Whey Protein & Elderly Muscle Wasting

Following a good diet and getting regular exercise become even more important as you get older. Recent research indicates that a diet including good quality protein, such as whey, can help to reduce age-related muscle wasting. Dr. Alan Hayes, a researcher in exercise metabolism at Victoria University, reports that delaying gradual loss of muscle is vital for healthy aging. To understand why whey protein can be useful, you need to know something about cheese making.

Miss Muffett was actually eating curdled milk when she saw the spider. When milk is acidified, some of the proteins, or casein, clump in a gelatinous mass called curds. The white liquid left surrounding the curds is called whey. When the curds are pressed and sieved, the solid eventually becomes cheese. Once upon a time, whey was thrown away. However, as a component of milk, the highly nutritional value of whey is now generally accepted.

Doctors call age-related muscle wasting sarcopenia. Your grandparents might have accepted this as inevitable. However, health professionals now understand the process of muscle loss much better. Whatever your age, muscle is constantly being broken down as part of normal metabolism. However, in older people, muscle rebuilding, or anabolism, slows. Assistant Professor Christos Katsanos at the Center for Metabolic Biology reports that nutritional supplementation can be an important way of increasing muscle anabolism in the elderly. Muscle weakness can have serious health implications. For example, you are much more likely to fall and suffer injury if weak leg muscles make you unsteady. So, with recent advances in understanding, you should not accept sarcopenia as an unavoidable consequence of aging.

When muscle protein is broken down to its constituent amino acids, they are released into the blood. In older people they are not all taken up again, so gradual muscles loss occurs. Ingestion of a balanced amino acid mixture stimulates muscle build-up by increasing blood amino acid levels. Essential amino acids which your body cannot make are even more effective. Dr. Elena Volpi, a professor at the University of Texas Medical Branch, reports that elderly people respond just as well as younger people to raised blood amino acid levels.

乳清含有多种蛋白，包括β-乳球蛋白，α-乳白蛋白，免疫球蛋白和描述为抗病性因子蛋白，注意伊利诺伊大学。这些蛋白质，其中含有丰富的人体必需的氨基酸，帮助使乳清蛋白在维持骨骼肌有用。Katsanos报道说，摄入乳清蛋白比服用氨基酸等量作为补充有效得多。这被认为是因为乳清也刺激血胰岛素水平。如果运动后可能只需乳清蛋白15克，你会比服用含有氨基酸相同量的补充更有效地提高肌肉的积聚。

Unfortunately, it is not just a matter of supplementing your diet with protein. Dr. Alan Hayes notes that resistance training or physical exercise also can play an important role in delaying sarcopenia. Whey protein is much more effective if taken in the hours after exercise. Amino acid levels in the blood are raised at a time when your muscle tissues are best able to take them up. Thereby, you can delay muscle wasting.