{"id":14315,"date":"2019-10-03T00:12:02","date_gmt":"2019-10-03T00:12:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/squad\/?p=14315"},"modified":"2019-10-03T00:12:02","modified_gmt":"2019-10-03T00:12:02","slug":"gut-microbes-might-fight-muscle-loss-as-you-age","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wellness\/gut-microbes-might-fight-muscle-loss-as-you-age\/","title":{"rendered":"Gut Microbes Might Fight Muscle Loss As You Age"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Muscle loss is a common concern with both men and women as they age and it\u2019s been linked to fractures, falls and disability. But new research on mice indicates that gut microbes may be a factor in regulating muscle mass and function, providing a potential opportunity to address the problem.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>Examining the loss of strength and muscle mass<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Researchers at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore looked at normal, healthy mice with gut microbes and at germ-free mice who had no gut microbes. They found that:<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The mice without gut microbes produced less energy.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The mice without gut microbes had weaker muscles.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Transplanting gut microbes (from the healthy mice) into the mice without gut microbes increased their strength and muscle mass.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The mice who received the gut microbes had a partial restoration of muscle function and growth.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cThese results further strengthen the growing evidence of gut microbes acting as crucial gatekeepers to human health,\u201d explains Sven Pettersson, the senior study author and a professor in the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine at Nanyang Technological University, \u201cand provide new insight into muscle mass maintenance with respect to aging.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>Generating energy in muscles<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The researchers put the mice through a variety of challenges, including running as the speed was increased and holding weights that progressively got heavier.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">They found that the mice without gut microbes had a difficult time generating energy in the muscles. But why?<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">It seems that their muscles had a harder time making and use mitochondria to give them energy. But when the gut microbes from the healthy mice were transplanted into the germ-free mice, the enzyme\u2019s activity increased, allowing the muscles to make more energy.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Although mice and humans are very similar in terms of physiology, the researchers are curious to see if the results can be replicated in humans.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The results of the study were published in <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Science Translational Medicine.<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Muscle loss is a common concern with both men and women as they age and it\u2019s been linked to fractures, falls and disability. But new research on mice indicates that gut microbes may be a factor in regulating muscle mass and function, providing a potential opportunity to address the problem. Examining the loss of strength [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14366,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[690],"tags":[823,1097],"class_list":["post-14315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-wellness","tag-aging","tag-gut"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14315\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}