Taking rapamycin between workouts might help your muscles clean out junk and rebuild stronger as you age — like getting the best of both rest and exercise.

As we get older, a protein in our muscles called mTORC1 can become overactive, which slows down the body's cleanup process for damaged parts inside cells. Taking rapamycin might help turn that cleanup process back on.

Taking a drug called sirolimus once a week might help older adults get stronger when combined with weight training, by giving muscles a break to clean out damaged parts between workouts — but we’re not sure yet if this actually works in people.

Taking rapamycin with exercise might help improve muscle strength in older people by affecting a specific cell pathway in the body.

Rapamycin might help older animals keep their muscle and stay lean by tweaking a key cell signal involved in aging.

Older mice with overactive mTORC1 had higher levels of certain muscle-related amino acid processes after taking rapamycin, which might help muscles handle stress and stay healthy.