Do You Intend To Get Stronger Or Weaker As You Age?

Some of us wonder what is going to happen to us when we get older

. We see others maybe even our own family members lose the ability to function and take care of themselves or even ending up in a nursing home sometimes for much of the last third of life. Any wonder we fear aging when we see the results of 20, 30 or more years of sedentary living leaving the human body a frail, weak shell of its former strong, healthy vibrant self.

We know now that a loss of strength, muscle tissue, mobility and functionality in not an inevitable part of the aging process. It is the result of disuse, the old 'use it or lose it' scenario. Our sedentary world is responsible and apathy, laziness and our indifference to the importance of our strength and fitness are what are responsible for loss of function.

Whether you like it or not if you do not get enough muscle building and maintaining activity you will lose at least one half pound of muscle each year starting around your mid 20's. You will lose more if you don't exercise and less if you do. If you choose the right exercise which works your muscles directly you can almost completely halt the loss.

This will be the difference between a really healthy active life right up until you go to meet your maker or the poor person that ends up in the nursing home unable to care for themselves. It is not the number of years that is the problem but what you do and don't do in the years and decades before you get old that makes the big difference.

Strength is not something that just hangs around if you aren't using it. It melts away slowly but surely so one day you wake up in middle age and find things have changed - a lot. Where firm muscle tissue used to be there is now flabby fat, thighs have become skinny and thin from loss of the big leg muscles, energy has been siphoned away, posture droops, the waistline has expanded and you look and feel much older that you should.

We do have a choice here, when we chose to stay strong with 2-3 sessions each week of strength training exercise. That process of 'growth and repair' spreads throughout every cell in our bodies when the 'youth' hormones are stimulated by muscle action. This makes us functionally younger and not just a little bit younger - a whole lot younger when every single system in the body is strengthened including the immune system giving protection from disease.

Every one of us has the choice to live out our life in a powerful, healthy body if we are willing to put in some time and effort and the alternatives are far worse than a bit of inconvenience. After all how inconvenient would it be to be dead 24 hours a day?

You choose whether your body's replacement cells that are being constantly rebuilt and replaced come in stronger or weaker. You choose whether they grow and renew or decay and deteriorate each day from then on. But your cells do not care which choice you make - they just follow the directions you send. It is so simple - work your muscular system and your cells get stronger; slow down, sit down, become less active and they decay.

by: Gen Wright

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