It’s long been known that strong muscles are critical for living healthy. Strong muscles help keep balance and prevent you from injuring yourself. They help with voluntary movements like walking and involuntary movements like the blood-pumping action of the heart.
The human body has more than 650 different muscles that account for half the body weight. While all muscles play a role in the healthy functioning of the body, the skeletal muscles that we have control over are the ones that help with voluntary movement. Some of these muscles sheath our skeleton, abdomen, chest, biceps, hamstrings and calves.
A March study by professors Preethi Srikanthan and Arun Karlamangla from the David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles, US, illuminates just how important it is to strengthen and increase the mass of our muscles to enhance longevity. The study, published in the American Journal Of Medicine, is the culmination of Prof. Srikanthan’s previous research into the role that muscles play in metabolic disorders like diabetes.Read More
Sujata Kelkar Shetty, PhD, writes on public health issues and is a research scientist trained at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, US.