How Much Muscle Do You Really Need for Health?
How Much Muscle Do You Really Need for Health?
The surprising muscle and health deep dive.
Post summary
Strength is linked to living longer and better.
But gym culture has taken this idea and ran with it, arguing that it’s optimal to pack on as much muscle as possible.
You’ll learn how much muscle you really need for health.
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Audio/podcast version
The post
On Monday, we explored BMI, the controversial health metric. We explained why BMI is valuable, revealed surprising facts around BMI, and discussed how to think about BMI in a way that improves your health.
Most criticisms of BMI come from the fact that muscular people can be classified as “overweight.” Yet a higher ratio of their weight comes from muscle rather than fat. Many people have used that to suggest BMI is “useless.”
But that only raises questions about muscle—and how much muscle is healthy.
Today we’ll cover:
If it’s healthy to have an overweight BMI if your “extra” weight is from muscle.
How much strength and muscle humans need for health.
Where building muscle for the sake of it fits into human history and what that can tell us about longevity.
The link between muscle, fat, and a “high” BMI.
Whether you can be obese by BMI standards but sufficiently lean and muscular.
How to use this information to make decisions about your muscles and health.
Let’s roll …
What if I have an “overweight” BMI, but my extra weight comes from muscle?
Research consistently shows that not having enough muscle can pose health problems. And we also know that strength is critical for longevity.
For example, Swedish research found that the strongest among a massive group of men of all ages were the least likely to die over two decades. The effect held even when the researchers removed any cardiovascular benefits from strength training.
But gym culture has taken data on muscle being beneficial and run with it. They’ve used it to argue that packing on huge amounts of muscle is they key to health.
But this is sort of like seeing data that suggests not having enough iron can pose health risks and assuming that we should all mega-dose iron. That would actually be bad. I.e., there’s a sweet spot for everything. Too little muscle can elevate your risk of issues—but so can too much.
So what amount of muscle is “enough?” What’s the sweet spot?
To understand what enough might be, we need to understand something important about the studies on muscle and health.