If you want to fight against symptoms of ageing, you must eat more apples and green tomatoes, suggested a new study. According to the study researchers from the University of Iowa, they have found a protein, ATF4, during the study which causes muscle weakness and loss during ageing.

According to the researchers, ursolic acid in apple peel and tomatidine, which comes from green tomatoes, is a small molecule that can provide help in preventing acute muscle wasting caused by inactivity and starvation. During the study, the researchers tried to understand whether the ursolic acid and tomatidine can block the cause of muscle weakness loss during aging.

Christopher Adams, professor of internal medicine and the study's senior author, said, "Ursolic acid and tomatidine appear to have a lot of potential as tools for dealing with muscle weakness and atrophy during ageing. We might be able to use ursolic acid and tomatidine as tools to find the root cause".

In the study, team led by Adams found that ursolic acid and tomatidine were effective in reducing age-related muscle weakness and atrophy in mice. According to the researchers, they discovered that the compounds, ursolic acid and tomatidine, increased muscle mass by about 10%. In addition, they increased muscle strength by about 30%.

The study published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry suggested that by reducing the activity of ATF4 protein, the compounds could allow skeletal muscle to deal with the effects of ageing.