Targeting Anabolic Impairment in Response to Resistance Exercise in Older Adults with Mobility Impairments: Potential Mechanisms and Rehabilitation Approaches.
Older adults are particularly susceptible to accelerated muscle loss, following physical inactivity or surgery. This is followed by a non-optimal muscle recovery. Although older skeletal muscle is clearly capable of improving with resistance training, the capacity to respond is reduced, resulting in smaller muscle strength gains when compared to younger subjects. The focus of this review was to highlight the blunted anabolic response to resistance exercise observed in older adults. Moreover potential mechanisms for this response are discussed.
Maintenance of skeletal muscle is fine-tuned by a balance of proteins that are synthesized and broken down. A chronic daily imbalance in the ratio of protein synthesis/breakdown rate will either to lead to gains or losses in muscle mass and strength. Older adult skeletal muscle has a diminished capacity to respond anabolically to a single bout of resistance exercise. The anabolic response to resistance exercise in older adults may be enhanced with the ingestion of protein and/or essential amino acids.
Identifying strategies to improve anabolic sensitivity to resistance exercise is of upmost importance in older adults who are healing from injury or surgery as these are important target populations in which muscle growth may be further compromised. > From: Drummond et al., J Aging Res (2012) (Epub ahead of print). All rights reserved to Micah J. Drummond et al. Published under the Creative Commons Attribution License.
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