Ben GreenfieldFounder, Ben Greenfield Life

The Secret to Preventing Muscle Loss as You Age

21 Apr 2025 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

0:58

A short conversation (YouTube video) where a host and Ben Greenfield discuss preventing age-related muscle loss (sarcopenia) and biohacking techniques. Key recommendations include resistance training (lifting heavy, keeping reps to about 12 or fewer) and use of a wearable called a sensate to stimulate the vagus nerve for recovery/relaxation.

Questions this video answers

1% per year

Use weights and keep reps to about 12 or fewer (limit of ~12 reps).

Sensate (worn around the neck over the collarbone; plays correlated music and provides vibrating stimulation).

Chapters

I was told that when you turn 30, you lose 1% of the muscle mass every year. It's called sarcopenia or something. What are the biohack techniques to improve or, you know, boost your muscle mass and improve your recovery?
Lifting weights. And lifting weights, particularly at a rep range that doesn't allow you to get more than about 12 reps in. So a lot of people just lift too light, right? So. So there's a whole concept of what's called reps in reserve. This is one of my favorites. So when I wake up in the morning, sometimes I want like that extra 20 minutes in bed. Or sometimes very similar to what happens to a lot of people. Wake up at like 3am with racing thoughts or something like that. This is called a sensate, and you wear it around your neck. It goes right over the collarbone. So it stimulates the area of the collarbone responsible for triggering the vagus nerve, similar to the vagal nerve stimulators on the back of the net, right? And then you put it on and it plays music through your headphones that correlate to the vibrating sensation that the sensate is incredible.