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Everyone already knows that muscle is good for longevity because muscle is the organ of longevity for your entire life and indeed for your longevity. And that's muscle.
Siim Land explains why muscle strength and power matter more than muscle mass for longevity and how to optimize muscle for health.
Ask about this video. Answers come from its transcript only — with the timestamp, so you can check them.
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Key Takeaways
- Muscle strength and power are more important than muscle mass for longevity.
- Building muscle mass should be a natural result of strength and power training.
- There is a point of diminishing returns with muscle mass; too much can be harmful.
- Maintaining moderate muscle mass and low body fat optimizes health and lifespan.
- Older adults must prioritize muscle maintenance to reduce frailty and mortality risk.
What the video covers
- Muscle is crucial for longevity, reducing risk of early death and age-related diseases.
- Muscle strength predicts longevity better than muscle mass because it reflects muscle quality and functionality.
- Muscle power is an even stronger predictor of mortality than muscle strength, requiring better nervous system condition.
- Muscle mass is important but should be a byproduct of training for strength and power, not the main goal.
- Excessive muscle mass may shorten lifespan due to increased strain on organs like heart and kidneys.
- Optimal muscle mass follows a U-shaped curve with lowest mortality at moderate lean mass levels.
- Low muscle mass in older adults greatly increases mortality risk after events like hip fractures.
- Muscle mass benefits metabolic health by improving insulin sensitivity and reducing fat mass.
- Body fat percentage can blunt the survival benefits of muscle mass.
- Calorie intake impacts aging; overeating to maintain large muscle mass may worsen health markers.
Chapters
- 00:00Muscle and Longevity Overview
- 01:03Personal Experience with Muscle and Health Markers
- 02:05Muscle Strength vs Muscle Mass for Longevity
- 03:05Hierarchy of Muscle Qualities: Power, Strength, Mass
- 04:05Research on Lean Mass and Mortality Risk
- 05:07Risks of Excessive Muscle Mass
- 06:07Muscle Mass Importance in Older Adults
- 07:05Measuring Muscle Mass and Health Recommendations
- 08:10Calorie Intake and Body Fat Impact on Longevity
- 09:30Final Thoughts and Community Invitation
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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Having a higher muscle mass can decrease the risk of early death by 30%. Whereas having a high fat mass can increase that risk by 56%. Indeed, it's consistently and repeatedly shown that higher lean muscle mass protects against many age
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related diseases and causes of death like frailty, diabetes, neurodegeneration, and heart disease. However, this doesn't necessarily mean that having more muscle is always better. Number one, people who build a lot of muscle don't live a lot longer
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than the lean and sinewy grandpa. I'm not talking about bodybuilders who take steroids. Of course, they die way sooner than regular people because of the steroids. I'm talking about people who naturally build muscle. All the professional bodybuilders who are still
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alive and in their 60s and 70s deliberately downsized and they lost some of their muscle because they couldn't maintain it. From my own experience, I have also seen that having 4 to 5 kilos of extra muscle worsened a
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lot of my longevity biomarkers like my resting heart rate, which increased by about 8 to 10 beats per minute from 36 to 45. And it also reduced my HRV from 110 to 85. I saw slightly worse liver enzymes and worse lipids because of
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having to eat so much food to maintain the muscle despite me not having taken any anabolics or steroids. So what's going on? What's going on is that people confuse muscle as the main goal with what actually matters and what mediates
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the association between muscle mass and longevity. In this video, I'm going to break down the science and studies of what predicts longevity more than muscle, how much muscle is optimal for longevity, and how you should go about building it. Also, if you want to
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discover your own health percentile to know what level of health you're at with various different types of biomarkers like your fitness markers, body composition, and blood work, what are your bottlenecks and biggest weaknesses, then take the health assessment in our
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top 1% health community link in the description. First of all, when researchers compare muscle mass and muscle strength, they find that strength predicts longevity and mortality risk better than muscle mass itself. Losing muscle strength as you age predicts
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mortality in older men independent of their muscle mass. That's because muscle strength reflects muscle quality, whereas you can have adequate muscle mass even as an overweight person. It doesn't tell you anything about the functionality of that muscle. Having
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higher strength means that you're regularly physically active and you've maintained lifelong physical capacity. You have a healthier nervous system that helps with firing your muscle fibers.
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You have better metabolic health. You're in a healthier hormonal environment with things like testosterone and IGF-1. You have greater physiological reserve against disease, and you have better mobility, stability, and balance.
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Interestingly, when comparing muscle strength to muscle power, then power is an even stronger predictor of mortality than strength. That's because muscle power is everything muscle strength is, plus a little bit more than that. It requires even greater muscle quality and
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even greater nervous system condition. And muscle power starts declining sooner than muscle strength. So, where does it lead us? It means that muscle mass itself is only third on the list of muscle qualities associated with longevity and reduced mortality. Number
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one is muscle power and speed. Think about sprinting and explosiveness like clean and jerks or plyometrics. Number two, muscle strength. Think about raw deadlift power, pull-ups, or shoulder press. And number three, muscle mass, the lean tissue itself. Of course, if
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you're very explosive and fast, but you don't have enough muscle mass itself, you're still going to have a bad time and you're still at a higher risk of frailty or breaking the hip when you fall. But the truth is that the muscle
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mass is a byproduct of muscle strength and power more so than muscle strength and the power. But if you train muscle strength and power, then your muscle mass will increase itself. So you don't need to deliberately focus on building
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muscle mass. It should come as a byproduct of the training itself. It's still true that muscle mass has protective effects against diabetes and falls, but nobody seems to ask how much muscle are we talking about then.
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Because if the answer was the more muscle the better, then all the natural bodybuilders would live the longest. But that's not the case. A 2025 dose response meta-analysis looked at more than 130,000 middle-aged and older adults. Most of the studies measured
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lean mass using a DEXA scan. People who were classified as having low lean mass had a 30% higher risk of dying during follow-up. When researchers analyzed lean mass kilogram per kilogram, every additional kilogram was associated with roughly a 1% lower risk of death. The
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relationship was nonlinear, which means that the greatest benefit probably comes from moving out of the low muscle range, while the benefit gradually plateaus as muscle mass gets higher. Unfortunately, in this analysis, they didn't have a standardized measurement of the muscle
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mass. Some of the studies measured total lean mass. Others measured what's called appendicular lean mass, and the others even used a percentage of lean mass out of total body weight. That's a very important distinction because 20 kg of
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muscle for a person who weighs 50 kilos is quite a lot. But it's not a lot of muscle for a person who weighs 100 kilos and is 190 cm tall. It is plausible that muscle and longevity follows a U-shaped
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curve like a lot of things in biology. Too low muscle is bad and increases mortality risk because of frailty and fractures. Now, this could be mediated by malnutrition, not muscle mass itself, but let's keep it here right now. Too
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much muscle mass shortens life because of wearing out the organs like the heart and kidneys. The kidneys have to filter and the heart has to pump so much blood that they wear out 10 to 20 years sooner than a normal weight person would. It's
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similar to obesity from body fat. It's just muscular obesity. And obese people died 10 to 15 years sooner. The lowest mortality is in the middle where you're muscular and you're also lean, but you're not carrying unnecessary mass compared to your height and your frame.
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One study found that mortality followed a U-shaped curve with the lowest risk at around 56 kg of predicted lean body mass. However, mortality remained below average all the way up to around 90 kg and it only started to rise towards the
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very highest values over 100 kg. This doesn't prove that more muscle is bad. You clearly have leeway until at least 95 kg of lean mass, but it indicates that there is a point of diminishing returns at the extremes of muscle. The
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risk of having too low muscle mass is quite clear. You're just too frail, you're too skinny, and if you fall, you're going to break a hip. However, this applies mostly to older people.
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Older adults with low muscle mass are over three times more likely to die within one year after a hip fracture compared to those with normal muscle mass. That's because older people have low bone density to begin with. A young
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person, even if they have low muscle mass, is not really going to break a hip, at least not in most cases. You're also more likely to gain fat and develop insulin resistance because muscle mass acts as a sponge for blood sugar and
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calories. With more muscle, you have better metabolic health and lower fat mass. The gold standard of measuring if you have enough muscle mass is to get a DEXA scan and to look at what's called appendicular lean muscle mass. It
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measures the muscle mass in your arms and legs because that's the place where it's harder to build muscle compared to your co
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meter and less than 5.4 kg per square meter as a woman, you're considered to have sarcopenia, also called low muscle mass. And sarcopenia is associated with a higher mortality risk. The older you get, the more likely you'll fall below
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that threshold. For men and women, you'd be around the bottom 10% of the population if you have sarcopenia. As a reference guide, my appendicular lean mass is usually around 9.5 and 10, which puts me around 90 to 95% of the
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population of men around age 30. But how can excessive muscle mass harm your health? A larger body requires the heart to pump more blood, which increases cardiac workload over time. I've seen that my resting heart rate was up to 10
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beats higher when I had 5 kilograms more muscle. I was even low body fat. If someone adds body fat on top of that, they could easily have 20 beats higher resting heart rate. Data from over 1.2 million people suggests that every 10
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beats per minute increase above 45 is linked to a 9% higher risk of all cause mortality and 8% for cardiovascular mortality. For me, going from 35 to 45 is literally zero difference for my mortality risk. But for someone going
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from 55 to 65 or from 65 to 75, it can be a big difference. More muscle also means higher protein turnover and more metabolic waste to filter, which increases the kidney's filtration workload over time. Maintaining a very large amount of muscle requires more
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calories. And if there's one consistent finding from over 100 years of aging research is that chronically eating more calories than your body needs tends to accelerate aging. Whereas moderate calorie intake is associated with better metabolic health. and in all animal
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species longer lifespan. More muscle mass can also increase the risk of sleep apnea because it builds your neck. If you lift weights, you can have a thicker neck because of increased muscle mass.
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Even if you're at a low body fat percentage, if you're overweight and you're over fat, then the neck is going to be thicker. Sleep apnea repeatedly cuts off your breathing while you sleep, which lowers oxygen levels and fragments
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your sleep. Over time, it increases the risk of high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, atrial fibrillation, and cognitive decline. has also been linked to a higher risk of Alzheimer's disease. Nex circumference is one of the strongest physical predictors of
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obstructive sleep apnea. Men with a nexumference of over 43 cm or over 17 in and women over 41 cm or over 16 in are considered to be at high risk for sleep apnea. Another important thing that will determine how much muscle is beneficial
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for you is your body fat percentage. If you have a lot of muscle, but you also have a lot of body fat, you're blunting the benefits of the muscle. In one 9-year study, excess body fat mitigated the survival advantage of having muscle
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strength and power. Now, it is better to be fat but fit than just being fat. But being fat, regardless of your fitness status, reduces the longevity benefits you get from your fitness. If you look at body fat and mortality risk, then for
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men, anything above 15% body fat is associated with increased risk. Whereas for women, anything between 20 and 35% appears to be fine. So for men, it matters a lot more to be leaner. Whereas for women, it doesn't matter that much
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and women naturally have less muscle mass as well. So for men, if you want to build muscle, you also want to be leaner. Lastly, I want to talk about BMI. I know that BMI gets clowned on a lot. It's not the most accurate tool out
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there because if you have a little bit more muscle, then your BMI could be categorized as overweight. For example, my BMI is 25, maybe 25.5. Basically on the edge of being overweight, although I have visible abs, even veins in my lower
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abs sometimes. That's because of the higher amount of muscle and bone density I have. Back when I weighed 5 kilograms more, my BMI was maybe 27 up to 28. It's still not bad, but as I shared earlier, my blood work was worse, my resting
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heart rate was higher, etc. BMI isn't very accurate in the standard distribution, but it is more accurate on the extremes. If your BMI is 30 or 35, which would be categorized as class one obesity, it doesn't matter how much
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muscle you have, you're carrying too much weight. Olympian bodybuilders have a BMI of over 30 and is not sustainable for long-term health. Ronnie Coleman, for example, had a BMI of up to 41.
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Chris Bumstead, 31. I don't think anyone would disagree that being professional bodybuilder is bad for your health. It's not only about the steroids. It's also about the insane mass that you have.
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Yes, you're very low in body fat, but this insane amount of muscle, yes, which is accomplished with the analog steroids, that insane muscle is what wears down your organs. Natural bodybuilders are not going to reach that. It's very rare for a natural
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bodybuilder to reach a BMI of 30 while being very lean. Natural bodybuilders would probably peak around 28 or 29 with a BMI. Of course, you can easily get a BMI of 30 or 35 if you're 20% body fat.
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But you don't want to be 20% body fat. That's the point. You want to be maybe 10, 12, not over 15% body fat as a man.
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And I think you only have the right to say that the BMI doesn't count for you if you are actually 10 12% body fat.
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Because if you're 20% body fat and you say that the BMI doesn't apply to you because you have muscle, then you're just fat, right? You only have the right to say that if you're lean because most of that BMI is driven by your extra body
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fat. If you can't see your abs and your BMI is over 25, you're overweight.
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Doesn't matter how much muscle you have. So, as I said, for me, my BMI is around 25 right now, which I think is quite optimal. I have plenty of muscle. As I said, I'm in the 90 to 95% of the
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appendicular lean mass for people my age. I'm not trying to be a strength athlete. I'm not trying to be a bodybuilder or something like that. So, being at the 90 to 95 percentile is very good. If I were to build more muscle, I
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would see worsening of my blood markers. I would see a lower V2 max, which is quite important. I would see a higher resting heart rate, lower HRV, etc. So, I don't really want to build more muscle. Now, understand many people
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don't have the same issue. Most people would benefit from building more muscle. But the point of this video is that don't chase the muscle. Chase the functional aspects of your training, the strength and the power. and the muscle
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is a byproduct that comes. So, here's an overview to clarify the ideas. Number one, low muscle mass is bad for your longevity. This means you have an appendicular lean mass below 7 for men and less than 5.4 for women. However,
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muscle strength and power matter more than muscle mass. You should let the muscle mass be a byproduct of you getting stronger rather than pursuing muscle hypertrophy and pure mass itself.
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Engage in strength training and focus on getting stronger. Also implement athletic power exercises like sprinting, plyometrics, kettle bell swings, Olympic weightlifting, and gymnastics. If your neck size is over 43 cm as a man or over 41 cm as a woman, you have a problem.
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It's either because of too much body fat, too much muscle, or both. In terms of body fat, as a man, aim for below 15%. As a woman, anything between 20 to 35% is fine, but I would suggest that 20
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to 25% is optimal. Once you're below 15% as a man and 20 to 25% as a woman, use BMI as a soft guide to your muscle mass.
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A BMI of over 26 to 27 is probably going to worsen your biomarkers, even if you're lean and you have a lot of muscle. But only if you're lean, because if you're not lean, you just need to lose body fat. All right, thanks for
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watching. If you want to discover your health percentage and get your road map to top 1% of health, then join the community using the link in the description. I'll see you there.
Topics:muscle longevitymuscle strengthmuscle powermuscle masslongevityaginghealth biomarkersmuscle qualitybody compositionSiim Land
