These stimulators jiggle your body to stimulate muscles.
You are in a condition as if you kept your muscles tight
for lifting up a heavy weight.
Hi, I'm Toshio Moritani, a sports medical expert.
Today I'm here to answer your questions on muscles.
This is Muscle Support.
The first question is from legendary cypress stick.
"Is the muscle power proportional to the size of a muscle?"
Yes, it is.
Anatomically, it is said that an individual can produce
about 4 to 6 kilograms of force per square centimeter of muscle.
However, muscles don't move on their own.
It's the brain that stimulates muscles and makes them contract.
Therefore, even among people with the same size of muscle,
some people have brains that are better at stimulating muscles
and they can produce bigger force than others.
Those who with brains that are not good at stimulating muscles
cannot produce so much force with their muscles.
In sum, muscle power is basically proportional to the size of a muscle,
but it also depends on how excited the brain is
and how much it stimulates a muscle.
The next question is from Wackadoodle.
"Can we build muscles no matter how old we get?"
Yes, we can.
As we often hear recently, "Muscles never betray you."
A recent study reveals that
even the elderly can build muscles if they do the workout properly.
So, we can build muscles no matter how old we get.
Next question is
"I want to lose some weight. Which muscle should I train first?"
Many people think that muscle training makes us consume a lot of energy,
but in fact, not so much.
Let's say your weight is 60 kilograms and a barbell weighs 3 kilograms.
It's obvious that moving your body would make you consume more energy.
Therefore, you would consume much more energy by walking and jogging
than by doing muscle training.
If you want to lose your weight, strengthen your legs and back first
and then do some exercises that use your whole body such as walking and jogging.
Those who have a lot of muscles like me have a high basal metabolic rate,
and it leads to higher resting energy expenditure.
Muscle training stimulates sympathetic nervous system,
which controls our appetite.
There is a famous theory that says
those who with decreased sympathetic nerve activities gain weight.
It's the most widely accepted theory in the world.
Those who cannot control appetite well
or have lower resting energy expenditure are more likely to become obese.
Once your sympathetic nervous system gets weaker,
your resting energy expenditure decreases.
Normally, feeling of being full is evoked right after eating something.
In fact, satiety center is a part of sympathetic nervous system.
In the past, dumbbell exercises were very popular,
but we don't burn a lot of energy just by doing those exercises.
Doing dumbbell exercises stimulates sympathetic nervous system.
It leads to better control of appetite and higher basal metabolic rate,
resulting in weight loss.
The next question is from Makku OS.
"If I drink a lot of alcohol after a workout,"
"how much would it reduce the effectiveness of a workout?"
There is a research paper on this topic.
When you train your muscle, mTOR becomes phosphorylated
and it induces a chemical reaction that is necessary for protein synthesis.
But drinking alcohol decreases the effect of mTOR by more than 20%.
Therefore, it is true that
drinking a lot of alcohol after a workout reduces its effectiveness.
The next question is from shinya.
"Is there an upper limit of muscle mass that humans can build?"
Yes, there is.
If there were no upper limit,
50 years of workout would have built too much muscle.
The more you do a workout, the bigger your muscle gets,
until the point you build muscles as big as bodybuilders have.
World-class bodybuilders have a surprising amount of muscles.
But when they took and studied samples of their muscles,
apoptosis, which means programmed cell death, was observed in some muscles.
When muscles become too big, nutrition doesn't arrive deep inside the muscles
and it eventually makes them collapse.
There is an upper limit of muscle mass that humans can build.
The next question is from Ka.
"Are those who have excellent reflexes different in muscle proportion,"
"muscle mass, and how easy it is to build muscles compared to others?"
First of all,
there is no good motor nerves or bad motor nerves.
Motor nerves are located in the spinal cord.
The number of motor nerves necessary for contracting biceps
are 500 and they are here.
It's the same for anybody, regardless of gender.
Therefore, whether you have excellent reflex or not
depends on the programming of the cerebrum that controls motor nerves.
It's about the timing, the number of motor nerves to use,
and the pulse frequency to stimulate muscles.
Those who have excellent reflexes are good at controlling these factors.
I think those who have slow reflexes are poor at using their brain.
Therefore, how well you can build muscles doesn't depend on motor nerves.
Those who are good at using motor nerves
can train their muscles well and build them easily.
The next question is from Warau fukuro.
"Is it true that doing a workout helps us become smarter?"
Yes, it is scientifically proven.
In the past, many people thought that
those who were doing a workout were not so smart,
but it was just because they spent less time studying.
A recent study shows that muscle training makes
insulin-like growth factor-1 (IGF-1) increase in blood.
It acts on the hippocampus,
the part of the brain responsible for memory and learning,
and improves cognitive function and learning ability.
Moreover, if you do an exercise of endurance,
the levels of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF)
increases in blood.
It results in more new nerve cells in hippocampus,
improving learning ability.
Many research papers show that muscle training and aerobic exercises
are very effective for improving brain function, even of demented patients.
Some therapeutic drugs for dementia are approved in Japan and USA to treat,
but there are far less scientific papers supporting their effectiveness
than those supporting the effectiveness of exercises for dementia.
Therefore, the best way to improve cognitive function is
doing exercises and workout.
It is a fact that doing a workout helps us become smarter.
The next question is from little robot with no prototype.
"Is it true that you wouldn't grow taller"
"if you build muscles while you are still growing?"
It's probably a superstition.
I think there is no scientific paper supporting this idea.
If you are a boy still growing, you don't have enough male hormone yet
and you cannot build so much muscles by doing a workout.
You need to wait maybe until you become a high school student,
the time when you release more male hormones and your voice changes.
Once male hormones are released enough and course through your body,
you would build muscles easily by doing a workout.
Building muscles and growing bones have nothing to do with each other.
So, it's a superstition.
I don't think doing a workout prevents you from growing tall.
The next question is from A.
"Do electronic muscle stimulators really work for building muscles?"
Yes, they do.
You may have seen some people using abs pads on TV.
Many people think that they are just vibrating muscles
and they have a lot of muscles just because they are athletes.
Electrical stimulation is a very interesting subject to talk about.
In order to make fast-twitch muscles bigger and stronger,
you need to lift 75% of maximum weight you can lift for 10 times
and repeat it for 3 sets, according to the basic method.
Electronic muscle stimulators are commonly used now
mostly because the elderly cannot do a hard workout.
That's why they use electronic muscle stimulators.
These stimulators jiggle your body to stimulate muscles.
You are in a condition as if you kept your muscles tight
for lifting up a heavy weight.
Therefore, although it doesn't look so hard to use the stimulator,
a lot of lactic acid gets released in your blood.
Electronic muscle stimulators are effective for building muscles.
The next question is from handle name.
"Are protein shakes effective for building muscles?"
"Why can't we just have 3 protein-rich meals a day?"
If you take about 1.2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight,
you can maintain your muscle mass.
However, the same cannot be said for the elderly.
It is said that even those who takes the most amount of protein
would lose 0.5 kilograms of muscles in 3 years.
Recently, researchers studied a group of people consumed 20 grams of
essential amino acids in a supplement right after a workout.
As a result, regardless of age or gender,
increases in muscle protein synthesis was observed in all the subjects.
So, it's better to take protein supplements.
If you are young, you can maintain your muscle mass by having proper meals.
But if you are older,
you should take a protein supplement after a workout.
If you could take it within 2 hours of finishing a workout,
it would be more effective.
The next question is from arendt.
"I've heard that human muscles are normally activated only partially"
"so that they wouldn't harm the body, but is it true?"
"I've also heard that an old person who was around 70 years old"
"saved a person who was trapped under a car"
"by lifting up the car that weighed nearly 1000 kilograms, but is it true?"
American Physiological Society published an article about it
and scientifically clarified the mechanism of "hysterical strength."
Most of the time, the power we can use is restricted by the brain.
Only in a life-or-death situation, such a restriction is lifted
and we can use our maximum strength.
It is possible that 70-year-old person displays incredible strength.
The next question is from calorie met hell mate.
"It is known that long-distant runners use"
"slow-twitch muscle fibers more often."
"If they want to run faster also in the short-distance running,"
"is it possible to train both fast- and slow-twitch muscle fibers"
"to the high level of performance at the same time or not?"
It may be possible to win 3rd place both in short- and long-distance running
in All Japan Inter University Track & Field Championships,
but not in competitions of higher levels than that.
The good example is the American sprint runner Joyner, who won gold medals.
After the Olympic Games in Seoul, she decided to set her new goal
to the long-distance running and started training for it.
She may have thought that she could just run at a slower pace.
But long-distance running requires both cardio and muscular endurance.
She couldn't win any prizes in long-distance running
even in the Olympic Qualifying Championship.
So, it's very hard to train both fast- and slow-twitch muscle fibers.
Thank you so much for watching.
Muscles never betray you.
I hope you would train muscles
because it could also improve your brain function,
and stay healthy both physically and mentally.