Roger Fielding's lab at Tufts followed the same older adults for ten years and found their individual muscle fibers still generated just as much force as before; what had actually gone missing was a disproportionate share of the fast-twitch fibers themselves

Roger Fielding's lab at Tufts followed the same older adults for ten years and found their individual muscle fibers still generated just as much force as before; what had actually gone missing was a disproportionate share of the fast-twitch fibers themselves

Roger Fielding runs a muscle physiology lab at Tufts University. In a study he co-authored with Walter Frontera and colleagues, the team biopsied muscle from the same group of older volunteers twice, 8.9 years apart, and measured whole-muscle strength alongside the contractile properties of individual muscle fibers. Whole-muscle strength and specific force were measurably lower at the second visit. According to a Tufts University news release de…