Muscle matters: Dr Brendan Egan at TEDxUCD

Dr Brendan Egan is a University College Dublin (UCD) lecturer in sport and exercise science in the UCD School of Public Health, Physiotherapy and Population Science, whose TEDxUCD 2014 talk is entitled 'Muscle Matters'.

On the sporting front, Brendan has represented Co. Sligo in Gaelic football at Senior inter-county level since 2003.

In his TEDxUCD 2014 talk Brendan explains the importance of maintaining muscle mass as we age.

Modern science has led to automation which means that we are predisposed to being physically inactive and in his talk Brendan outlines the risks to our health of this development. Furthermore, better medicines are leading to greater longevity and as the global population is getting older, the long term impact on health care provision is a huge challenge to be addressed.

Brendan in his talk focuses on Sarcopenia, a disease involving age related wasting of muscle, and talks about the connections with other diseases, including cancer and diabetes, and he encourages us to change our lifestyles now in order to keep our muscles strong as we age.

Dr Brendan Egan is a lecturer in sport and exercise science in the UCD School of Public Health, Physiotherapy and Population Science covering modules in sports nutrition, exercise prescription and molecular exercise physiology.

His current research interests concern the nutritional enhancement of sports performance and the molecular regulation of skeletal muscle function and adaptation in exercise, health and disease.

Brendan graduated with a BSc in Sport and Exercise Science from the University of Limerick in 2003, before graduating from Loughborough University with distinction from the MSc in Sport and Exercise Nutrition programme.

He returned to Ireland in late 2004 to commence doctoral studies under the supervision of Dr Donal O'Gorman at Dublin City University. The focus of this research was on skeletal muscle adaptation to exercise and in particular the continuity between acute molecular responses to individual bouts of exercise and the adaptations in skeletal muscle induced by exercise training.

He was awarded his PhD in 2008, before moving on to the prestigious Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden. There he completed his post-doctoral training in Professor Juleen Zierath's Integrative Physiology group at the Department of Molecular Medicine and Surgery. Here his research, using animal and in-vitro cell systems, focused on the transcriptional regulation of skeletal muscle insulin resistance in Type 2 diabetes by small, non-coding RNAs.

He joined the faculty at UCD in 2011.

In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.* (*Subject to certain rules and regulations)