Natural Remedies for Sarcopenia: Rebuilding Muscle Naturally

I started working with an 83 year old friend who has sarcopenia or age related muscle loss. She had gotten off to a pretty good start by walking a couple of blocks per day. She had ankle swelling that her doctors were not able to determine the cause of and that ankle swelling and related pain started making it impossible for her to continue her daily walking so she stopped her daily walks.

I then had her start applying melatonin lotion to her ankles to reduce the swelling in the hope that she would begin her daily walks again. The melatonin worked for the purpose, but she was no longer interested in going for her daily walks.

Recently when a group of us had gotten together for dinner at a restaurant, I noticed that she was walking with a cane and was having balance issues where she would start drifting sideways as she was trying to walk forward and it was noticeable enough that several of us were concerned that she might fall.

The next day, I spoke with her and explained that she looked like she was having balance issues and having trouble moving forward in a straight line at dinner the previous night. I also told her that it did not appear as though her muscles were strong enough to be able to help pull her back into a straight line and several of us were concerned that she might fall. She agreed, but said she didn't know what to do about it.
I told her that it is common for an 83 year old to lose muscle mass and that was called sarcopenia and she said she was not aware of sarcopenia, but felt she has been feeling a bit weaker lately.. I further told her that the solution was to get back to her walking and ultimately start an exercise routine to strengthen her core muscles to help improve her stability and balance. I suggested that she start using an amino acid called L Leucine which is one of the branched chain amino acids (BCAAs) that might help her get more from her walking and exercise program in terms of helping to build muscle and strength again. I also suggested that she start with using a walker to be much safer about it than using her cane. She was surprised at that suggestion, but I explained to her that if you are constantly fighting to maintain your balance while walking with a cane, she would not be able to derive maximum benefits from her walking and she said she agreed.

She started taking 3 grams of leucine powder mixed in a quart of water drinking about one third after breakfast, one third after lunch and one third after dinner. She has a pretty good protein intake so she didn't ad any additional protein. A side benefit that she has gotten from the L Leucine drink is that she no longer needs to apply melatonin lotion to her ankles to reduce the swelling, as the ankle swelling is now gone. She plans to ultimately increase her L Leucine dose to 4 grams total per day, but she wanted to start at the minimum in case she had a negative reaction to the L Leucine. I was not expecting this benefit for her ankles, but I think it is related to her heart as L Leucine can offer heart benefits as discussed here :

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8606064/

Here is a relevant quote from the animal study :

' Leu-treated mice showed a significant reduction in infarct size when compared with the control group (34.8% ± 3.8% vs. 43.1% ± 2.4%, n = 7, p < 0.05), whereas Rap-treated mice did not show the protective effects of Leu. This preconditioning effect of Leu was attenuated in mTOR+/− mice. Additionally, Leu increased the percentage of fused mitochondria and the mitochondrial volume, and decreased the number of mitochondria per cell in isolated cardiomyocytes. In HFD-induced obese mice, Leu treatment significantly reduced infarct size (41.0% ± 1.1% vs. 51.0% ± 1.4%, n = 7, p < 0.05), which was not induced by ischemic preconditioning, and this effect was inhibited by Rap. Furthermore, we observed enhanced mTOR protein expression and mitochondrial fusion with decreased reactive oxygen species production with Leu treatment in HFD-induced obese mice, but not in mTOR+/− mice. '

She started walking with a walker about two weeks ago and she has been going everyday. She said that on her fourth day she her legs felt very heavy and tired, but I explained that this is common in the second to fourth day of starting a new exercise of almost any type, especially if you are trying to push your limits. Today she told me that she is now exceeding the distance that she used to do and now she is going to work on increasing her walking speed.

She seems very committed to this regimen and now that she is seeing these improvements relatively quickly, I think it will be much easier to get her back on an appropriate exercise regimen to help strengthen her core muscles. She had previously learned the needed exercises for core muscle building when she had gone through physical therapy after a car accident, so I think she will be encouraged to start that regimen again.
She also mentioned that she really likes the walker over her cane because the walker offers several benefits that the cane doesn't. One, with the walker, she can always be looking ahead or around to either side, whereas with the cane she always has to look at the ground to make sure what the terrain ahead is like. Two, she said with the walker, it lets her know ahead of time if there is any unlevel ground just ahead so she is prepared before she reaches the unevenness in the ground. Third she said she feels much more confident, safer and balanced when she is walking compared to the cane.

Overall, my friend is very happy with her progress and is excited about potential future benefits! This is better than when she was walking before and it looks like she is going to stick with it.

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