Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know? From how stuff works dot Com. Everybody loves altoy. It's little ments that come intense. Well, once the ments are gone, you can do some really neat things with the leftover tense. People have made empty three players, cameras, even stoves. Check out how stuff works dot com slash tent evators to find out more. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me is always as Charles Bryant. I don't even know why I say that. Chuck. I should just go Josh and Chuck here, you get your thing. This is a stupid intro. Chuck, let's start over. You say that every week. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Chuck Bryant. This is stuff you should know. Thanks for listening to us. Thank you, and even hardier things would go out if people actually paid for this. But still no, people like free Yeah, good for them. Well yeah, well we're not charging for it. If you're not. Everyone, I'm just saying right, and you know what, think about that before you write in and tell us. We're idiots. Yeah, we'll give you your money back. Did you ever see that Simpsons where Bart goes off on um that itchy and scratchy fan. No, where he's actually talking about the Simpsons the guys like, I feel like they owe me something as a loyal fan. I think it was Comic book guy. He goes off on and he goes, oh, really, they owe you something for years and years of free programming entertainment that they provided you no charge. That's what happens. Though. You know, people will take ownership and I do the same thing. We all do. It's nice to be owned. It's like lost sucks. Now, how could you do that doesn't suck? I've never paid any attention to it. Actually, I think this past season was a return to for him, but the previous season was a little lame. It happens. Moving on, moving on to Sarcopenia. Well, speaking of aging aging television shows, yes, we could also discuss aging human beings. Very nice, Josh, that was that was clumsy? That got delivered by a drunk pizza guy. Let's dish on Sarcopenia. I just like that name. It's it's a good name. It is um so Chuck. You know, there's some obvious signs of aging as as we progress in our years. Especially it seems like these days, once you start to hit the mid to late seventies, all of a sudden, bam, you're like half your height, stooped over, your rib cage is sunken in like the guy from the Unforgiven Metallica video, sagging skin. These are the signs of age, and you just kind of take this for granted. I know I did until I wrote this article. But it turns out that a lot of this stuff can be prevented. And a lot of these signs of aging are sarcopenia, which is age related muscle loss. Right, And we just want to say out there, if you are under forty, like many of our listeners probably are, listen up because it will happen YouTube and you can remember this one day and and use it, or you can advise your parents and grandparents. Yeah. Well, actually the whole reason this came up was because I was talking to my dad about it. He just turned seventy one and July four and um, he's starting to he lost a bunch of weight. He's looking like Mr Burt Reynolds these days. Um, a lot. Actually only mac though, only the good stuff. Um. And he's but he's his muscles are starting to actually because he's losing a bunch of weight and he's advancing in age, but he's not exercising as much. So I said, you know what, You're at risk for sarcopania. And I'm going to look up this article I wrote. And you were sitting next to me, and you said, are we podcasting on that this week? And I said, yes, we are, so here we are everyone. That's how it happens to the back story. People always wonder how we pick. That's how we pick sometimes. Yeah, and the whole reason. Um, also because we do have a fairly young listener ship. This can be prevented most easily by starting. Yeah, starting you. So let's talk about sarcopane. Let's talk about muscle loss first. Let's talk about muscle chuck. Protein. Yeah, yes, muscle mass is protein basically the end, the end. And uh, I like your how you said that in the article that the body seeks stasis. So what you want is that balance between the production and usage of that protein, right, you don't want to overproduce. The body seeks stasis in many many ways. Well, yeah, that's that's the that's the yeah, that's that's the level that it's it's seeking at all times with everything right, equilibrium, equilibrium body. It's a beautiful thing. So chuck, um, muscle is obviously produced in the body. We don't just you know, go buy a length of muscle and insert it where we want it one day. Yeah right yeah, um. We we actually can produce our own um through non essential proteins. These are proteins that the body produces its on its own. Right. Then we have essential protein that we need to build muscle, and we derived these by you know, jumping on gazelles and eating their throats out, or just eating peanut butter and things like that to contain on protein, tuna, tearing the throat out of peanut butter. So we gotta tear the throat of something to get muscle, right, and those are essential proteins. You're right, right, you might have already said that. I think I did, but it doesn't matter, buddy. Um. So we take this protein, uh and and the stuff we produce it's called synthesis, and the stuff we use the not the essential proteins, that's metabolism. Right, um, And we we never really lose our ability to metabolize proteins as we age, but we do tend to lose our ability to synthesize our own right. This is where you wanted to get into hormones. Correct, you were just setting me up all day long, buddy. Uh. Insulin like growth hormone I g F one. Yeah, testosterone and growth hormone, they all play a role in the product and of the protein. Josh, did you know that I did? I wrote this article. Well anyway, the point is these hormones, hormones, you know, are the chemical messengers in our body. They do all sorts of crazy stuff. I just wrote about, um, whether or not you can get pregnant while you're breastfeeding. And hormones are amazing. And by the way, I know everything there is to know about the about the menstrual cycle. You know everything. I'll ask me any question later, I'll tell you many minarchy. The problem, Josh, is that the pro these hormones decline as we age, right, So the the the um the protein production is aren't getting it's not getting the signals that it used to through the hormone, so non essential protein production slips leaving only essential production or I'm sorry, essential proteins that you ingest. And I think you you indicated that as we get older, we actually need more proteins. So that's kind of like a one to punch, right, and we don't necessarily get more proteins once you Once you establish a diet in your lifetime, you usually kind of stick to it, especially in your seventies and right. I mean people may you know, kind of come to understand their bodies. I can't remember how Douglas Copeland put it in. Generates an X, I think aware of your body. People become aware of their bodies later in life, so they may change their diet some but generally, you're your protein intake will remain the same even though you need it more. So you've got hormone decline and protein deficiency. So that's two of the three. Actually we didn't even mention the third yet. Well this is the most this is the most vital one motor unit restructuring. So you've got these three things, hormone decline, protein deficiency, and motor unit um restructuring, which we were about to get into, and all of a sudden, you've got sarcopenia because you're stooped over. Your face is sagging again. You look like the old guy from the Unforgiven video. You're walking slow. What is the Unforgiven video? You know that Metallica song Unforgiven. It came out post Good Metallica, before Horrible Metallica. So it was during the after Ride, the Lightning before whatever, that Lala Pellusa tour when they started wearing eyeliner and stuff, when they cut their hair. So we've got we've got sarcopenia um, but we haven't really talked about that motor unit restructuring. This is the most important factor, right, So let me tell them what a motor unit is. Yes, So, Joshua, things called motor neurons, and they command the muscle fibers to voluntary muscle fibers voluntary muscifibers to do things. Right, So that's a motor unit as those two things together, right, the muscle fibers they command, and the neurons the muscle fibers and the neurons that command them. That's a motor unit, right. And and again it's strictly voluntary muscle we're talking about. So the neuron gets a command from the brain. I think. In the article I used the example of raised right arm and punch chuck in the neck. I would never do that. I'd say, shut up, brain. Um. So the brain sends the signal to the neurons involved in raising your right arm and they fire um and contract the muscles. Innervation, which is what's going on, like you're lifting your arm. It's really a bunch of muscles contracting. And when I think about it like that, I think about like little tiny like pirates, like pulling on the um, the hoisting, the sale sure like that like he ho he, and all of a sudden, your your your arm is raised. Right there. You have it. It's called innervation. Technically, when the muscle fibers are caused to contract from the neurons right um, now raising your arm, that would be pretty much probably exclusively the result of slow twitch neurons. Yeah, lets we need to explain the difference here. There's two kinds of neurons. There's fast twitch and they're slow twitch ft and st and fast hitch fast twitch fast twitch fastitch. I like fast twitch fast twitch. That's really hard to say. Is it's like Irish wristwatch? Yeah, exactly. It's very specialized because they command like only fast movements like when you run, or like eye twitches your eyelids. Yeah, like really precise movement. But there aren't as many of them because they only command a certain you know, limited number of functions. Right. Well, one one fast twitch neuron will command, um, say, just a few muscle fibers because it has to be precise, so it can't be concerned with a whole bunch at once. Slight twitch, on the other hand, is uh the mass. I think the way I put it in the article was, um, the fast twitch neurons are kind of agile, like a tightrope walker, where slow twitch or like bulls and China shops, they're just kind of big and dumb and lumbering and brewer, you know exactly. So the slow twitch neuron is going to raise your arm because it's just a bunch of just muscle fiber that isn't really involved in anything precise. Big. The problem is that the ft the fast twitch, they die off as you age, first the first to go. So what happens is if if there if if a group of muscle fibers are no longer commanded by a neuron, they're at risk of um atrophying, right, which is muscle death. Right. Uh so then all of a sudden you have muscle loss to prevent this body has a pretty cool system. This is very cool. Out of nowhere, Um, the closest slow twitch neuron that's that's uh, the one that's closest to the dead fast twitch neuron will take over, will attach itself and take command in place of right. Yes, so you still need these precise movements, but now it's being um, they're being commanded by a big, dumb, lumbering neuron. Right. So that is the restructuring. That's motor motor unit restructuring, right, And the result of it is UM. You know if a loss of coordination, UM, a loss of quick reaction, yes, less precise right, So that's part of that UM, that lack of balance that happens as you age. It's actually the result of muscle loss, exactly. And that's part three of the what you called the perfect storm that can increase the onset of sarcopania. And when this happens, especially along the spine, the muscle fibers along the spine, when there's motor unit restructuring or just straight up neuron death, UM, that's that's what gives us our stoop posture because the stand upright, it requires muscles going he hoped right, and um, when you lose it, you end up being stooped over. So these all put together, all these signs of age, the loss of the intercostal muscles between the ribs, stoop postures, sagging skin, it's called senile sarcopania. And this is the most preventable type of sarcopania. You can also get sarcopania from um disease. There's some other much less preventable forms of environmental conditions can sure Like basically, if you lay down in a highway tunnel for several years and just inhale carbon monoxide constantly, you're probably sarcopenia will be among the various maladies that developed. Well, the good news though, like you said, is that this can be prevented, and this is the message that you need to talk to your parents and grandparents about and what people like me need to remember very soon as I am aging right, And there's an easy solution to this waights resistance training. So for a long time doctors well they still do, but physicians UM have The medical establishment has always recommended something like I think, um, thirty minutes of exercise a day. It's all about cardio usually cardio like walking, running, wommen, getting the heart going, and yeah you need to do that. But that has little to no effect on sarcopenia. But resistance training does. Um, And they've done a bunch of studies on this. I found out this is one of those articles, Chuck, where I wrote it and there was just so much awesome information out there. There's just a really interesting article to write despite when it was assigned to me, and I found out with sarcopenia was I was like, you gotta be kidding me, right, why would I be writing this? Yeah, me of all people, Um, I need to write about whiskey. But there there's been a bunch of studies that have turned up some really surprising results. Right. So um, there was one that I came across that put a group of elderly people age eighty four. Yeah, this is pretty impressive unresistance training. And by resistance training, we're talking about um, oh, I don't know. You know where you lift legs weights with your legs by just like flexing them out where I can't remember. I don't know what it's called like bringing your I've done it before, probably a doubt. If they recommend that the elderly go in there and start hitting the bench press. No, as a matter of fact, they recommend that the elderly not try this first by themselves. They need at the very least the advice of somebody who knows what they're talking about at the gym, who works at the gym, and they're not a personal trainer. You want to talk to your doctor first if you're if you're elderly, but we're The point here is is that if you are elderly and you are developing circopania, it can actually be reversed by resistance training. It was like, these signs of aging can be reversed. Um. These this this study that had seventy eight to eighty four year olds. They put them on a resistance training program um and they saw an increase of protein synthesis. Remember that's the stuff that we that's the ability with los as we get older. The increase was a hundred and eighty two percent. That's unreal. That's huge because normally there's like increases and whenever you look at a study it's like, oh, there was a two percent change. That's significant different, This is enormously significant. Just by doing weights, we can synthesize protein, right, yeah, I can I tell them about the other one. Please do? Uh. The U s d A did this one and they said that the elderly participants who did resistance training for forty five minutes three times a week saw for twelve week over three month spans, on average, increase of thirty muscle five increase in strength. Yeah, and that's huge, man, that's forty five minutes three times a week in twelve weeks. It's nothing. No, not much. And if you're seventy or eighty, what else do you're not working? Yeah? Get the gym? Yeah, Wapner commands you should we talk about astronauts well this Yeah, I was hoping we get to this. The whole the whole reason that we know that resistance training works is thanks to our friends at NASA. This is weird, man. What happens is astronauts have a similar existence as elderly because it's very sedentary. They're in a space shuttle and there's not much room. They're waitless. They're just hanging around, drinking tang doing nothing. They never did nothing. For nobody. Here's the interesting thing, Josher's and I know you know this. They have an opposite effect. They're slow twitch. Well weightlessness, weightlessness does well yeah, not not just if you're an astronaut, but yeah, being being waitless. Uh, the fast twitch ones actually, uh, the slow twitch ones dial first and in the fast which ones to pick up the slack right rather than down here on Earth where the fast twitched size off first and then slow twitch picks up. And I've heard of this. I didn't know the science behind it, but I had heard that if you're weightless in space, like these people that are up there for like a year at the space station are coming back and like tearing calf muscles, Like, yeah, that's the result of it. It's not a loss of coordination, but very easily torn muscles because the little the little precise, uh, fast twitch neurons are not used to controlling like these huge you know, they don't do the heave hoe that well. Yeah, so that's to work this all out, if you know, and outer space one day. Yeah. And I think the last point is is, yes, you're supposed to do cardio. You're supposed to do the thirty minutes of walking every day to stay alive and all that. But the point is is you can't walk. If you can't stand up straight right, you can't walk away your sarcopanian. So you want to you want to do the resistance training first. You want to start on that. You want to start that regimen first and then move into walking. And again, if you're twelve years old and you're listening to us, you have no idea how this applies to you, But my friends, it does. Sarah, Sarah are no, she's twelve. This does apply to you, just as it applies to Chuck and I. And let's go hit the gym, buddy. Let's do it. Yeah, you, me and Arnie mh so Chuck uh and if anybody wants to, this is one of those articles that would be good to kind of print out and a half around to refer to. I think there's some really good links on Lots More Information page to give you more information, lots more information, uh that you can find that article by typing in sarcopenia. That's s A R C O P E N I A UH in the handy toolbar at how stuff works dot com. And uh, before we do listener mail Chuck, let's do a little plug. Yeah, we don't. We haven't plugged ourselves in a long long time. We're not big on tuting our own horns now. So we're going to plug our blog, which we haven't done in a while. And you can go to the house stuff Works dot com website. Yeah, go to the blogs. You'll see it over on the right side, the blogs of how stuff Work. Yep, there's a there's a lot of people that blogs who we have seven eight nine now, yeah, and they're all really great act they are. We have um our Tracy, our colleague, Tracy Wilson writes fans stuff. It's all about geek dumb um. Katie does the history stuff blog. Yeah, Stuffy missed in history class. I should say. Scott's over there with auto stuff Science. We've got the Holster Banks trickling in the gang with tech stuff. The brain does one. Yeah, um, but yeah, you can find all of them at the blogs at how stuff Works dot com and um, I think it's blogs dot how stuff works dot com right or the home Should we plug that webcast? Definitely. We haven't plugged this in a long time because we were not too sure of ourselves at first with the webcast. But we do what we are. We are we now, when did that happen? I think it's good. Okay. Uh. We do a webcast every Wednesday at one o'clock Eastern Standard time, and it's it's live. It's live video without a net and it's pretty clear that it's live when you see as stumble through certain things and what not. Not this week or last week, the week before, we actually started over like five minutes into it, did we remember? It got so out of hand We're just like, let's just start over. I don't even remember. It was. Wow. It's a lot of fun though, and it's a little different than the show. It's a little more news oriented. We talked about current events, and we don't cannibalize the podcast, no, not at all. So it's it's fun and you can watch that on our blog. Actually. Yeah, so that's our webcast and the blog, which means plug time is over and that means listener mail. That's right, Josh. I'm just gonna call this it made me feel good and it's from Omaha. That's a great title. I always think of these on the fly, and you understand, Dear Josh and Chuck I've been meaning to write you and the History Stuff gals for a long time now for helping me survive horrendous long international plane trips for work. I save up a bunch of podcasts and listen to them to keep out the noise of strangers exchanging small talk and baby screaming, and to take my mind off my anxiety and border However, now I really have something to thank you for. Friday, I got back from a trip to Brazil uh and, during which I listened to the podcast on Tako and other parasites prevalent in Brazil Lovely uh And the next day I had to put my beloved bunny of nine years to sleep. It's awful. Is that related to toxo? Not at all, um, I have been heartbroken. It's very sad. Yesterday, driving home from work, I played a couple of your podcasts I hadn't listened to on my trip and found myself laughing out loud. I was amazing. I hadn't felt like laughing or even smiling for days, and you two cheered me up more than I thought was possible. Awesome. Sure, you didn't save my life or anything like you did with the hypermiling woman, But you certainly help my emotional state for that. I thank you. Keep up the great humor. I'm sure it helps more than helps people. More than you know. Is from grim and Elmahaa Braska Brim. Yeah, awesome, and that awesome name the last name or a name or stuffing she had a different name and that she can't say it on the yere Oh, I got you. You know, we don't say full name. Did you give her that nickname? No? No, no, that's how she signed it, But then her full name was I got it there as well. Well, that's fantastic. Yeah, made it made me feel good. Well, if you have any stories about how we made you feel better about a dead pet or any international travel you'd like to tell us about, you can send that in an email to stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, does it how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot com home page. Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you

Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff you should know? From how stuff works dot Com. Everybody loves altoy. It's little ments that come intense. Well, once the ments are gone, you can do some really neat things with the leftover tense. People have made empty three players, cameras, even stoves. Check out how stuff works dot com slash tent evators to find out more. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. With me is always as Charles Bryant. I don't even know why I say that. Chuck. I should just go Josh and Chuck here, you get your thing. This is a stupid intro. Chuck, let's start over. You say that every week. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Chuck Bryant. This is stuff you should know. Thanks for listening to us. Thank you, and even hardier things would go out if people actually paid for this. But still no, people like free Yeah, good for them. Well yeah, well we're not charging for it. If you're not. Everyone, I'm just saying right, and you know what, think about that before you write in and tell us. We're idiots. Yeah, we'll give you your money back. Did you ever see that Simpsons where Bart goes off on um that itchy and scratchy fan. No, where he's actually talking about the Simpsons the guys like, I feel like they owe me something as a loyal fan. I think it was Comic book guy. He goes off on and he goes, oh, really, they owe you something for years and years of free programming entertainment that they provided you no charge. That's what happens. Though. You know, people will take ownership and I do the same thing. We all do. It's nice to be owned. It's like lost sucks. Now, how could you do that doesn't suck? I've never paid any attention to it. Actually, I think this past season was a return to for him, but the previous season was a little lame. It happens. Moving on, moving on to Sarcopenia. Well, speaking of aging aging television shows, yes, we could also discuss aging human beings. Very nice, Josh, that was that was clumsy? That got delivered by a drunk pizza guy. Let's dish on Sarcopenia. I just like that name. It's it's a good name. It is um so Chuck. You know, there's some obvious signs of aging as as we progress in our years. Especially it seems like these days, once you start to hit the mid to late seventies, all of a sudden, bam, you're like half your height, stooped over, your rib cage is sunken in like the guy from the Unforgiven Metallica video, sagging skin. These are the signs of age, and you just kind of take this for granted. I know I did until I wrote this article. But it turns out that a lot of this stuff can be prevented. And a lot of these signs of aging are sarcopenia, which is age related muscle loss. Right, And we just want to say out there, if you are under forty, like many of our listeners probably are, listen up because it will happen YouTube and you can remember this one day and and use it, or you can advise your parents and grandparents. Yeah. Well, actually the whole reason this came up was because I was talking to my dad about it. He just turned seventy one and July four and um, he's starting to he lost a bunch of weight. He's looking like Mr Burt Reynolds these days. Um, a lot. Actually only mac though, only the good stuff. Um. And he's but he's his muscles are starting to actually because he's losing a bunch of weight and he's advancing in age, but he's not exercising as much. So I said, you know what, You're at risk for sarcopania. And I'm going to look up this article I wrote. And you were sitting next to me, and you said, are we podcasting on that this week? And I said, yes, we are, so here we are everyone. That's how it happens to the back story. People always wonder how we pick. That's how we pick sometimes. Yeah, and the whole reason. Um, also because we do have a fairly young listener ship. This can be prevented most easily by starting. Yeah, starting you. So let's talk about sarcopane. Let's talk about muscle loss first. Let's talk about muscle chuck. Protein. Yeah, yes, muscle mass is protein basically the end, the end. And uh, I like your how you said that in the article that the body seeks stasis. So what you want is that balance between the production and usage of that protein, right, you don't want to overproduce. The body seeks stasis in many many ways. Well, yeah, that's that's the that's the yeah, that's that's the level that it's it's seeking at all times with everything right, equilibrium, equilibrium body. It's a beautiful thing. So chuck, um, muscle is obviously produced in the body. We don't just you know, go buy a length of muscle and insert it where we want it one day. Yeah right yeah, um. We we actually can produce our own um through non essential proteins. These are proteins that the body produces its on its own. Right. Then we have essential protein that we need to build muscle, and we derived these by you know, jumping on gazelles and eating their throats out, or just eating peanut butter and things like that to contain on protein, tuna, tearing the throat out of peanut butter. So we gotta tear the throat of something to get muscle, right, and those are essential proteins. You're right, right, you might have already said that. I think I did, but it doesn't matter, buddy. Um. So we take this protein, uh and and the stuff we produce it's called synthesis, and the stuff we use the not the essential proteins, that's metabolism. Right, um, And we we never really lose our ability to metabolize proteins as we age, but we do tend to lose our ability to synthesize our own right. This is where you wanted to get into hormones. Correct, you were just setting me up all day long, buddy. Uh. Insulin like growth hormone I g F one. Yeah, testosterone and growth hormone, they all play a role in the product and of the protein. Josh, did you know that I did? I wrote this article. Well anyway, the point is these hormones, hormones, you know, are the chemical messengers in our body. They do all sorts of crazy stuff. I just wrote about, um, whether or not you can get pregnant while you're breastfeeding. And hormones are amazing. And by the way, I know everything there is to know about the about the menstrual cycle. You know everything. I'll ask me any question later, I'll tell you many minarchy. The problem, Josh, is that the pro these hormones decline as we age, right, So the the the um the protein production is aren't getting it's not getting the signals that it used to through the hormone, so non essential protein production slips leaving only essential production or I'm sorry, essential proteins that you ingest. And I think you you indicated that as we get older, we actually need more proteins. So that's kind of like a one to punch, right, and we don't necessarily get more proteins once you Once you establish a diet in your lifetime, you usually kind of stick to it, especially in your seventies and right. I mean people may you know, kind of come to understand their bodies. I can't remember how Douglas Copeland put it in. Generates an X, I think aware of your body. People become aware of their bodies later in life, so they may change their diet some but generally, you're your protein intake will remain the same even though you need it more. So you've got hormone decline and protein deficiency. So that's two of the three. Actually we didn't even mention the third yet. Well this is the most this is the most vital one motor unit restructuring. So you've got these three things, hormone decline, protein deficiency, and motor unit um restructuring, which we were about to get into, and all of a sudden, you've got sarcopenia because you're stooped over. Your face is sagging again. You look like the old guy from the Unforgiven video. You're walking slow. What is the Unforgiven video? You know that Metallica song Unforgiven. It came out post Good Metallica, before Horrible Metallica. So it was during the after Ride, the Lightning before whatever, that Lala Pellusa tour when they started wearing eyeliner and stuff, when they cut their hair. So we've got we've got sarcopenia um, but we haven't really talked about that motor unit restructuring. This is the most important factor, right, So let me tell them what a motor unit is. Yes, So, Joshua, things called motor neurons, and they command the muscle fibers to voluntary muscle fibers voluntary muscifibers to do things. Right, So that's a motor unit as those two things together, right, the muscle fibers they command, and the neurons the muscle fibers and the neurons that command them. That's a motor unit, right. And and again it's strictly voluntary muscle we're talking about. So the neuron gets a command from the brain. I think. In the article I used the example of raised right arm and punch chuck in the neck. I would never do that. I'd say, shut up, brain. Um. So the brain sends the signal to the neurons involved in raising your right arm and they fire um and contract the muscles. Innervation, which is what's going on, like you're lifting your arm. It's really a bunch of muscles contracting. And when I think about it like that, I think about like little tiny like pirates, like pulling on the um, the hoisting, the sale sure like that like he ho he, and all of a sudden, your your your arm is raised. Right there. You have it. It's called innervation. Technically, when the muscle fibers are caused to contract from the neurons right um, now raising your arm, that would be pretty much probably exclusively the result of slow twitch neurons. Yeah, lets we need to explain the difference here. There's two kinds of neurons. There's fast twitch and they're slow twitch ft and st and fast hitch fast twitch fast twitch fastitch. I like fast twitch fast twitch. That's really hard to say. Is it's like Irish wristwatch? Yeah, exactly. It's very specialized because they command like only fast movements like when you run, or like eye twitches your eyelids. Yeah, like really precise movement. But there aren't as many of them because they only command a certain you know, limited number of functions. Right. Well, one one fast twitch neuron will command, um, say, just a few muscle fibers because it has to be precise, so it can't be concerned with a whole bunch at once. Slight twitch, on the other hand, is uh the mass. I think the way I put it in the article was, um, the fast twitch neurons are kind of agile, like a tightrope walker, where slow twitch or like bulls and China shops, they're just kind of big and dumb and lumbering and brewer, you know exactly. So the slow twitch neuron is going to raise your arm because it's just a bunch of just muscle fiber that isn't really involved in anything precise. Big. The problem is that the ft the fast twitch, they die off as you age, first the first to go. So what happens is if if there if if a group of muscle fibers are no longer commanded by a neuron, they're at risk of um atrophying, right, which is muscle death. Right. Uh so then all of a sudden you have muscle loss to prevent this body has a pretty cool system. This is very cool. Out of nowhere, Um, the closest slow twitch neuron that's that's uh, the one that's closest to the dead fast twitch neuron will take over, will attach itself and take command in place of right. Yes, so you still need these precise movements, but now it's being um, they're being commanded by a big, dumb, lumbering neuron. Right. So that is the restructuring. That's motor motor unit restructuring, right, And the result of it is UM. You know if a loss of coordination, UM, a loss of quick reaction, yes, less precise right, So that's part of that UM, that lack of balance that happens as you age. It's actually the result of muscle loss, exactly. And that's part three of the what you called the perfect storm that can increase the onset of sarcopania. And when this happens, especially along the spine, the muscle fibers along the spine, when there's motor unit restructuring or just straight up neuron death, UM, that's that's what gives us our stoop posture because the stand upright, it requires muscles going he hoped right, and um, when you lose it, you end up being stooped over. So these all put together, all these signs of age, the loss of the intercostal muscles between the ribs, stoop postures, sagging skin, it's called senile sarcopania. And this is the most preventable type of sarcopania. You can also get sarcopania from um disease. There's some other much less preventable forms of environmental conditions can sure Like basically, if you lay down in a highway tunnel for several years and just inhale carbon monoxide constantly, you're probably sarcopenia will be among the various maladies that developed. Well, the good news though, like you said, is that this can be prevented, and this is the message that you need to talk to your parents and grandparents about and what people like me need to remember very soon as I am aging right, And there's an easy solution to this waights resistance training. So for a long time doctors well they still do, but physicians UM have The medical establishment has always recommended something like I think, um, thirty minutes of exercise a day. It's all about cardio usually cardio like walking, running, wommen, getting the heart going, and yeah you need to do that. But that has little to no effect on sarcopenia. But resistance training does. Um, And they've done a bunch of studies on this. I found out this is one of those articles, Chuck, where I wrote it and there was just so much awesome information out there. There's just a really interesting article to write despite when it was assigned to me, and I found out with sarcopenia was I was like, you gotta be kidding me, right, why would I be writing this? Yeah, me of all people, Um, I need to write about whiskey. But there there's been a bunch of studies that have turned up some really surprising results. Right. So um, there was one that I came across that put a group of elderly people age eighty four. Yeah, this is pretty impressive unresistance training. And by resistance training, we're talking about um, oh, I don't know. You know where you lift legs weights with your legs by just like flexing them out where I can't remember. I don't know what it's called like bringing your I've done it before, probably a doubt. If they recommend that the elderly go in there and start hitting the bench press. No, as a matter of fact, they recommend that the elderly not try this first by themselves. They need at the very least the advice of somebody who knows what they're talking about at the gym, who works at the gym, and they're not a personal trainer. You want to talk to your doctor first if you're if you're elderly, but we're The point here is is that if you are elderly and you are developing circopania, it can actually be reversed by resistance training. It was like, these signs of aging can be reversed. Um. These this this study that had seventy eight to eighty four year olds. They put them on a resistance training program um and they saw an increase of protein synthesis. Remember that's the stuff that we that's the ability with los as we get older. The increase was a hundred and eighty two percent. That's unreal. That's huge because normally there's like increases and whenever you look at a study it's like, oh, there was a two percent change. That's significant different, This is enormously significant. Just by doing weights, we can synthesize protein, right, yeah, I can I tell them about the other one. Please do? Uh. The U s d A did this one and they said that the elderly participants who did resistance training for forty five minutes three times a week saw for twelve week over three month spans, on average, increase of thirty muscle five increase in strength. Yeah, and that's huge, man, that's forty five minutes three times a week in twelve weeks. It's nothing. No, not much. And if you're seventy or eighty, what else do you're not working? Yeah? Get the gym? Yeah, Wapner commands you should we talk about astronauts well this Yeah, I was hoping we get to this. The whole the whole reason that we know that resistance training works is thanks to our friends at NASA. This is weird, man. What happens is astronauts have a similar existence as elderly because it's very sedentary. They're in a space shuttle and there's not much room. They're waitless. They're just hanging around, drinking tang doing nothing. They never did nothing. For nobody. Here's the interesting thing, Josher's and I know you know this. They have an opposite effect. They're slow twitch. Well weightlessness, weightlessness does well yeah, not not just if you're an astronaut, but yeah, being being waitless. Uh, the fast twitch ones actually, uh, the slow twitch ones dial first and in the fast which ones to pick up the slack right rather than down here on Earth where the fast twitched size off first and then slow twitch picks up. And I've heard of this. I didn't know the science behind it, but I had heard that if you're weightless in space, like these people that are up there for like a year at the space station are coming back and like tearing calf muscles, Like, yeah, that's the result of it. It's not a loss of coordination, but very easily torn muscles because the little the little precise, uh, fast twitch neurons are not used to controlling like these huge you know, they don't do the heave hoe that well. Yeah, so that's to work this all out, if you know, and outer space one day. Yeah. And I think the last point is is, yes, you're supposed to do cardio. You're supposed to do the thirty minutes of walking every day to stay alive and all that. But the point is is you can't walk. If you can't stand up straight right, you can't walk away your sarcopanian. So you want to you want to do the resistance training first. You want to start on that. You want to start that regimen first and then move into walking. And again, if you're twelve years old and you're listening to us, you have no idea how this applies to you, But my friends, it does. Sarah, Sarah are no, she's twelve. This does apply to you, just as it applies to Chuck and I. And let's go hit the gym, buddy. Let's do it. Yeah, you, me and Arnie mh so Chuck uh and if anybody wants to, this is one of those articles that would be good to kind of print out and a half around to refer to. I think there's some really good links on Lots More Information page to give you more information, lots more information, uh that you can find that article by typing in sarcopenia. That's s A R C O P E N I A UH in the handy toolbar at how stuff works dot com. And uh, before we do listener mail Chuck, let's do a little plug. Yeah, we don't. We haven't plugged ourselves in a long long time. We're not big on tuting our own horns now. So we're going to plug our blog, which we haven't done in a while. And you can go to the house stuff Works dot com website. Yeah, go to the blogs. You'll see it over on the right side, the blogs of how stuff Work. Yep, there's a there's a lot of people that blogs who we have seven eight nine now, yeah, and they're all really great act they are. We have um our Tracy, our colleague, Tracy Wilson writes fans stuff. It's all about geek dumb um. Katie does the history stuff blog. Yeah, Stuffy missed in history class. I should say. Scott's over there with auto stuff Science. We've got the Holster Banks trickling in the gang with tech stuff. The brain does one. Yeah, um, but yeah, you can find all of them at the blogs at how stuff Works dot com and um, I think it's blogs dot how stuff works dot com right or the home Should we plug that webcast? Definitely. We haven't plugged this in a long time because we were not too sure of ourselves at first with the webcast. But we do what we are. We are we now, when did that happen? I think it's good. Okay. Uh. We do a webcast every Wednesday at one o'clock Eastern Standard time, and it's it's live. It's live video without a net and it's pretty clear that it's live when you see as stumble through certain things and what not. Not this week or last week, the week before, we actually started over like five minutes into it, did we remember? It got so out of hand We're just like, let's just start over. I don't even remember. It was. Wow. It's a lot of fun though, and it's a little different than the show. It's a little more news oriented. We talked about current events, and we don't cannibalize the podcast, no, not at all. So it's it's fun and you can watch that on our blog. Actually. Yeah, so that's our webcast and the blog, which means plug time is over and that means listener mail. That's right, Josh. I'm just gonna call this it made me feel good and it's from Omaha. That's a great title. I always think of these on the fly, and you understand, Dear Josh and Chuck I've been meaning to write you and the History Stuff gals for a long time now for helping me survive horrendous long international plane trips for work. I save up a bunch of podcasts and listen to them to keep out the noise of strangers exchanging small talk and baby screaming, and to take my mind off my anxiety and border However, now I really have something to thank you for. Friday, I got back from a trip to Brazil uh and, during which I listened to the podcast on Tako and other parasites prevalent in Brazil Lovely uh And the next day I had to put my beloved bunny of nine years to sleep. It's awful. Is that related to toxo? Not at all, um, I have been heartbroken. It's very sad. Yesterday, driving home from work, I played a couple of your podcasts I hadn't listened to on my trip and found myself laughing out loud. I was amazing. I hadn't felt like laughing or even smiling for days, and you two cheered me up more than I thought was possible. Awesome. Sure, you didn't save my life or anything like you did with the hypermiling woman, But you certainly help my emotional state for that. I thank you. Keep up the great humor. I'm sure it helps more than helps people. More than you know. Is from grim and Elmahaa Braska Brim. Yeah, awesome, and that awesome name the last name or a name or stuffing she had a different name and that she can't say it on the yere Oh, I got you. You know, we don't say full name. Did you give her that nickname? No? No, no, that's how she signed it, But then her full name was I got it there as well. Well, that's fantastic. Yeah, made it made me feel good. Well, if you have any stories about how we made you feel better about a dead pet or any international travel you'd like to tell us about, you can send that in an email to stuff Podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, does it how stuff works dot com. Want more how stuff works, check out our blogs on the house stuff works dot com home page. Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you