As we age, the loss of muscle mass and strength, known as sarcopenia, becomes increasingly common. This can lead to reduced mobility, increased risk of falls and fractures, and a lower quality of life in older adults. Creatine supplementation combined with resistance exercise may help attenuate sarcopenia and promote healthy aging.
What Happens to Muscles and Bones as We Age
Starting around age 40, adults lose approximately 1% of muscle mass per year. This accelerates after age 50. The loss is primarily due to inactivity, as lifelong exercise can help maintain muscle mass even into very old age.
MRI scans reveal that younger individuals have larger, stronger muscles surrounding bones. After age 50, muscle atrophy occurs and muscle tissue is replaced by fat infiltration, known as sarcopenic obesity. This increases risk of chronic diseases.
Bone mineral density and strength also decline with age, leading to osteopenia and osteoporosis. Older adults suffer around 33% of all falls annually, often leading to fractures, hospitalization, and reduced mobility. Finding ways to preserve muscle and bone strength is crucial for healthy aging.
The Benefits of Resistance Training
Resistance exercise is perhaps the most effective way for adults to build and maintain muscle mass and strength throughout life. Progressive resistance training provides the mechanical overload and muscle damage necessary to stimulate muscle protein synthesis and promote hypertrophy and strength gains.
Multiple meta-analyses confirm resistance training can increase muscle cross-sectional area, lean body mass, and strength in middle-aged and older adults. Improvements are seen even in frail elderly populations when using appropriately supervised and progressively overloaded programs. Consistency is key – 2-3 resistance sessions per week provide ongoing stimuli to counteract sarcopenia.
Beyond driving muscle growth, resistance training provides numerous other benefits important for healthy aging. Weight bearing exercises help maintain bone mineral density, reducing risk of osteoporosis. Resistance training improves muscle power, coordination, and balance, reducing risk of falls and fractures. It also promotes independence and improves ability to carry out activities of daily living requiring strength and mobility.
Resistance exercise helps regulate blood glucose and may improve body composition by reducing fat mass, especially when combined with dietary interventions. This can lower risk of obesity, metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes. Resistance training also has psychological benefits – group exercises classes provide social interaction while individual programs support self-efficacy.
In summary, resistance training is truly exercise as medicine for older adults. Though no pill can completely replace resistance exercise, strategic supplementation such as creatine may provide synergistic effects when paired alongside a regular training program. Maintaining lifelong resistance exercise should be the foundation for healthy aging.
Higher Doses of Creatine May Be Needed for Adults
Research suggests older adults may need higher creatine doses to achieve benefits, likely due to anabolic resistance – the reduced responsiveness to stimuli like exercise and protein. While young adults use a “loading phase” of 20g creatine per day, older adults may need at least 0.1g per kg bodyweight, or higher daily maintenance doses of 5-10g. Higher intakes may help overcome age-related deficiencies in muscle creatine content.
Creatine Supplementation Can Augment Resistance Training
While resistance exercise should remain the foundation, creatine supplementation may provide synergistic effects when combined with training programs in older adults. Multiple meta-analyses pooling results across hundreds of subjects consistently show greater increases in lean mass, muscle thickness, and strength when creatine is added to resistance training versus training alone.
For example, a comprehensive meta-analysis by Chilibeck et al. combined 21 studies with over 700 older adults. The creatine groups gained an additional 1.3kg more muscle mass and exhibited greater upper and lower body strength compared to resistance training alone. Critically, creatine improved lower body strength to a greater extent, which can bolster mobility and reduce fall risk.
The mechanisms underlying creatine’s synergistic effects are multi-factorial. Creatine draws water into muscle cells, thereby increasing protein synthesis and activating satellite cell proliferation and differentiation. This provides greater cellular machinery to support exercise-induced muscle hypertrophy. Creatine may also reduce protein breakdown and muscle oxidative stress/inflammation following intense training.
Higher creatine doses (5-10g/day) appear necessary to overcome anabolic resistance in aging muscles compared to younger athletes (2-5g/day). Older adults may particularly benefit from creatine due to age-related reductions in intramuscular creatine content and accelerated muscle loss. In summary, creatine supplementation can provide a safe, legal way to augment resistance training adaptations and help attenuate sarcopenia.
Creatine Alone Offers Less Benefit for Muscle and Bone
Without resistance exercise, creatine alone provides little benefit for aging muscles or bones. Most studies showing positive effects included supervised resistance training programs with higher creatine doses.
Surprising Benefits for Bone Health
Creatine may help attenuate bone loss in postmenopausal women. In one study, women randomized to creatine plus resistance training lost 50% less hip bone mineral density compared to training only. Sophisticated imaging techniques reveal creatine increases lower leg muscle and bone density versus placebo when combined with resistance training. This may potentially reduce fracture risk, though more research is needed.
Potential Applications for Sarcopenic Obesity, Frailty, and Muscle Wasting Conditions
Though speculative, creatine’s potential to increase muscle mass and strength while reducing fat infiltration could attenuate sarcopenic obesity. Creatine may also aid conditions like frailty and cachexia (muscle wasting), where preserving lean mass and strength is critical. Future studies are needed in these populations.
Creatine to preserve muscle, strength, and function
Creatine shows promise for helping older adults preserve muscle, strength, and function when combined with resistance exercise. Benefits for bone health are less clear. Higher doses, at least 5-10g per day, appear necessary for older populations. More research is underway to determine creatine’s efficacy for attenuation of age-related muscle and bone loss.
Workout and Fitness News
Subscribe to our mailing list and get interesting stuff and updates to your email inbox.
Thank you for subscribing.
Something went wrong.