Oct 14 2011 --- Whey protein supplementation and exercise may offer the ideal solution to a healthier old age, the first ever international business conference on Healthy Ageing in Europe was told in Amsterdam on Wednesday October 12, 2011.

The conference organized by Bridge2Food featured a Fonterra Ingredients sponsored session on sarcopenia, the muscle equivalent of osteoporosis.

Professor Luc van Loon, a leading scientist on exercise and nutrition from the Department of Human Movement Sciences at Maastricht University Medical Centre told the meeting that nutritional and exercise strategies, to prevent the loss of muscle mass in the elderly, are increasingly important ingredients to healthy ageing.

Professor van Loon explained the mechanisms of age-related loss of skeletal muscle mass and looked at new work which suggests that the triggers for muscle formation in response to food intake are blunted in the elderly.

He also pointed out that research now suggests that older people respond better if they consume protein just before or after physical activity, which stresses that timing of protein intake is essential for muscle building and maintenance. This means that prolonged resistance type exercise training in conjunction with planned protein consumption may be an effective therapeutic strategy to augment skeletal muscle mass and improve functional performance in the elderly.

Professor van Loon also spoke about experiments that show how ingestion of whey protein in particular stimulates muscle protein synthesis.

The global population is ageing.  By 2050 it is estimated that more than two billion people will be over 60 years of age. Ageing is associated with a decline in muscle mass and function. This loss of muscle is known as sarcopenia. The loss of muscle mass appears to begin relatively early (20-30 years of age), and continues until the end of life (Stein et al, 1999).  The process is gradual in the first few decades of adult life (~3% per decade), and the rate of loss appears to increase in later decades of life (over 7% per decade).