Insulin boost restores muscle growth in elderly

Friday, September 25, 2009 - 11:21 in Health & Medicine

When most people think of insulin, they think of diabetes - a disease that arises when, for one reason or another, insulin can't do the critical job of helping the body process sugar. But the hormone has another, less well-known function. It's also necessary for muscle growth, increasing blood flow through muscle tissue, encouraging nutrients to disperse from blood vessels and itself serving as a biochemical signal to boost muscle protein synthesis and cell proliferation.

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