Why Muscle Matters & How to Build It

1. Dr. Andy Galpin

   The science and practice of enhancing human performance for sport, play, and life. Welcome to Perform. I'm Dr. Andy Galpin, a professor of kinesiology in the Center for Sport Performance at Cal State Fullerton. In the center, our mission is to conduct and disseminate research that enhances human performance.

2. In addition to my role as a scientist, I also work directly with high-performing athletes. This could include Olympic gold medalists, world champions, MVPs, Cy Young winners, all-stars across multiple sports, the NHL, NBA, the NFL, PGA TOUR, boxing, the UFC, and many more. So while I focus most of my career on sport and athletes specifically, my real passion is the physiology behind that. And so what I hope to share with you over this podcast is a deep dive into the physiology of human performance.

3. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean sports per se. This is really human performance at its finest, most broadest definition. This could be athletes, musicians, leaders, scientists, educators, or anything else in between. Human performance really is what you want your body to be capable of. So in order to accomplish that, I'm extremely excited to share with you the physiology behind human performance in a way that is engaging, applicable, and most importantly, useful.

4. Today, we're going to be talking about muscle, more specifically skeletal muscle, my favorite. Now, I know when you first hear that, your mind may jump to things like sport performance and big giant muscles and bodybuilding and aesthetics. And while that may or may not be of interest to you, I will tell you candidly it's a large interest of mine. You may be surprised to learn that muscle quality and quantity are incredibly important for your overall health and well-being.

5. Yeah, you heard that right. Quality muscle is essential for the vitality of nearly every cell, organ, or organ system in your entire body. Let me give you two specific examples of what I'm talking about. First is the connection between muscle and the brain. Now, there are many lines of evidence we could utilize here, but one that I think highlights the point beautifully is a recent study on about a half a million participants, mostly middle-aged men and women.

6. And in that they found that about 30% of dementia cases were directly attributable to low grip strength. Now, that may sound alarming and/or interesting to you, and I promise, we'll get into the details of that study, and many others, later in the show.

7. Now, that was an example of muscle quality or functionality. Let me give you another one regarding muscle quantity or size, and how that will directly relate to longevity or lifespan. Once again, there's lots of research to pull from, and we'll get into this later in the show. But it's very clear that being under muscled is a significant problem.

8. In fact, we know this is such a big problem. The National Institute of Health has an entire wing dedicated specifically to sarcopenia, which is the advanced loss of muscle with age. If you'd like some hard numbers to wrap your head around a little bit here, consider this. Those in the bottom 20th percentile versus the top 20th percentile in terms of how much muscle mass you have on your entire body, well, those in the bottom portion have about two times the risk of all cause mortality as those in the top.

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