Page 35 - Retail Pharmacy Assistants September 2020

WEIGHT LOSS 33
By Margaret Mielczarek.
Stroll down any aisle of a retail pharmacy, or Google ‘weight loss’, and it will soon be apparent that shedding weight is one of
the most complicated and difficult to achieve objectives. Many companies and weight-loss ‘gurus’ like to make the mission overly complicated, but health experts all agree it doesn’t have to be difficult – that while it may take some discipline, organisation and lifestyle change, it’s still a matter of having more weight than your body needs. Although this rings true, why is it harder to lose weight as we age? And is it perhaps more important to consider overall health, fitness and strength rather than weight loss per se?
Effects of age-related muscle loss on weight-loss efforts
One of the keys to a faster metabolism is muscle mass, which unfortunately
we start losing as we get older, making weight-loss efforts harder.
Dr Simon Sostaric, Exercise Physiologist from Melbourne Sports
and Allied Health Clinic (msahc.com.au), says muscle loss begins in our early 40s “with hormonal changes happening and a decline in physiological parameters, which normally drive metabolism – and that’s primarily through muscle changes, because if you’re losing muscle, you’re losing mitochondria – and the metabolic pathways change [so] it gets easier to increase fat mass”.
“As your muscle mass is deteriorating, then that fat gain is most commonly accelerated as well,” he added. “If muscle mass loss is accelerated, that will have a greater metabolic cost.”
Further explaining the role of muscle in weight control, Dr Sostaric says “muscle is an integral regulator of glucose”.
“That’s the primary regulator that we have [of glucose], so if your muscles aren’t contracting, you’re not capitalising
on a really good opportunity to manage your blood glucose levels [and] in the absence of that, then the opportunity to lose glucose control increases,” he said.
According to Community Pharmacist and Master Herbalist Gerald Quigley, the “classic” causes of muscle loss are:
• Sedentary lifestyle.
• Eating the wrong food. “The big thing
there is protein,” Mr Quigley said. “We should be having protein across the day, not just with one meal.”
• Inflammation. • Stress.
“If you’ve got any sort of chronic disease ... you’re inflamed – your body’s inflamed. That causes that disruption ... to the anabolic/catabolic balance,” Mr Quigley said.
When it comes to stress as a cause of age-related muscle loss, he adds that “this is why we tell people as they’re ageing: you need to keep walking, keep moving”.
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RETAIL PHARMACY ASSISTANTS • SEP 2020