Why Is Building Muscle Important for Everyone?

The fancy science word for building muscle is hypertrophy, but it's not inaccessible. Learn how hypertrophy works and why building muscle keeps us healthy in this episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of I Heart Radio. Hey
brain Stuff, Lauren vocal bomb here. If you think that
getting stronger means slinging around the most iron possible at
the local gym, and think again. If you think of
building muscle is only for buff guys and tight tank tops,
think again. And if you think the term hypertrophy is

(00:23):
too science to even say for your own health and
well being, you again need to think again. Hypertrophy is
an enlargement of existing cells that leads to an increase
in the volume of bodily tissue. For our purposes, hypertrophy
is an increase of muscle tissue. In other words, building muscle.
Don't back away, don't shake your head and mutter that's

(00:44):
not for me. Building muscle is for everyone at just
about every stage of life. It's a critical part of
staying healthy, and you don't need to pump iron to
do it. You don't need bulging veins, you don't even
need to know the difference between a trapezis and adultoid.
You just need to work your muscles. We spoke with
Brad show Enfeld, a renowned fitness expert who has published

(01:06):
more than a hundred papers and academic journals on exercise
and sports nutrition. He said, it's not only growing muscle,
it's losing muscle. If you don't resistance train, whereby you're
looking to build muscle, it's really a static choice because
you end up losing muscle. A resistance training is simply
working your muscles against some kind of resistance. That resistance

(01:27):
can come in the form of weights or stretchy bands
commonly called resistance bands or exercise bands, or even your
own body weight. If you're doing a push up, you're
using your body weight to force certain muscles to work,
and that counts. Schoenfeld said. After about the age of
thirty five, the average person who's not lifting weights is
gonna lose roughly a half percent of their muscle mass

(01:48):
per year, and that percentage starts to accelerate when you
get into your late fifties early sixties, and then it's
exponential after that. So what's the big deal with losing
a little muscle? Being physically active, which by definition means
building and maintaining healthy muscles, improves mental health, lowers the
risk of stroke, improves cognitive function, improves sleep, increases joint flexibility,

(02:11):
and improves balance. Thereby reducing the risk of falls in
the elderly, and that's just a few benefits. Stronger muscles
help strengthen bones and control blood sugar and cholesterol levels,
thus building muscle. Muscle hypertrophy is a much researched subject,
and over the course of history, recommendations based on that
research have changed. The key question is how to most

(02:33):
efficiently build muscle given a few variables, such as the
number of repetitions or reps, and the number of sets
of any particular exercise. A set being a predetermined number
of reps, so ten reps of say push ups maybe
one set. An exercise program may call for more than
one set of that single exercise. The level of resistance

(02:54):
or the load, say the weight on a barbell in
the gym, or the attention in a resistance band or
your body weight if you're doing push ups is certainly
a factor too. Schoenfeld said, I think there are misperceptions
about what actually builds muscle. A lot of times people
think they have to lift heavy weights to build muscle.
There's actually a lot of good research showing that muscle
growth can be developed over a wide array of repetition ranges.

(03:18):
So throw out the old notion that heavy weights build
strength and lots of reps somehow tone the muscles. You
can get equally full muscles without pushing eye bulging weight,
as long as you do enough reps that the final
ones are challenging to complete. I think difficult, too impossible.
In the end, the goal is too literally, on a
cellular level, build more muscle. When muscles are exercised enough,

(03:42):
cellular level damage occurs, triggering a process in which proteins
are dispatched to repair or replace the damaged cells. That
process builds on existing structures like myofibrils and sacomers, a
bigger muscle is born. Of course, all of that is
just so much science gobbled egook. For those sertned only
with looking better at a T shirt or keeping their

(04:02):
blood sugar from skyrocketing, or simply getting down the stairs
without a hip shattering tumble. Hypertrophy can also just be
doing enough exercise to be strong enough to get those
jobs done. Schoenfeld said using weights is one of the
best way to do it. The way that you're going
to ultimately over time build muscle is by consistently challenging
your body. But you can just do push ups, and

(04:24):
other body weight exercises, things like squats, lunges or toastands
that will at least early on, have positive effects on
strength and muscle growth. Over time, it gets harder to
challenge your muscles, but there's ways if you're inventive, that
you can just use body weight or resistance bands. The
National Institute on Aging suggests its strength building exercise session

(04:45):
two or more days a week without working the same
muscle group two days in a row. Everybody is different
and finding out what works for you may require some experimentation,
especially when you factor in other variables like diet. It's
a good idea to consult a health professional before starting
any new exercise or nutrition program. But the overall message
on hypertrophy is clear. It's not something reserved for gym

(05:08):
rats and wanna be Schwartzenegger's building muscle is crucial to
good health and aging well for all of us. Today's
episode was written by John Donovan and produced by Tyler Clang.
Brain Stuff is a production of I Heart Radio's How
Stuff Works. For more in this and lots of other topics,
visit our home planet, how stuff Works dot com and

(05:30):
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