The maxim ‘use it or lose it’ is wrong, researchers say. Here’s why.

Author: Derek Beres / Source: Big Think

UMass Amherst biology professor Lawrence M. Schwartz redefines the term by writing, “use it or lose it, until you work at it again.”
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A fair amount of time during the aging process seems to be dedicated to discussing what one used to be able to do. This is especially true in exercise. I used to run for this long. I used to be able to lift this amount of weight. I used to be this flexible. At some point something changes and the person stops practicing the regimen. The decline seems inevitable, creating a mindset in which people simply give up.

It’s true—bodies age and die. We have different capabilities at various ages dependent upon a variety of biological realities. Yet a new review, written by UMass Amherst biology professor Lawrence M. Schwartz and published in Frontiers in Physiology on January 25, takes the “use it or lose it” mentality to task. In a new understanding of the term, Schwartz writes that it’s really “use it or lose it, until you work at it again.”

Little is predetermined when it comes to our capabilities. Schwartz uses our ability to gain and lose muscle in his argument.

There’s hypertrophy, the process by which a muscle grows. There are a number of ways of causing this, most popularly resistance training and load bearing, but also anabolic steroids. This does not require a gym: move furniture around your apartment or work at a job that requires some amount of lifting on a regular basis and your muscles grow.

Then there’s atrophy, muscle shrinkage. Stop lifting and resisting objects and you lose it. So far, so good. The question is, is it truly lost? That is, is the loss permanent, as the adage is popularly received to mean.