Muscle loss in people with type 2 diabetes happens even in younger adults, not just older people — so it's not just aging causing it, and might be due to different reasons than regular age-related muscle loss.

People with type 2 diabetes who lose muscle tend to lose a specific kind called 'slow-twitch' muscle first, which is different from regular aging muscle loss or muscle loss from not moving much. This suggests diabetes-related muscle loss might be its own unique condition.

When people with type 2 diabetes lose muscle strength, their muscle cells—especially the endurance type—don’t produce energy as well, which might explain why they get tired more easily during physical activity.

Doctors use different rules to diagnose weak muscles in people with type 2 diabetes, but those rules give wildly different results — from 7% to 58% of patients. That confusion means we probably need better, diabetes-specific rules to spot this problem accurately.