I have to admit, my perspective on the role of muscles has pretty much exclusively pertained to movement. Skeletal muscle enables us to blink, smile, walk, play tennis, and chew our food. But while we don’t mind the effort required to masticate our food, the average American is not so motivated to exercise on a daily basis. However, the amazing reality is that muscles do a whole lot more than enable movement. Our muscle mass is an internal pharmacy, dispensing medicine into the body when in motion.
The medicine produced by moving muscles that I am referring to is in the form of molecules called myokines. From muscle, myokines travel throughout the body, including to the brain. Hundreds of myokines have been identified, and each of them uniquely contributes to our health. For example, some myokines convert white fat into brown fat that burns up extra calories as heat, and that’s great for weight loss. Others are anti-inflammatory, and still others travel to the brain, cross the blood brain barrier, and function as anti-depressants. In the brain, myokines reduce stress, anxiety, and even neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s. Literally, they become molecules of hope.
Myokines treat high blood sugar by increasing blood glucose uptake by the cells and reducing insulin resistance. They have the potential to treat all kinds of health conditions and diseases, including diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and cancer. They also hinder muscle wasting and have been found to be key players in supporting muscular health in the elderly.
Aerobic exercise apparently produces certain myokines, while muscle-strengthening resistance exercise produces other kinds. Research has explored the effect of different types of exercise, and a recent review of those studies concludes that, “Particularly, resistance training turned out to be a powerful stimulus to enhance myokine release.”[1] Sadly, we don’t avail ourselves of the benefit of this endogenous medicine enough. In studies, approximately 75 percent of adults over 65 years of age do not engage in the minimum amount of physical activity required to stay healthy. Maybe there’s joint pain, or the fear of falling, or a strong couch preference. But sedentary living has a profound effect upon our myokine production as well as our ability to experience health, and can create a vicious cycle.
Let’s say that arthritis leads to lack of physical activity, and this lack of activity results in discontinuation of myokine production. The dearth of myokines means there’s no myokine medicine available to treat the inflammation in the joints. The arthritic pain gets worse, which confirms us in the easy chair. However, the amazing thing is that even though we close down the internal pharmacy in our muscles, we can put it back in business at any time.
We go to the doctor when something is going wrong with our body, and say, “Doc, please give me some medicine for this.” But did you know that we can ask our body to dispatch powerful, endogenously produced pharmaceuticals simply by exercising?
Walking is great, but consider adding some muscle strengthening activity into your day to maximize your myokines. Our muscles are so incredibly valuable to our well-being. Often, we do not understand the important role they play—not only in body shape, physical strength, and ability, but also in energy level, managing our blood sugar metabolism, and, as we just learned, in being the largest, best-equipped, personalized pharmacy available to us. We don’t need insurance to obtain this medicine. We don’t have to wait in line at Walgreens or Walmart. We don’t have to make a doctor’s appointment to get a prescription—no giving of our hard-earned money to be placed in the pharmaceutical industry’s vat. However, there is a price. We do need to exercise for these medicines to be dispensed.
How about starting to look at our muscles as our very own pharmacy, equipped with powerful, natural, no side-effect medicines that are dispensed whenever we make the decision to exercise? I hope you’re motivated to exercise more.
[1] National Library of Medicine. Myokines and Resistance Training: A Narrative Review. PubMed.
