Is Muscle the Key to Overall Health? Exploring the Importance of Muscle Strength and Function

Muscle-centric medicine is a new study devoted to discovering the importance of building and maintaining a strong musculoskeletal system. Instead of fighting against all these common ailments separately; obesity, hormone imbalances, metabolic dysfunction, inflammation, and insulin resistance, this muscle-focused science proposes that all these issues are just symptoms of being under-muscled. That makes life simpler, right?

Why is Muscle Important for Our Health

Muscle plays such an important role in so many actions performed in our body. One of the most under-appreciated uses of muscle is managing blood sugar. This occurs because when we eat food, the glucose in the food is absorbed into our bloodstream, the first step in our body attempting to use this glucose for energy. This glucose needs to be put somewhere because if it does not leave the blood, it can cause serious damage to our bodies including permanent organ damage. All the cells in our body utilize glucose but they can only take up so much from the blood, so if you have more glucose in your bloodstream than your cells can take, it will take a while for your glucose levels to slowly fall back down. If, however, you have a significant amount of muscle, you could easily manage the rest of the glucose before your blood sugar levels in your bloodstream rise too high. Muscle will absorb the glucose in order to provide energy for your muscles, as such, the more muscle you have, the more glucose they can absorb, and the sooner your body will be able to clear the glucose from your bloodstream.

Muscles also contain many amino acids and small proteins called cytokines that fight inflammation and promote our bodies' ability to heal. The more healthy muscle mass you have, the more anti-inflammatory proteins you have at your disposal.

When muscles contract they release cell signals referred to as myokines. These cell signals interact with other cell signals released from fat tissue and chemical signals from your gut and influence the way your body and brain function in response. These myokines stimulate fat loss, help manage glucose levels, stimulate bone formation, protect brain cells from damage and help control blood pressure. In short, they are very useful in several necessary processes in the body that contribute to overall health and longevity.

How to Build Enough Muscle

Building sufficient muscle isn't really a destination, more of a life-long journey and commitment. True health isn't something that we achieve and then call it a day. We aren't working towards a beach body for our summer vacation and then sliding back into our old ways of overindulging and inactive, comfortable lifestyle habits. Building enough muscle? It's a sliding scale. You're on the right track if you are losing fat, building muscle and creating a healthier lifestyle that creates slow and manageble physical changes. That is the key to building a healthy lifestyle for longevity. Again, we aren't in the buisness of training for one day or event or vacation here. We are after long term, sustainable health and wellness.

I have a blog post about how to gain more muscle that you can check out here to help you get started.

References:

1. https://drgabriellelyon.com/muscle-centric-medicine/

2. https://www.nhsinform.scot/illnesses-and-conditions/blood-and-lymph/hyperglycaemia-high-blood-sugar/#:~:text=Regularly%20having%20high%20blood%20sugar,doctor%20or%20diabetes%20care%20team.

3. Rogeri PS, Gasparini SO, Martins GL, Costa LKF, Araujo CC, Lugaresi R, Kopfler M, Lancha AH Jr. Crosstalk Between Skeletal Muscle and Immune System: Which Roles Do IL-6 and Glutamine Play? Front Physiol. 2020 Oct 16;11:582258. doi: 10.3389/fphys.2020.582258. PMID: 33178046; PMCID: PMC7596683.