Longevity Benefits of Muscle: The Real Reason to Build It After 40

Listen to the post, Muscle Isn’t Just About Looks — It’s Your Longevity Insurance, on our Live Lean TV Podcast. Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast!

Exercise Isn’t Optional Anymore

Everyone needs to exercise.

And I mean everyone.

Yes, including you Matthew, and you Michael, and you Jacob.

Because by 80, most people have lost a third to half of their muscle, and their strength and power disappear even faster than that.

This is why exercise, specifically lifting weights, isn’t just for bodybuilders anymore.

It’s for everyone.

I’ve been creating content on the benefits of building muscle for over 15 years.

But for most of that time, I focused on the aesthetic side of strength and muscle building: looking better, staying lean, and feeling more confident.

Now that I’m 46, I’ve been reading a lot of books on the longevity benefits of muscle and strength.

So on today’s episode of Live Lean TV, I’m sharing a few of the eye opening benefits of building muscle from a longevity perspective, using key takeaways from Dr. Peter Attia’s book, Outlive, that don’t get talked about enough in the personal training space.

This is the post I’d send to anyone in their 30s, 40s, or even 50s who doesn’t work out because they don’t care how they look.

Because building muscle and strength goes way beyond looks.

Let’s get into it.

Table Of Contents – Jump To Links

Muscle Is Your Armor Against Aging

If you want to live longer and thrive in life, the longevity research is clear.

Muscle is the closest thing to armor you can build against disease and old age related issues.

Strength training improves mobility and function, even in people who are obese, recovering from cancer, elderly, or frail.

It strengthens your heart and circulation.

It upgrades your mitochondria, the tiny engines that make your energy, so you burn fat and handle sugar better for overall metabolic health.

More muscle also means more fat burned, plus better support for your joints and skeleton.

And every time you train, your muscles release signaling molecules, called myokines, that boost your immune system and tell your body to build new muscle and stronger bones.

It might be the most powerful longevity tool we have.

But muscle doesn’t just protect your body.

It also protects your brain.

Exercise Is Fertilizer for Your Brain

What if a run or a bike ride could actually help your brain?

Endurance exercise releases something called BDNF, which works like a potent fertilizer for your brain.

It supports the hippocampus, the part responsible for memory.

Exercise also keeps the blood vessels in your brain healthy, and research suggests it may help protect the brain as we age, especially for people at risk of Alzheimer’s.

So lift heavy, and keep your heart rate up too.

Now for the bad news: your muscle has already started disappearing.

You Start Losing Muscle in Your 30s

Your muscle peaked years ago, and you never noticed.

Muscle mass starts quietly declining a little each year, as early as your 30s.

By 80, most people have lost somewhere between 30 and 50% of it.

That’s a third to half of the tissue that keeps you moving, protects your joints, and keeps your metabolism healthy.

The good news is that this decline isn’t fixed.

How fast it happens depends heavily on what you do in the next 10 to 20 years.

But losing muscle isn’t even the biggest problem.

What you lose alongside it is worse.

You Lose Strength and Power Faster Than Muscle

Here’s what most people miss: muscle size isn’t what fails first as you age.

You lose strength two to three times faster than we lose muscle mass.

And you lose power, which is strength times speed, two to three times faster than we lose strength.

The reason is that the biggest change in aging muscle is the shrinking of your fast-twitch type two muscle fibers.

Those are the muscle fibers that let you catch yourself when you trip and help you stand up quickly.

If you’re primarily just doing zone 2 cardio for your workout, you may be protecting your slow twitch type one muscle fibers, but unless you’re challenging your muscles with heavier weights, your type two fibers wither away.

That’s why heavy resistance training is non-negotiable, especially as you age.

And here’s the scarypart: losing muscle and strength is way easier than getting it back.

Why Muscle And Strength Disappears Faster Than You Build It

You can spend years building muscle and strength but you can lose a big chunk of it in just a couple of weeks from being sedentary.

In one study published in JAMA, just 10 days of bed rest cost healthy older adults about 3 pounds of lean mass, mostly from their legs, and their strength dropped by roughly 15%.

This muscle loss is called sarcopenia, and causes low energy, weakness, and poor balance.

That means a much higher risk of falls and broken bones.

And if you’re overeating and sedentary, it gets worse, because this combo increases muscle loss as fat spills over into your muscle tissue.

And regaining muscle later in life is very hard.

The best time to build muscle and strength was yesterday.

But the next best time is today.

And muscle and strength isn’t the only thing shrinking.

Your bones are weakening too.

Your Bones Are Weakening Too (Here’s What to Do)

About one in five people over 65 who break a hip or leg die within a year.

Bone density follows the same path as muscle: it peaks in your late 20s, then slowly declines.

Since estrogen is essential for bone strength, this decline may speed up for women after menopause, especially if they are not on HRT.

Other risk factors for low bone density include:

• your genetics
• smoking
• low muscle mass
• being under-nourished
• drugs that block estrogen

Most people use a DEXA scan to measure body fat and lean mass but it can also measure the bone density in your hips and lumbar spine, which can help you diagnose osteoporosis.

If you have low bone density focus on:

• Getting enough protein and total calories
• Strength training to build and protein bones

Strength Training Is Your Retirement Account

Strength training is like saving for retirement.

That’s how Dr. Peter Attia frames it in his book Outlive, and I think about it constantly.

Nobody retires comfortably by starting to save money at 65.

Your muscle, strength, and bones work the same way.

The more muscle and strength you build early, the more you will benefit for decades.

Your goal should be to reach old age with enough muscle and bone density to stay protected from injury and keep doing the things you love.

So that’s why you should think of muscle as your longevity insurance.

This means the work starts now in your 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, even if you’re 65.

You can do it.

If you want the exact training structure for all of it, start my free 7 day trial of inside my Live Lean workout app.

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Now I want you to go check out this post on How To Increase Your VO2 Max After 40.

Keep Living Lean.