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Asked by Ruby_can_fly to Amy, Craig, Laura, Partha, Saffron on 15 Jun 2015.
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Craig Doig answered on 15 Jun 2015:
hello Ruby
The boring answer is we are not really sure.
Living on our muscle cells are smaller special cells that can build new muscles. These are mostly ‘asleep’ until something tells them to wake up they then make new muscles cells. For some reason when we are old these cells stop being so good at building new muscles and to make things worse the machinery that breaks down the muscles keeps working. So the overall amount of muscle goes down, we get week because of that and we fall over and hurt ourselves when were old. Once that happens when you are older (70+) then you have to lie in bed for a long time and this increases the amount of muscle you loose making the problem worse.
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Laura Wales answered on 23 Jun 2015:
As people get older, there is a reduction in the action of nerve cells which send signals to the muscles to initiate movement. If someone is inactive they get muscle loss. In turn, it is harder for an elderly person to exercise and this leads to further muscle loss. This could contribute to falls among elderly people, as Craig explained further.
As we get older, some hormone levels decreased, including growth hormone, testosterone and insulin-like growth factor. Some elderly people don’t have as big an appetite and if they don’t take in enough calories or protein in their diet, they won’t be able to sustain their muscle mass.
Comments
Ruby_can_fly commented on :
thx 🙂