April 2026 I was listening to a fascinating IFM podcast featuring Dr Mark Hyman and Dr Gabrielle Lyon. The subject was longevity, muscle, ageing, and metabolism in human health. Not horses. Humans.

And yet for the entire conversation I found myself sitting there thinking exactly the same thing: "Horses do this too."

You know that feeling when somebody starts talking about one subject, but all you can see are parallels somewhere else? That was me for the best part of an hour. Every point they made about muscle, ageing, recovery, metabolism, stress, protein, and energy production seemed to have a direct equine equivalent.

In fact, by the end of it I was thinking about horses standing in fields. Particularly the older ones, or the EMS horses, and the horses recovering from injury, or the horses that never seem to bounce back as quickly as they once did.

One of the biggest messages from the conversation was that medicine may have been overlooking part of the picture. Or not the wrong thing exactly - just not the whole picture.

For years, attention has centred around fat. Weight gain, weight loss, obesity, body fat percentages, metabolic syndrome. All important conversations, of course.

But increasingly, researchers are beginning to recognise that another piece of the puzzle may be just as important - muscle. Not bodybuilder muscle or six-packs, and not gym mirrors and protein shakes. Simply healthy, functional muscle. The sort that allows a body to move, recover, adapt, and cope with the demands of everyday life.

And that's where things started getting really interesting.

Because we tend to think of muscle as something that powers movement. A horse uses muscle to run, jump, carry a rider, climb a hill, or launch into one of those spectacular field gallops that usually end with us wondering whether they'll survive their own enthusiasm.

But what if that's actually the least interesting thing about muscle?

The more researchers learn, the more they're discovering that muscle behaves less like a piece of machinery and more like an active organ – a “metabolic” organ. One that's involved in regulating energy, managing glucose, influencing inflammation, influencing immune function, and helping the body cope with physical and emotional stress.

As I sat listening, I couldn't help thinking how beautifully it maps onto what we see in horses.

Think about the horse that loses topline every winter, or the horse that struggles to recover after box rest, or the horse that seems to become more metabolically fragile with age, or the horse whose body condition appears perfectly acceptable, yet somehow they're not thriving in the way you'd expect.

Perhaps we've been looking at these as separate stories. But what if they're all connected? What if muscle sits much closer to the centre of the picture than we've previously realised?

One concept the podcast discussed particularly caught my attention. They explained that ageing isn't always the slow, gradual process we imagine. Sometimes it happens in sudden drops - a period of illness, or an injury, or a hospital stay, a stressful life event or a stretch of inactivity.

Researchers refer to these as catabolic events - periods where the body rapidly loses muscle tissue. And honestly, as soon as they said it, I thought of horses again, because horse owners know this phenomenon all too well.

A horse goes on box rest, or has a laminitis flare, or spends a wet winter moving less, or experiences a respiratory challenge, a stressful herd change, or a period of chronic discomfort. And suddenly the topline disappears, the strength goes, the recovery takes longer. The horse seems older almost overnight – (tell me about it! I meant me there, not my horses...)

We've all seen it happen. And perhaps that's because muscle isn't simply responding to these events - it's one of the things being affected most profoundly by them.

The conversation then turned to protein, which is where I nearly laughed out loud. Gabrielle made the point that as humans get older, protein becomes more important, not less. Again tell me about it – I’m now knocking on well into my late 60s, and all I’m hearing is how important protein is for my muscle health, and how I've got pump weights to maintain my ever dimishing muscle tone.

But again, we can immediately relate this to our horses, because how often do we see exactly the same thing? The senior horse losing topline or the older horse struggling to maintain condition? The horse we almost overfeed yet their body still doesn't seem to be getting what it needs (we have an elderly rescue cat who’s in this same position sadly…).

Tis easy to assume this is simply part of us all getting older, but is it that the older bodies become less efficient at building and maintaining muscle? This is certainly how I'm feeling about my own body...

This means the quality of the raw materials suddenly matters much more. Not necessarily more feed, but better building blocks - better amino acids, better digestion, better absorption. And once again, the human vs. equine paralells begin looking remarkably similar.

Then came my favourite moment of the entire conversation - "There is no such thing as a healthy sedentary person."

I suspect anybody who has ever managed horses immediately understands that statement, because there is also no such thing as a healthy sedentary horse.

Movement isn't simply exercise – it communicates - every step tells the body something. Maintain this muscle, keep this strength, support this system, adapt to this environment. Movement isn't merely something the body does - it's one of the ways the body stays healthy in the first place.

The final piece of the puzzle centred around mitochondria - the tiny energy-producing structures inside every cell – and again, the parallels were impossible to ignore.

Humans with poor mitochondrial function is often linked with fatigue, poor recovery, inflammation, reduced capacity to cope, and metabolic dysfunction. Sound familiar?

And we see similar patterns in horses all the time - poor stamina, difficulty maintaining muscle, PSSM and tying-up, poor recovery. A horse that simply doesn't seem to have the same spark they once had. We’re different species, but the biology’s the same.

By the end of the podcast I found myself arriving at a conclusion I hadn't expected when I first pressed play - perhaps muscle deserves a much bigger place in our conversations about horse health.

Not because muscles make horses look athletic, or because they need a perfect topline, or because we're trying to turn every horse into an equine bodybuilder - but because muscle appears to sit at the crossroads of so many things we care about. Energy. Recovery. Metabolic health. Healthy ageing. Movement. Comfort. Quality of life.

So, is muscle one of the most overlooked clues in equine health? Not the whole story, but perhaps a bigger part of the story than we've been giving it credit for?
 
So what do we actually do with all of this?

Well, perhaps it starts with viewing muscle differently - not simply as something that powers movement, but as one of the foundations. Because once we begin looking through that lens, a few practical priorities start appearing.

Firstly, movement matters. Not endless exercise, but regular, appropriate movement that gives the body a reason to maintain the muscle it's worked so hard to build. Horses were designed to move, and every step sends signals that help support strength, coordination, metabolism, and overall wellbeing.

Secondly, protein quality matters. Not simply how much feed goes into the feedbowl, but whether the horse is receiving the amino acid building blocks needed to maintain and repair muscle tissue. Lysine, methionine, and the other essential amino acids don't receive the same attention as calories and sugar, but they're often the very things the body is crying out for.

Thirdly, we can't ignore digestion. Because it doesn't matter how carefully we formulate a diet if the horse isn't absorbing what we're feeding. Time and again, whether we're discussing muscle, immunity, metabolism, coat quality, hoof quality, or healthy ageing, we seem to arrive back at the same place - the gut.

And finally, there's energy itself. Not simply energy as in "fizz", but energy at a cellular level. The mitochondria that silently power every muscle contraction, every repair process, every adaptation, every day of a horse's life. They're not separate conversations at all - they're all part of the same story.

At EquiNatural, products such as EssentialAminos and Acetyl L-Carnitine often form part of this wider discussion, alongside feeds such as Simple Systems’ Sainfoin or Agrobs MyoProtein Flakes. Not because they're magic bullets, but because they help address some of the fundamental building blocks that healthy muscle depends upon.

And perhaps that's the biggest lesson I took away from the seminar. Muscle isn't simply about strength. It's about helping the whole horse stay capable, adaptable, and engaged with life for as long as possible. For me, that's a far more interesting conversation than toplines alone.

That's certainly something I'll be pondering next time I find myself leaning on a gate with a cup of tea.