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Muscles can remember their strength
"I don't know if it lasts forever, but it seems to be a very long-lasting effect. Since the extra nuclei don't die, they could be poised to make muscle proteins again, providing a type of muscle memory"
- Kristian Gundersen, a physiologist at the University of Oslo in Norway
Pumping up is easier for people who have been buff before, and now scientists think they know why -- muscles retain a memory of their former fitness even as they wither from lack of use.
That memory is stored as DNA-containing nuclei, which proliferate when a muscle is exercised. Contrary to previous thinking, those nuclei aren't lost when muscles atrophy, researchers report online August 16 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The extra nuclei form a type of muscle memory that allows the muscle to bounce back quickly when retrained.