At one point in Dr Gabrielle Lyon’s bestselling book, Forever Strong, she asks her reader a series of questions. ‘Are you able to perform your daily activities? Do you experience pain throughout the day? Do you feel healthy? Do you have the energy to do the things you love?’ She picks apart these pesky downsides and unspoken discomforts of ageing, but she doesn’t leave them untreated. For Lyon, the ‘magic pill’ is clear: muscle.
Lyon, who founded the Institute for Muscle-Centric Medicine® in the USA, up-ends modern medicine in Forever Strong by focusing on muscle as the only vital organ we can control. Providing concrete scientific data as well as case studies from her own medical experience, Lyon suggests that a lack of healthy muscle tissue is a serious risk factor for ageing populations.
What she names the ‘Lyon Protocol’ is a plan for longevity; a preventer of Alzheimer’s disease, cardiovascular disease and numerous forms of cancer; and a guarantor of improved mental health and wellbeing. By virtue of muscle growth, Lyon says, the process of ageing is slowed and improved.
Leading the reader by the hand, Forever Strong simplifies a mass of complex scientific evidence and explains the Lyon Protocol in a logical, easy-to-follow manner. After frankly addressing the stakes at hand – disease, obesity and frailty, to name a few – Lyon then charts her reader’s ‘road map to success’. She explains the nutritional science of proteins and carbohydrates that, along with fitness activity, encourage muscle growth.
Lyon also provides detailed (and appealing) meal plans, recipes and training exercises, all aimed at streamlining information so the reader can improve their muscle health and watch their body become younger in real time.
The obvious question is whether Lyon’s ‘cure-all’ is too simple. How can muscle growth alone revitalise the body? Readers could argue that Lyon’s focus is narrow and doesn’t consider other factors that contribute to disease in old age. However, that doesn’t make her analysis of the benefits of healthy muscle any less persuasive.
I spoke to a local geriatrician, who emphasised the need for regular exercise ‘not only for the brain and overall frailty, but for balance and reducing fall risks’. She also advocated the benefits of a Mediterranean diet and physical, cognitive and social activity, all of which support the science Lyon cites.
Overall, Forever Strong provides valid and evidence-based advice on how to combat ageing, and the path to success that Lyon offers is simple: to live and age well, it helps to grow some muscle.
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