Angela Haupt in Time Magazine:
For decades, muscle has been treated as something to sculpt, strengthen, or show off. Dr. Gabrielle Lyon wants people to think of it differently: as one of the body’s most important organs—and one of the strongest predictors of how well we’ll age. In 2015, as a fellow in nutritional sciences and geriatrics at Washington University in St. Louis, Lyon cared for older adults with dementia and studied the relationship between body composition and brain function. She became convinced that medicine had spent decades asking the wrong question. Instead of focusing primarily on body fat, she came to believe, doctors and researchers should pay closer attention to the health of people’s muscles.
Lyon’s 2023 book Forever Strong: A New, Science-Based Strategy for Aging Well argues that muscle is “the organ of longevity”—not a vanity project but a metabolic powerhouse. When you contract it, she says, muscle secretes peptide hormones called myokines that communicate with the brain, liver, and pancreas. “It creates a whole-body cross talk,” she says. “It’s amazing.”
More here.
Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.