Muscle & Exercise

Muscle loss with age, recovery and exercise basics.

Written by HealthDiseases Research Team

Educational hub

Articles on muscle & exercise are in preparation. Each passes editorial review and fact-checking before publication, and this hub will be opened to search engines once it holds a full introduction and several completed guides. Browse the conditions index for topics already covered.

Symptoms

Muscle cramps The classic cramp story — "you're low on something" — is mostly wrong: cramps are nerves misfiring, not tanks running empty, which is why stretching outperforms most supplements and why the magnesium verdict disappoints.

Health guides

Protein and weight loss Protein is the one macronutrient with three separate jobs in weight loss — fullness, muscle protection and a higher cost of digestion — which is why it anchors every diet that works, whatever the diet calls itself.

Ingredients

What the evidence says about ingredients commonly used in this area.

Creatine After hundreds of trials, creatine sits where almost nothing else on this site does — genuinely effective for its core claim, boringly safe, and cheapest in exactly the form that works. Its problems are myths, not evidence.
L-citrulline Citrulline is the quiet way into the nitric-oxide pathway — the same pathway erections, blood pressure and muscle blood flow all run on. Small trials in each; honest sizes below.
Magnesium Magnesium is involved in hundreds of enzyme reactions, and low levels are common in people with type 2 diabetes. That is why it helps some people and not others — the benefit depends on where you start.
Vitamin D Vitamin D spent a decade as medicine's favorite explanation for everything — then the big trials reported. What survives is a real deficiency problem, a short list of proven jobs, and doses far more modest than the megadose era.