‘Sa word every woman, particularly women who are 40+, should know. It refers to age-related loss of muscle mass and function. ‘So what?’, you may think – don’t we all grow frail as we age? Not much to be done about it, right? Wrong.
And if you’re a woman, you’ll be wanting to do all you can to build up your muscle strength at any age, but it becomes especially important – urgent, even – in our 40s, 50s and beyond.
Starting when we’re around 30, our bodies naturally start to lose 3–8% of muscle mass per decade, according to research done in the US. This rate of decline is even higher after 60, which means we could potentially lose 50% of our total muscle mass by age 80.
In some cases, this can advance to sarcopenia (believed to affect 10–20% of older adults, although this estimate is probably low due to inadequate diagnosis rates), which can manifest as trouble with basic daily activities like getting up from a chair, walking, twisting the lid off a jar, or carrying groceries. Over time, loss of strength can lead to falls or other injuries, which have a greater probability of causing life-threatening complications for older women, since we are more likely than men to develop
