Dr. Andy Galpin

What is up for discussion, though, is whether or not that happens as a normal response to normal training in healthy humans.

There is strong evidence that anabolic steroid use, especially over a number of years, can increase that number.

And again, we know it will decrease with aging.

Now, when I say anabolic steroid use, I'm mostly talking about testosterone here.

Now, please, so I can be ultra clear here, I am not encouraging anyone to utilize anabolic steroids or testosterone.

I'm not a medical doctor.

If you are interested in...

Any use of exogenous hormones, that's something you need to work out with your personal physician.

This is not, again, me encouraging or recommending the use.

I will not also suggest it will make your muscle healthier or any better.

There are many factors to think about when considering exogenous hormones, and I am not the person to take advice from on those things.

We also know that consistent strength training will prevent the loss of those muscle fibers over time.

Whether or not you can, again, go above and beyond your normal set at a normal age with just basic strength training, I guess is still up for debate.

There are maybe some things, if you catch me off camera, I'm willing to share with you.

But according to the current science right now, that's the best we can say.

So what this means is you've got two paths to changing skeletal muscle structure and function.

The first is increasing the amount of muscle fibers.

As we just got done discussing, that's probably quite challenging to do in normal settings.

And so I want to spend more of our time talking about how do we alter the metabolic and contractile properties.

So another thing that makes skeletal muscle extremely unique is the fact that it is multinucleated.