Muscles and The Immune System

Strong skeletal muscles play an important role in maintaining an effective immune system. Skeletal muscle accounts for about 40% of total body weight and contains at least 50% of all body proteins.

Muscle Mass

Muscle mass is the amount of muscle in your body, including skeletal muscles, smooth muscles, and cardiac muscles. Muscle mass plays a role in increased workout performance, and it can play a role in overall health, too. Muscle plays an important role in whole-body protein metabolism, which is particularly important when it comes to the body’s response to stress—including recovery from trauma or illness.

Muscle mass can also play an important role in the prevention of certain conditions and chronic diseases. In addition, gaining muscle mass can give you more energy and stronger muscles to perform daily tasks.

In addition to age, your gender, height, and weight may play a role in how much muscle mass you have. Men have more skeletal muscle mass than women, and gender differences are greater in the upper body.

Low muscle mass is associated with outcomes such as higher surgical and post-operative complications, longer length of hospital stay, lower physical function, poorer quality of life and shorter survival.

Cachexia

Skeletal muscles may combat the process of cachexia. Cachexia is a wasting syndrome characterized by significant weight loss, muscle atrophy, and an impaired ability to perform activities of daily living. This refers to the wasting away of muscle and fat that often accompanies severe chronic illness, alongside a weakening of the immune system. Cachexia typically accompanies severe chronic illnesses such as cancer. It is characterized by the wasting away of the body’s muscle and fat. Cachexia can also affect people with other serious conditions, such as AIDS, chronic kidney diseases, and heart failure.

Cachexia may be due to the body overcompensating when it attempts to take energy from muscle and fat to help fight a severe illness. Alongside cachexia, people with severe illnesses can also experience a weakened immune system. This is because their T cells, which are central to the immune system’s response to illness, become exhausted. There is a relationship between muscle mass loss and T cell exhaustion. This has implications for the strength of the immune system.

Cachexia can also increase the risk of other complications, such as infections, delayed wound healing or poor response to treatment, heart failure, exacerbation of chronic conditions such as asthma, and malnutrition.

Sarcopenia

Sarcopenia, or age-related muscle loss, begins at age 30—some estimates say it starts even earlier, at 25—and causes muscle loss of as much as 3 to 5% per decade. Untreated sarcopenia, as well as osteoporosis, can lead to an increased risk of falls and fractures.

Musculoskeletal aging is a major public health strain due to the significant demographic modifications in the population, and it is linked to high risk of falls, loss of autonomy in elderly individuals and institutionalization with small health outcomes.

Muscle mass and strength usually peak at the age of 40. After that, one may lose up to 8 percent of muscle mass every decade. Without intervention, the rate of decline could double from the age of 70. For those approaching middle age, early indicators of deteriorating muscle health include difficulties in carrying groceries or feeling easily fatigued while performing household chores.

Rather than accepting these signs as inevitable consequences of ageing, preserving muscle health and function should become a priority, especially as individuals approach their 40s. Fortunately, seniors need not feel it is too late, as muscle loss can be reversed through proper nutrition and by incorporating resistance exercises into daily routines.

Muscle Mass and Immunity

Skeletal muscle is a molecular and metabolic machine that provides the basis for human movement and any form of physical exercise. Muscles produce and release compounds which play an important role in the proliferation, activation, and distribution of some immune cells.

Loss of muscle mass is associated with compromised immunity and infections. Research in older adults has shown increased markers of inflammation associated with low muscle mass and muscle function.

Muscle is a major storage site for amino acids that are used by the body during a trauma or infection. Therefore, low muscle mass coupled with inadequate protein intake may affect the body’s response to an injury or infection.

The proteins in muscle mass may be used by the immune system to respond to injury. Altered muscle metabolism plays a key role in the genesis, and therefore the prevention, of many common pathologic conditions and chronic diseases.

Given the evidence linking muscle to the immune system, maintaining or improving muscle health should be a priority. Exercise can help to boost the immune system—in part because of muscle mass. Exercise has an anti-inflammatory effect, and habitual exercise improves immune regulation, delaying the onset of age-related dysfunction.

Muscle contractions during exercise increase the rate of blood flow lymph drainage, resulting in more immune cells circulating in the body at a higher rate. It particularly helps recruit specialized immune cells that target pathogens, such as natural killer cells and T cells. This lowers the risk of infection and its severity.

Not all inflammation is bad. Muscle-damaging exercise creates a localized pro-inflammatory state that draws in lymphocytes and mobilizes leukocytes, enhancing the immune response temporarily.

Regular strength training also maintains the quality of the muscles, with less interspersed fat, which boosts immune functioning and reduces the risk of certain cancers. A healthy immune system catches these harmful rogue cells before they proliferate. More muscle mass also creates a hiding place for some T cells, which become exhausted by chronic infection.

Tips to Maintain Muscle Health

Safeguarding muscle mass can be done with a few simple strategies – mainly focusing on physical activity and proper nutrition.

Engage in regular exercise. Aim for at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity exercise a week and include resistance training to also help maintain muscles and strength.

Eat enough protein. Incorporate protein foods, like chicken, seafood, eggs, nuts, beans, or dairy into your diet. Follow a nutritious diet. Choose a balanced diet full of vegetables, fruits, whole grains, proteins, healthy fats and key vitamins and minerals like calcium and vitamin D.

Avoid smoking. Cigarette smoke directly damages muscles in the body. Smoking impairs the muscle protein synthesis process and increases the expression of genes associated with impaired muscle maintenance; smoking increases the risk of sarcopenia.

The average adult needs around 7-9 hours of sleep each night. Regularly having this much sleep is especially important for those looking to increase their muscle mass. Sleep has a huge contribution in the muscle building process and muscle recovery after certain kinds of tissue damage, like intense training sessions or injury. Levels of structural proteins in skeletal muscle decrease in response to sleep loss.

Drink 6 to 8 cups or glasses of water a day. Muscles need water to stay healthy. In fact, muscles are made up of nearly 79% water. We are not drinking enough water to keep our muscles healthy.