When you ask someone how long it takes to lose muscle, the answers are all over the place. But new research from the University of Copenhagen shows that our muscles can deteriorate from inactivity much quicker than we think—and it’s even harder to get it back.
For the experiment, men of all ages had one leg immobilized to see how long it would take for their muscle mass to deteriorate significantly. As it turns out, it only takes two weeks.
The study found that young men lost up to one third of their muscular strength after two weeks, and older men can lose up to one quarter.
The study found as well that the more fit you are, the more muscle you lose over this two-week period. So if you’re very physically fit and you injure yourself for a long period of time, you lose more mass than someone who is not as fit.
Though the older participants tended to lose slightly less muscle mass than the younger participants, this does not mean that it’s not just as critical. In fact, one of the researchers said that loss of muscle mass, no matter how much, would have a greater impact on an older person, since it will have a greater effect on their general health.
The worst discovery? “It’ll take you three times the amount of time you were inactive to regain the muscle mass that you’ve lost,” said Martin Gram, a researcher at the Center for Healthy Aging and the Department of Biomedical Sciences. He theorized that this is because inactivity takes up your whole day, when exercise only takes an hour or two at a time.
If that’s not motivation to keep an eye on your injuries and get to the gym regularly, I don’t know what is.
