The older you get, the more muscle mass you lose and with that come all sorts of problems as you age, including weight gain, diabetes, arthritis but also brain shrinkage.
Improving strength and muscle mass is associated with better function of brain white matter – the areas of the brain responsible for making fast connections between brain areas or between the brain and the body. Other studies have shown that loss of muscle mass is associated with lower brain volume and dementia, and muscle mass was also positively correlated with cognitive function in individuals from the UK Biobank study. There are several potential reasons for this association, one critical factor is that your muscles are the best way to improve blood sugar control, which is critical for reducing the risk of dementia.
However, it is important to realise that you don’t need to train like a bodybuilder! Just four sets per week of resistance training is enough to see benefit!
Literally 5 minutes of exercise, or 8 minutes if you include the gaps between the exercises, is all you need to do three to four times a week to build and preserve muscle mass.
Set yourself the goal of three x 8 minute sessions per week, scheduled in your diary to keep you motivated and on track.
Watch these short videos from ex-Gladiator, Kate Staples for some instruction and motivation to get started:
https://www.patrickholford.com/kate-staples-burn-fat-fast-videos/
You can also see more on the programme in your library, where the beginner’s, intermediate and advanced programmes are laid out:
https://foodforthebrain.org/library/strength-training-in-8-minutes-with-kate-staples/
