Muscle loss is caused by lack of exercise, aging, injuries, nervous system disorders, and diseases that attack muscles. Inactivity causes gradual muscle loss, while injuries and nervous system disorders can cause localized or severe muscle loss. Maintaining an active lifestyle can prevent muscle loss.
The main cause of muscle loss tends to be a general lack of exercise. For example, people with jobs where they sit at a computer all day will often experience muscle loss unless they include supplemental exercise. Injuries often lead to muscle weakness for the same basic reason. Other primary causes of muscle loss include aging, disease or injury to the nervous system, and diseases that directly attack the musculature. Some types of loss can be overcome through lifestyle changes or treatments, while others are usually permanent.
When muscles are not being used, the body allows them to gradually decrease. Individuals who don’t get enough exercise will tend to lose muscle slowly over years on end. It may take a long time for this process to become noticeably severe, but maintaining significant amounts of muscle—like an athlete’s muscle mass, for example—requires fairly consistent maintenance. If someone is suffering from this type of muscle wasting, a more active lifestyle can often be enough to reverse the situation.
As people age, their bodies stop regenerating cells as quickly. This is what causes many of the outward signs of aging and is also responsible for some amount of muscle loss. It’s also generally true that people tend to exercise much less as they get older, and this helps to overwork the muscle, reducing the effects of aging. If frequent exercise is maintained, older people can avoid considerable muscle loss.
Injuries tend to cause muscle wasting for several reasons. Sometimes injuries simply confine a person to a bed for a period of time and this can cause muscle loss throughout the individual’s body. In other cases, an injury may simply cause a person to stop using certain muscles, and this can cause more localized muscle wasting.
Nervous system disorders can potentially cause severe muscle loss. This often happens because the nerves simply stop sending impulses to certain muscles. If muscles don’t move, they gradually decrease in size for the same reason that people who live sedentary lives tend to lose muscle.
There are also diseases that simply cause muscle to decrease by directly destroying muscle tissue. A common example would be the various forms of muscular dystrophy. These types of diseases are generally difficult to treat because they are often based on genetic predispositions.
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