The aging process can be difficult to handle, especially for those who have exercised all their lives.

The whole point behind exercise is to enhance one’s vitality and stamina in order to live as long and as healthy a life as possible. But due to the fact that the body’s cells and muscles breaks down as we grow older, all that hard work at building muscle is essentially frittered away with each passing day, each passing month and each passing year. Can anything be done to prevent that from happening?

While nothing can stop the aging process itself – nothing yet, anyway – researchers believe that how someone eats in early adulthood has a big impact on preserving muscle. And the best way to preserve muscle? Restricting calories.

It sounds somewhat counterintuitive. Seeing as how muscle needs fuel, one would think that fueling the body with extra calories gives the muscles more fuel to feed off. More fuel, more development, right? But after analyzing the diets and cellular makeup of rats fed pretty much anything and everything throughout their lives (i.e. an unrestricted diet), they found an excessive amount of iron built up in the rats’ cells as they grew older.

While iron is essential for muscle development, researchers believe that excessive iron accumulation can lead to muscle depletion when it mixes with oxygen, this after observing the damage done to the rats’ DNA an RNA (i.e. the building blocks of life and essential for cellular development). It is this witches’ brew of iron and oxygen that adversely affect cells’ mitochondria due to the development of damaging free radicals. These ruinous radicals unleash their fury within mitochondrial walls, eventually leading to cell death and muscle depletion.

The researchers believe the buildup of iron within cells and cell death may help explain why muscles don’t function as efficiently later in life, this after observing another group of rats whose caloric intake was about 40 percent less than the unrestricted group. And what’dya know? The restricted rats’ iron levels were normal. The study’s published in the journal PLoS One.

“Muscle is critical for your overall well-being,” said Dr. Christiaan Leeuwenburgh, the study’s lead author and professor of aging at the University of Florida’s College of Medicine and the Institute of Aging (Go Gators!).

The good professor couldn’t be more correct. Muscle development is about more than just looking good in a swimsuit or maxing out on the bench press. It’s about keeping the muscles in as healthy and as well-conditioned as possible today, tomorrow and for all of life. And contrary to what’s often believed, consuming a diet that’s balanced and restricts from excessive calories (not a willy-nilly dieting plan) is best for preserving hard-earned muscle – muscle absolutely essential to maintaining an active lifestyle for as long as possible.