Welcome to the Get Fit Guys, quick and dirty tips to slim down and shape up.

My name is Ben Greenfield and I'm the Get Fit guy.

In today's episode, you're going to learn how to live longer by gaining muscle.

Now the older I get, the more I think about benefits of fitness that go above and beyond just looking good.

Rather than just being worried about the effect of exercise on swimsuit season,

I'm getting more appreciative of benefits like the brain boost you get from physical activity,

the increased mobility and balance, and of course, the improvement in longevity.

But when it comes to longevity,

what part of fitness gives you the most benefit? Well, it turns out that the answer is not necessarily lung size or flexibility or speed. Instead, a new study shows that the more muscle

you have, the lower your risk of death. And in today's episode,

we're going to find out why that is and what you can do about it. Now, in the study that I mentioned

earlier, participants underwent tests to determine their muscle mass index, which is the amount of muscle

relative to height. The investigators then used a follow-up survey

to determine how many of these participants

had died of natural causes

and how muscle mass was related to death risk.

Well, people with the highest levels of muscle mass

were significantly less likely to have died

than those with lower levels of muscle mass.

So in today's episode,

we're going to talk about how muscle makes you live longer, whether you even need to do cardio at all, and how to maximize your muscle gain. Now, according to a study performed at McMaster

University in Hamilton, Ontario, resistance training activates a muscle stem cell called a satellite

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