the.com/atrophy
Use it or lose it, cellularly enforced.
means The wasting away of a body part, tissue, or skill from disuse, lack of nourishment, or neglect.
from From Greek atrophia, 'a wasting away' — built from a- ('without') plus trophe ('nourishment, food'), the same trophe that gives us words like 'trophic.' The Greeks used it literally for bodies starved of food; medicine later widened it to any tissue or muscle that withers for lack of use, and we widened it further still to skills and relationships that go slack when nobody feeds them.
- cause
- disuse, not just old age
- reversible
- often yes, with retraining and time
- astronauts
- lose muscle mass in weeks without gravity
- brain version
- skills fade from unused neural pathways too