The Washington Post

wellness-musclememory

What is muscle memory? - The Washington Post

It’s not a fitness myth: There really is such a thing as muscle memory, although it may not mean exactly what you think it does.

Although people colloquially refer to never forgetting how to ride a bike, throw a baseball or serve a tennis ball as examples of “muscle memory,” those comeback skills actually stem from a motor learning process. In other words, they are “motor memory.” When you learn how to perform these movements well and can do them automatically without conscious thought, that information becomes encoded in the brain, so in the future, “you still have the fundamental coordination that you learned,” explained David Behm, a university research professor in the School of Human Kinetics and Recreation at the Memorial University of Newfoundland in Canada.

When exercise physiologists talk about muscle memory, on the other hand, they’re referring to the phenomenon whereby previously trained muscles acquire strength and volume after a period of disuse much more quickly than never-trained muscles do when starting from scratch.

In the past 15 years, research has shown that the changes actually persist in the muscles themselves. In <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2930527/">one study</a> of mice, for example, the results suggest that after nuclei in muscle cells proliferate in response to an overload of training, those extra nuclei aren’t lost during subsequent periods of inactivity. They’re retained in distinct muscle fibers, essentially waiting to be reactivated with retraining.

When you exercise, it’s normal for muscle fibers to experience minor damage; this is part of the way a muscle gets stronger. Dormant cells called satellite cells move to the site of the injury and insert more nuclei — the brains of the cells — into the muscle fibers, which allows the muscle to grow, explained exercise physiologist Fabio Comana, a lecturer in exercise and nutritional sciences at San Diego State University. Even if you stop exercising for a significant period of time, he said, “the nuclei stay [in place] and accelerate the return to muscle growth” with retraining.

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Another area of research into muscle memory relates to changes to the ways your genes work in response to your environment and behavior, according to Kevin Murach, an assistant professor of health, human performance and recreation at the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville. “In the muscle cells, genes get turned on and off in response to exercise in order to make certain proteins in the cell, which ultimately facilitates muscle growth and strength,” he said. According to this theory, long-term changes to these genes could be what drives muscle memory.

One way or another, this much is clear: The more you exercise, the more (muscle memory) savings you’ll accrue. “Once you’ve got those additional nuclei, they’re in reserve. You’re banking that capacity,” said Lawrence Schwartz, a professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. “You essentially have an instrumental manual for making muscle, so you can get enhanced growth much faster the second time around.”

And researchers believe muscle memory is long lasting, maybe even permanent. “There’s never an age where it stops,” Behm said. In fact, a <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0531556519307806?via%3Dihub">recent study</a> involving men in their 50s to 70s investigated the effects of completing a resistance training regimen, followed by a detraining period, then a retraining period, each consisting of 12 weeks. As expected, resistance training increased knee extension strength and power by 10 to 36 percent. Detraining resulted in a 5 to 15 percent loss of strength and power. The big reveal: “Less than eight weeks of retraining were needed to reach the post-training level of … maximum strength,” according to the researchers.

But how quickly you regain your former fitness depends on how fit you were initially, how long the layoff was, how old you are and how long you’d been exercising to establish your muscle memory, according to Cedric Bryant, president and chief science officer of the American Council on Exercise. “The more fit you are and the longer you established that muscle memory,” he said, “the more the odds tilt in your favor.”

All this news about muscle memory should be encouraging for those who fell off the fitness wagon during the pandemic. It means you’re not starting from square one; you have a distinct advantage when it comes to regaining your former level of fitness. And the principles apply to both resistance training and endurance training, according to Cory Dungan, an assistant professor in exercise physiology at Baylor University.

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With strength training, Comana recommends using this principle for weight progression to avoid injuring yourself when you resume weight training: If you’re doing three sets of 10 reps for two or three weeks, once you get to the point where you feel as if you could do two more reps until you reach the point of failure, then it’s time to add a little more weight.

With aerobic exercise, the best way to rekindle your muscle memory is to ease into your workouts again. “Start at a level below what you were accustomed to doing, then gradually increase in terms of duration, frequency, then intensity,” Bryant said. “Do the minimum effective dose. Moderately challenging should be enough to set you on a course of regaining fitness. Don’t try to go from zero to 60 in terms of ramping up too soon.”

Instead, it’s generally safe to increase these elements by 5 percent every week or two as you feel comfortable, Bryant said. This means that if your goal is to do 150 minutes of aerobic exercise per week, which amounts to five 30-minute sessions, you could start with 15-to-20-minute sessions at an intensity where you can speak but not sing, he said. “Then add five minutes per week until you get to where you were.” Then you can increase the intensity of your workouts, perhaps by adding higher-intensity intervals to your baseline pace.

To hone your skills with a particular sport, such as tennis, soccer or golf, focus more on how you can take advantage of the motor-neuron process. “You can use mental imagery to send messages to those neurons that will turn on when you want to do that movement,” Behm said. It may also help to watch videos where other people are playing that sport, because this will activate the mirror neurons in your brain, he added. (When you watch sports, specific neurons in your brain will fire as if you were playing the sport yourself.)

Ultimately, it helps to think of muscle memory as a payoff for all the past work you put into learning a sport, boosting your aerobic capacity or endurance, or building muscle and strength. The best way to tap into muscle memory is to “get back on the horse,” Murach said. “You will never know how much muscle memory you may have until you start training again.”

Stacey Colino is a writer in Chevy Chase, Md., specializing in health and psychology and a co-author of “Emotional Inflammation: Discover Your Triggers and Reclaim Your Equilibrium During Anxious Times.”

Stacey  Colino

What is muscle memory?

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Wellness

The Washington Post Wellness section provides coverage and analysis of health, healthcare, nutrition, wellness and fitness news, trends and policy. Post Wellness also includes discussions and blogs about major health issues.

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Here’s what muscle memory really means, and how to use it

Adult Acne

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Why adult acne is on the rise and what to do about it  - The Washington Post

It seems like a cruel trick from Mother Nature: At a time when you’re becoming concerned with fine lines and wrinkles on your face, you find yourself dealing with acne breakouts, too. This has become a noteworthy phenomenon during the coronavirus pandemic. A study in the December 2021 issue of the Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology evaluated acne in 172 physicians during the pandemic and found that 45 percent reported their acne worsened, 27 percent reported relapses and over 7 percent indicated that they had acne for the first time.

Dermatologists are seeing similar trends among their patients. Recently, “I’ve been seeing more acne in adults, predominantly in women, than I had in the last 15 years,” said <a href="https://www.mountsinai.org/profiles/joshua-zeichner">Joshua Zeichner</a>, an associate professor of dermatology at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City.

Although acne is often thought of as a teenage affliction, adult acne has long existed. “Acne is unpredictable. It does what it wants, whenever it wants,” said <a href="https://yardleyderm.com/our_doctors/richard-g-fried/">Rick Fried</a>, a dermatologist and clinical psychologist in Yardley, Pa. “We have zero predictors of when people will outgrow adult acne and what the trajectory of its course will be.”

Still, some of the recent boost in blemishes can be traced to the pandemic, experts said. Friction from masks, for example, can cause a type of blemish called acne mechanica, while the trapping of exhaled breath, oil and humidity can lead to other breakouts. “It’s an environment where heat, moisture and humidity mix with surface oils and whatever else is on your face. It’s almost like a greenhouse effect [for pimples] under the mask,” said <a href="https://weillcornell.org/diane-s-bersonmd-7183">Diane Berson</a>, an associate professor of dermatology at Weill Cornell Medicine/New York-Presbyterian Hospital.

Our faces aren’t used to being covered with a mask, which “increases moisture [and] traps dead skin cells and bacteria on the skin,” added <a href="https://keck.usc.edu/faculty-search/nada-elbuluk/">Nada Elbuluk</a>, an associate professor of clinical dermatology at the Keck School of Medicine at the University of Southern California.

Another factor is stress from the pandemic. When your body and mind experience stress, levels of the hormone cortisol increase, which stimulates the skin’s sebaceous glands to produce more oil. Stress also activates the immune system, which promotes inflammation. More oil and more inflammation can trigger acne flare-ups, said Zeichner, who is the medical adviser for <a href="https://joriskincare.com/">Jori skin care</a>, a new line of products designed to treat adult acne.

Lifestyle factors such as diet may also be playing a role in recent breakouts. During the pandemic, “our whole way of living was shut down, and dietary habits, for the most part, got worse, not better,” Zeichner said. <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8582896/" target=_blank>A review of studies</a> in a November 2021 issue of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health found that, during the pandemic, people increased their snacking frequency and ate more sweets and ultra-processed foods, such as sodas, packaged breads, frozen foods, chips and salty snacks, cookies, cakes and sugary breakfast cereals.

<a href="https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/ijd.15862">Research</a> has found that a high-glycemic index diet — one filled with those same sugary and processed foods, which cause blood sugar levels to spike — may be an acne trigger. When blood sugar spikes, it increases inflammation and oil production in the skin, leading to acne breakouts, Zeichner said. By contrast, consuming fruits, vegetables, legumes, steel-cut oats and foods rich in omega-3 fatty acids (such as fish, seafood, nuts and seeds), which keep blood sugar level, is associated with improvements in acne.

Although it’s possible to adjust your diet, stress and masks aren’t going to disappear from our lives anytime soon. So what can you do about acne? Mild cases can be addressed with over-the-counter cleansing or treatment products that contain benzoyl peroxide, salicylic acid or retinoids — but “nothing works overnight,” said Elbuluk, who is also the director of the USC Skin of Color and Pigmentary Disorders Program. “For many people, over-the-counter products alone don’t suffice. If you’re not getting improvements in six to eight weeks, see a board-certified dermatologist.”

Dermatologists have a larger and stronger arsenal to combat acne over the long term, although the approach will depend somewhat on which factors are contributing to someone’s acne. For hormonal acne (related to the menstrual cycle or perimenopause), there’s a new topical cream called Winlevi (clascoterone), an androgen blocker. “This is a first-in-its-class topical androgen that’s absorbed into the skin,” Fried said. “It doesn’t have systemic effects. It doesn’t affect the production or level of hormones in the body.”

For non-hormonal acne flare-ups, topical treatments include antibiotics (such as dapsone or clindamycin), retinoids (such as tretinoin, tazarotene and adapalene), and newer combination products such as a benzoyl-peroxide-clindamycin preparation and a benzoyl-peroxide-tretinoin blend. If you apply topical retinoids, there’s an increased potential for irritation, so it’s important to also use a hydrating agent such as a moisturizer that contains ceramides, niacinamide or hyaluronic acid, Berson said. “You want to maintain the skin’s barrier function if you’re prone to acne breakouts.”

People who are prone to acne also should use oil-free foundation if they wear makeup — and wash it off well at the end of the day, Berson said. Also, “wash your pillowcases regularly, at least once or twice per week.” Don’t wear disposable masks for multiple days in a row, Elbuluk said, and be sure to wash cloth masks regularly.

Medication for persistent acne triggered by hormonal fluctuations include oral contraceptives, which can put hormones on a more even keel, leading to fewer breakouts. Another option is spironolactone (a prescription diuretic), which blocks the androgen receptors on the sebaceous glands, causing them to stop producing as much oil, Zeichner said. However, spironolactone can lower testosterone levels.

Oral antibiotics, especially from the tetracycline class, have long been used to treat recalcitrant acne, but this approach brings concerns about disruption of the gut microbiome and the development of antibiotic resistance. A newer antibiotic called sarecycline, a narrow-spectrum form of tetracycline, is as effective as doxycycline in treating acne, Fried said. And <a href="https://jddonline.com/articles/article-oral-tetracyclines-and-acne-a-systematic-review-for-dermatologists-S1545961620S00s6X">research</a> has found that sarecycline doesn’t affect gut bacteria the same way that doxycycline or minocycline do. For severe acne that’s prone to scarring, oral isotretinoin (a.k.a. Accutane) may be an option.

Given the influence that stress can have on acne, it’s wise to take steps to reduce or relieve stress in your life. “We don’t know what an individual’s threshold is for stress where it elicits enough inflammation to cause the appearance or persistence of acne,” Fried said. “Anything that is stress-reducing may help lessen the severity of acne and improve the effectiveness of treatments.” The key is to find what works for you — whether it’s exercise, yoga, meditation or other relaxation techniques — for the sake of your skin, as well as the rest of your body and mind.

Why adult acne is on the rise and what to do about it 

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Black guy stressing and headache

How stress affects your brain and body  - The Washington Post

We all know what stress feels like physically — though the symptoms vary by person. Some people experience shakiness or a racing heart, while others develop muscle tension, headaches or stomach aches. But what we might not realize is that our physiological responses to life’s stresses and strains can have deeper, less obvious repercussions for just about every organ and system in the body.

“I think people really underestimate just how big the effects are,” said Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, director of the Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research at Ohio State University’s College of Medicine. When you experience stress, your brain triggers the release of a cascade of hormones — such as cortisol, epinephrine (a.k.a., adrenaline) and norepinephrine — that produce physiological changes. These changes, called the stress response or the fight-or-flight response, are designed to help people react to or cope with a threat or danger they’re facing.

Need a quick stress-reliever? Try one of these surprising science-based strategies.

The trouble is that these changes can and do occur in response to stressors that are not life-threatening — work deadlines, traffic jams, financial pressures, family strife — and, over time, they can take a toll on the body and mind. “People understand big stressors, but they don’t pay attention to smaller, accumulating stressors that make a difference, too,” Kiecolt-Glaser said.

What follows is a detailed look at how stress can affect many organs and systems in the body, from head to toe.

The brain: Acute forms of stress — when you’re facing a work deadline or having an argument with a loved one, for example — can be beneficial in the short term, briefly bathing the brain with hormones (such as cortisol) that help improve your motivation, ability to focus and performance, said Wendy Suzuki, a professor of neural science and psychology at New York University and author of “<a href="https://read.amazon.com/kp/embed?asin=B08VJMHJKD&preview=newtab&linkCode=kpe&ref_=cm_sw_r_kb_dp_NET1M37Q1HKXF7JG7ABX&tag=thewaspos09-20" target=_blank>Good Anxiety: Harnessing the Power of the Most Misunderstood Emotion</a>.”

By contrast, the prolonged elevated cortisol levels that come with chronic stress and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) can interfere with and damage the brain’s hippocampus, which is critical for long-term memory function, Suzuki said. Long-term increases in cortisol also can damage the brain’s prefrontal cortex, which is essential for focused attention and executive function (cognitive processes that allow you to plan, organize, solve problems, engage in flexible thinking and control your impulses).

The cardiovascular system: With acute stress, your heart rate increases and your blood pressure surges, so (evolutionarily speaking) you can prepare to fight or run for your life. After the stressful encounter subsides, these functions are supposed return to their normal states. But that doesn’t always happen in the modern world, where we can encounter stressor after stressor.

Chronic stress, which occurs over months to years, can lead to high blood pressure, adiposity (fat accumulation), insulin resistance and greater systemic inflammation, said Ahmed Tawakol, co-director of the Cardiovascular Imaging Research Center and director of nuclear cardiology at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. “Together, these drive the buildup of arterial plaques and heighten the risk of heart attack and stroke.”

Stacey Colino

Chevy Chase, Md.

Here’s what muscle memory really means, and how to use it

Why adult acne is on the rise and what to do about it

How stress can damage your brain and body