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Muscle loss in old age linked to fewer nerve signals
Researchers say they may have worked out why there is a natural loss of muscle in the legs as people age - and that it is due to a loss of nerves. In tests on 168 men, they found that nerves controlling the legs decreased by around 30% by the age of 75. This made muscles waste away, but in older fitter athletes there was a better chance of them being 'rescued' by nerves re-connecting. The scientists published their research in the Journal of Physiology.
As people get older, their leg muscles become smaller and weaker, leading to problems with everyday movements such as walking up stairs or getting out of a chair.
Failure to expand the motor unit size to compensate for declining motor unit numbers distinguishes sarcopenic from non-sarcopenic older men (open, DOI: 10.1113/JP275520) (DX)
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday March 13 2018, @03:05AM (4 children)
gym stuff?!?
Wow are you all deep in the exercise propaganda. Manufacturers of weight lifting equipment and exercise bikes love you for it.
Don't waste your time and energy on effort that has no point other than exercise, get your exercise doing something useful, such as housework! Vacuum the floors, clean and polish some more pans and counter tops, lug some laundry to the wash, or even better, actually use your hands to wash those "hand wash only" clothes you wouldn't have bought if you'd paid attention to that part. Or, do a bit of automobile maintenance. Or some yard work.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 13 2018, @04:08AM
I've got some snow you can shovel. I'll even give you a dollar to do it.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 13 2018, @12:49PM (2 children)
I did mattress wrestling this past weekend - one king down the stairs, one king up - exhausting: yes. But, like automotive repair work, the lasting result are all the skinned knuckles.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday March 13 2018, @05:36PM (1 child)
That touches on a different complaint I have, which is, that the thoughtless idiots who design buildings and furniture have not cared enough to see what a pain they've made it. Why do we still have so many sharp corners? Just last week I tried to move a couch into an office and only after lugging it up the stairs, then inside and around the corners of the hallway, learned it wouldn't quite fit through the last door. So close, but no. It was an older office building with very narrow and short doors, the kind that a wheelchair can't fit through (not that a wheelchair bound person could reach the door anyway, as the building has no elevator) and the couch was an older style that had not been designed with removable legs.
They are improving, slowly, with much complaining and yelling, and beating about the head with lawsuits over the Americans with Disabilities Act. Doors have become wider and taller. Most new furniture now has removable legs, or can be disassembled. The little shallow step up to the porch is out, and door sills are better. Most counter tops and coffee tables no longer have viciously pointy corners sticking out, ready to snag or impale anything that gets too close. Prudent to cover those kinds of corners with a tennis ball that's been cut open. I also very much do not miss snaggy drawer and cupboard handles with the crossbar with ends that stick out.
Not sure what can be done for making it easier to move a king mattress up the stairs. Change to a one story home? Make the stairs wider and less steep? (Ever seen spiral stairs in a medieval church? Stone, very narrow, and very, very steep. Trip on those and you could all too easily break your neck.) Can a mattress be made in such a way it can be disassembled for transport, without ruining its comfortableness?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday March 13 2018, @06:14PM
My deal with the wife is: this is the last king mattress I will ever move up or down stairs - any future king mattress moving will be budgeted for professional movers, or handled by the new mattress delivery people. The king mattress is a particularly ugly beast at 78x80x12, and floppy. They don't bother with handles anymore, and the typical weight is right around 100lbs. Our stairwell is a mid-level landing switchback, set in a box that is about 75" wide, so no flipping the mattress over the handrail, it won't quite squish that much. Our bedroom doorway is 79" high right at the top of the stairs, so the mattress slides in one way, not the other - big fun doing the 90 degree roll on the stairs.
I think a lot of furniture is made just big enough to fit through a "standard" 30" door, which means that sometimes that door has to come off the hinges for some things to fit. I custom made a twin bedframe with integral headboard out of dimensional lumber and made the headboard 29" high, so it rolls in the bedroom door sideways on a skateboard. Unfortunately, 5' outside the bedroom door is a "passageway opening" with no door that is only 28" wide, so we get to do the angle turn thing to get in and out of that.
The real key to furniture moving happiness is to not do it.
🌻🌻 [google.com]