Why Older Adults Need to Exercise

A group of researchers shed light on the reasons why older adults experience muscle loss, and therefore become frail and weak. Their findings suggest that muscle wasting in older adults comes as a result of changes in the nervous system. Researchers report that when a person turns 75 years old, he or she has 30 to 50 percent less nerves controlling his legs. This disconnects part of the muscles from the nervous system and renders them useless. Deprived of their normal functions, the muscles start wasting away.

This is why older people’s leg muscles get smaller and weaker, and they become frail and disabled. This is not so with healthy muscles, whose nerves create new branches that can save detached muscle fiber.

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