Rehab Management, June 9, 2007 GALVESTON -- Recent studies have shown insulin provides crucial assistance in building muscle, and that its ability to do so drops off dramatically in the elderly. Evidence now suggests a simple, cost-free therapy appears to largely overcome that drop-off in insulin response: walking. Experiments at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) and the University of Southern California, Los Angeles conducted on 13 healthy volunteers in their late 60s showed that 45 minutes of walking 20 hours before exposure to insulin restored the muscle-growth-stimulating effects of the hormone to levels comparable to those seen in normal young adults. Prior research had suggested that a large part of the problem older people experience lies in the tiny blood vessels that feed the muscles protein-building amino acids, glucose and insulin (which itself also works within muscle cells as a powerful protein growth factor). In young adults, these normally closed vessels open wide in response to the insulin increase generated by a meal, providing clear passage for muscle-making materials. In elderly people, however, this process, known as "vasodilation," is much less pronounced.