to nutrient and hormone delivery failures due to poorer blood supply.
Our team is making good headway in finding more and more out about what causes the loss of muscle with age,
Rennie said in a statement. It looks like we have good clues about how to lessen it with weight training and possibly other ways to increase blood flow.
The findings are published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
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