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Forty mice went up.
In December 2019 a rocket took forty mice to the space station. Eight of them were built to a new plan. A lab had switched off one gene in each of those eight. They grew up with twice the muscle of the rest.
Space pulls muscle off a body fast. The plain mice came home smaller, with thinner bone. Their eight cage mates came home the size they left…
One gene held that line.
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That gene makes a protein called myostatin. Its job is to keep muscle growth in check. Se-Jin Lee found it in 1997.
Some cattle carry a broken copy of it. They grow double muscle on plain grass. So the brake sits in you as well.
Lift something heavy and the brake eases off. Sit still for a month and it clamps back down.
I pay north of $20,000 a year for research feeds. But most of what lands in them is junk. My filter is short. I want a trial with a control group, run long, printed in a journal. Sales pages do not count.
No one can sell you the shot those mice got. But you can work the same brake from the other side. Load a muscle hard enough and it grows past its set point. One cheap powder helps that work go further…
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// Body Hack
THE TWO DAY LOAD
Creatine is the most tested supplement on the shelf. It parks a little more fuel inside the muscle. That buys you one or two more reps in each set. More reps, month after month, add up to more muscle.
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Lift twice a week: two full body sessions, three days apart. |
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Pick six lifts: squat, hinge, push, pull, row, carry. |
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Three sets of eight: end each set with two good reps left in the tank. |
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Add load when eight feels easy: small jumps beat big ones. |
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Take 3 to 5 g of creatine monohydrate: one scoop in water, any hour that suits you. |
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Keep the dose on rest days: the muscle fills its stores over weeks. |
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Eat protein near the session: 25 to 40 g of it. |
Trials that ran this way pooled up well. Older lifters who took the powder gained more lean mass than the ones who just lifted. Strength on the chest press and the leg press was linked to it as well.
TRIALS: 22 · LIFTERS: 721 · EXTRA LEAN MASS: 1.37 kg
→ Source: Chilibeck et al., Open Access J Sports Med, 2017
I take five grams each morning in my coffee. Two sessions a week is all I manage in a busy month. That has been plenty.
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// The Brake
YOUR MUSCLE COMES WITH A BRAKE
Three labs are learning how to ease it off. Here is where that work stands.
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// SuperMuscle
The flight had a third group. Eight plain mice got a shot that blocks the brake. They gained muscle in orbit. And bone with it.
MICE FLOWN: 40 · MUSCLE LOST BY UNTREATED MICE: up to 18% · BONE LOST: up to 11%
→ Source: Lee et al., PNAS, 2020
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// SuperLean
A drug firm took the idea into people. Its trial ran 48 weeks in 507 adults with obesity. The brake blocker on its own added lean mass. But the popular weight loss shot, given alone, took lean mass off. Both at once gave the best split of the lot… more fat gone, muscle kept.
ADULTS: 507 · LEAN MASS ON THE BLOCKER: up 1.0% · ON THE WEIGHT SHOT: down 4.7%
→ Source: Heymsfield et al., Nature Medicine, 2026
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// SuperGuard
A second firm is running the same play. Their trial is called COURAGE, and it is still open. On the weight shot alone, a third of what came off was lean mass. Adding their brake blocker spared about half of that.
LOSS THAT WAS LEAN MASS: 33% · SPARED BY THE BLOCKER: about half
→ Source: Regeneron, EASD late breaker, 2025
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None of those shots are on sale to you. Each one aims at the same brake. So here is the thing worth taking from the mouse work: muscle mass is not fixed by your birth year.
It answers to load, food, and a scoop of cheap chemistry. Two of those three sit in your kitchen. The third one waits under a bar…
Imagine strength that still holds at seventy.
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