'An Apple A Day' And Tomato Helps Prevent Muscle Wasting?

"An apple a day keeps the doctor away," but a tomato, too?

New findings published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry found that compounds in both apples and tomatoes may help in preventing muscle wasting.

"Many of us know from our own experiences that muscle weakness and atrophy are big problems as we become older," said Dr. Christopher Adams, a professor of internal medicine at the University of Iowa, said in a press release. "These problems have a major impact on our quality of life and health."

In this recent study, researchers used elderly mice experiencing muscle weakness and atrophy to study the effects of ursolic acid from apple peels and tomatidine from green tomatoes. The animals were fed diets lacking or containing either 0.27 percent ursolic acid or 0.05 percent tomatidine for close to two months.

Findings revealed that both compounds increased muscle mass by about 10 percent and increased muscle strength by up to 30 percent or the equivalent of returning muscle ability to that of a young adult. Furthermore, researchers also discovered that eating the compounds helped deactivate the transcription factor ATF4, a protein that changes the formation of genes typically seen in the muscle wastage of older individuals. ATF4 starves the muscles of proteins necessary to keep up their strength, leading to a loss of mass. 

"Many of us know from our own experiences that muscle weakness and atrophy are big problems as we become older. These problems have a major impact on our quality of life and health," Adams said. He further pointed out that by reducing ATF4's activity - the ursolic acid found in apple peels and tomatidine found in tomatoes, will allow the skeletal muscle to better recover from aging. 

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