On Wed, 16 Sep 1998, Buji Kern wrote:
> Overall, dense skeletons with well developed tuberosities, indicate
> relatively heavy muscularity.
I would expect so, especially compared to the muscular
development of contemporary sedentary people. I certainly don't
think it could have been typical of paleolithic people to be
weak. I'm just wondering about what *optimum* muscularity would
be, given the trade-offs involved.
> I have several comments re muscularity, and its uses beyond cosmetics. One
> is that a great deal of pleasure is mediated by muscular exertion. I spent
> several hours today hitting a tennis ball as hard as I could, and the only
> things I can think of that give more, all require an intimate connection.
> Not to mention its hard to stretch them out for two hours!
The pleasures of exertion do not require massive development. I
also had a great time yesterday afternoon practicing karate with
a colleague -- first time I've trained in a couple of years. The
ability to keep this practice up for two hours requires a decent
level of cardiovascular fitness and decent muscularity. It's not
clear, however, that it would have been better if I were carrying
20 more pounds of muscle than what I'm carrying now.
> Second, a lot of old people run out of the muscle power to do the simple
> things that life requires, even in America. Getting up from a chair,
> carrying a bag of groceries, etc, etc. We are all going to lose mass as we
> go down the road of life. Why not start with a full tank?
I think it's rather likely that much of this atrophy is itself
the result of inactivity. I'm 45 now, and I can remember why my
parents were 45. At that age, they got *no* exercise; it just
wasn't done. They hardly moved. Their mindset was that exercise
was work, and you don't work unless you're getting paid. In his
60s my father took up regular exercise, including a modest
strength training program. Today, in his 70s, he is reasonably
muscular and still capable of physical activity. My mother
(they're divorced) never exercised. Today she is nearly an
invalid. She has had cancer, and that didn't help, but even
before the cancer she was not capable of much movement.
In contrast, I recall a television program about an isolated
tribe in the Brazilian rain forests. They showed a man, in his
mid-60s, easily climbing a tall branchless tree using a handheld
loop of cord around the trunk. The man was muscular, with
excellent definition, but not large.
If by a "full tank" you mean enough muscle to meet the typical
demands of a challenging natural environment, then I agree
completely with your point above. If you mean, however, as much
muscle as you can force your body to gain by means of extensive
weight training then I'm not so sure. I suspect there is a point
beyond which added muscle is counterproductive.
Obviously this is also true in the other direction. The CRON
program involves loss of muscle, especially if one is heavily
muscled to begin with. If this slows down the aging process, as
appears to be the case, that is good. If it makes one too weak
to cope with the demands of living, that is not so good. One of
the criticisms of CRON is that the results that you get with
animals living in protected environments, such as lab cages and
Biosphere, cannot be generalized to free-living conditions.
On the other hand, we may tend to overestimate the amount of
muscle needed. I have mentioned G.B. Shaw, who died at age 97
from injuries sustained when he fell out of a tree that he was
pruning. Shaw, a vegan his entire adult life, was almost
certainly a CRON specimen. He was by all accounts extremely thin
and wiry. That he lived so long and remained active enough to
climb trees is suggestive, even on a diet that I would regard as
suboptimal.
Todd Moody
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