Why Does Decreased Lean Muscle Mass Matter?

Posted: April 29, 2024

If you find yourself feeling weaker, struggling with everyday tasks, or noticing changes in your body composition, it could be low testosterone. Testosterone replacement can help your body rebuild lean muscle mass, one of the common symptoms of testosterone deficiency. 

Lean muscle mass is the total weight of the muscles in your body. This muscle tissue plays a crucial role in overall health, strength, and how your body functions. Your muscles are the powerhouses behind every step you take, every item you lift, and even how many calories you burn while resting.

While some muscle loss is natural as men age, it can be accelerated by factors like inactivity, poor nutrition, and declining testosterone levels. Over time, this can have a cascading effect on your health and well-being.

If you are experiencing muscle loss and suspect it could be low testosterone, we can provide the precise testosterone replacement treatment your body needs. Schedule an appointment at Low T Center now to get your testosterone levels checked.

Muscle’s Vital Functions in Your Daily Life

Muscles aren’t just about how you look; they’re essential for everyday health. They play crucial roles in how your body burns calories, your ability to move and function, maintaining a healthy body composition, and even protecting you from injuries. 

Lean muscle mass is metabolically active tissue. This means that it burns calories even at rest, contributing significantly to your basal metabolic rate (BMR). A higher BMR translates to your body burning more calories throughout the day, helping you to maintain a healthy weight. 

Skeletal muscle is the driving force behind our movement. From daily tasks like carrying groceries or climbing stairs to athletic endeavors, muscle strength is crucial. Additionally, strong muscles stabilize joints, improving coordination and reducing the risk of strain or injury. Strength training builds robust muscles that act as protective armor for our bones and joints.

Your muscle tissue contributes to a balanced body composition, characterized by a healthy ratio of lean mass to fat mass. Maintaining lean muscle mass helps regulate body fat percentages, reducing your risk of obesity-related diseases.

Testosterone Replacement Helps Build and Maintain Muscle

Help regain your strength and mobility with testosterone replacement.

Muscles are like a house. To build a strong, stable house, you need good building materials (protein) and a skilled crew (hormones like testosterone). These factors work together to create and maintain your muscle mass.

Protein

Protein are the bricks your body uses to construct and repair muscle tissue. After exercise, microscopic tears occur in muscle fibers. These tears are a natural part of the muscle-building process, signaling your body to repair and strengthen the damaged tissue. Protein gives your body the essential amino acids it needs to rebuild muscle fibers, leading to muscle growth.

Testosterone

While protein provides the raw materials, testosterone oversees and directs the building process. Testosterone works in several ways:

• Stimulates Protein Synthesis: Testosterone tells your muscles to increase protein synthesis, the process by which your body uses amino acids to build new muscle tissue.
• Reduces Muscle Breakdown: Testosterone helps reduce muscle protein breakdown, which is the natural process of your body breaking down muscle for energy. By minimizing breakdown, it allows your body to focus on building and strengthening muscle.
• Increases Satellite Cell Activity: Satellite cells are like reserve muscle stem cells. Testosterone helps activate these cells, allowing them to fuse with existing muscle fibers and contribute to muscle growth.

Muscles that are regularly challenged through exercise send a signal to your body to maintain or increase muscle mass. When you exercise regularly, particularly resistance training that targets your major muscle groups, you provide the perfect environment for testosterone to work.

Contributors to Muscle Loss

Low testosterone plays a major role in muscle loss, as it is essential for muscle growth and maintenance, and its levels naturally decline as men age. Typically, men in their 30s have testosterone levels averaging around 600 ng/dL. By their 50s, this average has dropped to the 400 ng/dL range, and men older than 60 can have levels dipping far below 300 ng/dL. Optimal total testosterone levels for most men should be no lower than 300, and range as high as 1,000 ng/dL.

This decrease over time leads to sarcopenia, or the age-related loss of muscle mass and strength. After your 30s, you begin naturally losing muscle tissue in a gradual process that often becomes more noticeable with each passing decade. This decline can lead to functional limitations, reduced mobility, and increased risk of falls and injuries, especially in older adults.

Although advancing age is one of the biggest causes of low testosterone, younger men can also experience testosterone deficiencies. One of the most significant contributing factors to this is lifestyle. Our bodies are designed for movement, so highly sedentary lifestyles can prevent our systems from working the way they need to. When muscles aren’t challenged through regular exercise, your body becomes efficient at breaking them down rather than preserving them, leading to both muscle loss and weight gain.

Testosterone Replacement to Improve Muscle Development

If low testosterone is behind your lean muscle loss, Testosterone Replacement Therapy (TRT) may be a solution. TRT can restore your testosterone levels to within a healthy range, boosting your body’s ability to repair and rebuild muscle tissue. 

Testosterone injections deliver a precise, measured dose of testosterone directly into the bloodstream. With weekly self-administered injections, your body has fast access to the testosterone it needs to actively rebuild muscle and address other symptoms of low testosterone.

We offer easy, convenient testosterone injections to help you get your health back on track. Schedule a consultation at Low T Center today to discuss your symptoms, get your levels checked, and explore personalized treatment options.

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Disclaimer: This article is made available for general, entertainment and educational purposes only. The opinions expressed herein do not necessarily reflect those of Low T Center. You should always seek the advice of a licensed healthcare professional.