Your Muscles Are Texting Your Brain and You're Ignoring Them

What if your biceps could text your brain, and the only message was 'move more, you absolute couch potato'?

That's closer to the truth than you'd like. Your muscles send messages all day, and most of us leave them on read.

Ouch. Okay, so who's texting whom?

Muscle fibers release myokines. That's just muscle-made messenger proteins that travel in your blood. Muscle writes, blood delivers, another organ reads it.

Delivers to where?

Brain, fat, liver, bone. In lean adults, muscle can be a third or more of body weight. It's a giant gland that also happens to carry your groceries.

Sounds like wellness marketing. What's the proof?

Fair. In the early 2000s, Bente Pedersen's Danish team showed contracting muscle releases interleukin-6, a messenger protein, into the blood because of the work itself, not injury or infection.

Wait, isn't interleukin-6 the scary inflammation one?

Everyone says that. Same name, different job. Here it's a short signal from working muscle, not a body-wide fire alarm.

So which myokines do what? Give me the cheat sheet.

There isn't a finished one. Researchers have catalogued hundreds of candidates, and for many we only know muscle cells make them. So be suspicious of any pill promising to boost your myokines.

Cheaper than supplements, then. What do I do Monday?

Make big muscles work. Squats, rows, push-ups, carrying heavy things, brisk walks, stairs. Research doesn't hand us a magic dose, so regular beats heroic.

And my eight hours in a desk chair?

Break it up. Stand, walk a lap, do sit-to-stands. Muscle can't type if it's never switched on.

So my chair is basically airplane mode for my legs.

Exactly. Takeaway: stand up every hour today, and this week do something hard enough to make your leg muscles burn.