#FindFit – Muscle Health: What Is It & Why Is It Important?

Whether you compete at the highest levels of sport, maintain an active lifestyle, or find yourself too caught up in the daily grind to always look after yourself, health experts agree that muscle health and strength should be a focus for living a long and healthy life.

Healthy muscles possess several key characteristics that contribute to their overall function and vitality.

These include the ability to generate force and power, which enables muscles to effectively perform various movements and support the body’s daily activities. Additionally, a high mitochondrial density within muscle cells is crucial for optimal energy production and endurance, as mitochondria are responsible for converting nutrients into energy. Lastly, a well-balanced composition of muscle fiber types—consisting of both slow-twitch (Type I) fibers for endurance and fast-twitch (Type II) fibers for quick, powerful movements—ensures that the muscles can adapt and respond to a wide range of physical demands.

Strong and healthy muscles not only help you perform better in your favorite activities, but they also play a crucial role in the aging process. As you age, your muscle mass and strength naturally decline. This decline can start in your 30s or 40s, which is much earlier than most people think. Sarcopenia, the term that defines significant muscle loss, is associated with frailty and increased mortality in older adults.

The World Health Organization identified the preservation of muscle mass and the prevention of frailty as key indicators of healthy aging. Currently, nutrition and exercise are the two main interventions to prevent sarcopenia and its adverse outcomes. Such lifestyle changes can be a challenge, though.

What if there was a way to preserve muscular strength, or even improve it without diet or exercise? Researchers studying Urolithin A have been asking just this question.