Research

Hormonal

Age-related skeletal muscle loss (sarcopenia) is fundamentally driven by 'anabolic resistance,' a blunted muscle protein synthesis response to nutritional and exercise stimuli, compounded by reduced physical activity.

As you age, your muscles become less sensitive to protein and exercise. To maintain muscle, you likely need to consume more protein per meal and engage in resistance training, as your body's natural response to these stimuli is blunted compared to when you were younger.

GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
Ground breaking work more than 10 years ago helped to develop the idea of 'anabolic resistance' to explain the phenomenon of age related muscle loss. The premise being that increases in MPS and suppressions in MPB in response to the key environmental factors regulating muscle maintenance i.e. food intake... and exercise... are blunted compared to younger people.
Daniel J. Wilkinson et al. · Ageing Research Reviews · 2018

Why this rating

Supported by multiple meta-analyses and stable isotope tracer studies, though some acute vs chronic discrepancies exist.

Source

The age-related loss of skeletal muscle mass and function: Measurement and physiology of muscle fibre atrophy and muscle fibre loss in humans

Daniel J. Wilkinson et al. · Ageing Research Reviews · 2018

DOI 10.1016/j.arr.2018.07.005

narrative_reviewCited 825×
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DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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