Lex Verdijk

At a glance

• Lex Verdijk is a Dutch muscle physiologist and associate professor in the Department of Human Biology at Maastricht University and the NUTRIM research institute.
• He trained as a physiotherapist, holds a master’s in movement sciences and earned his PhD in 2009 with a thesis on satellite cells and muscle characteristics in sarcopenia.
• His research looks at how exercise and nutrition can counter the loss of muscle mass and function with ageing, inactivity and disease.
• With colleagues he showed that in older people it is mainly the fast type II muscle fibres that shrink, and that the number of satellite cells, the muscle’s stem cells, falls specifically in those fibres. Type I fibres are largely spared.
• Another study showed that resistance training makes type II fibres grow again in older men, together with an increase in satellite cells.
• In Maastricht he works with Luc van Loon, among others, and has more than 150 scientific publications to his name.
• For longevity, his work matters because maintaining muscle mass and strength helps people stay independent in later life.
• Takeaway: strength training still works at an older age; combine it with enough protein spread across the day.