Exercise helps turn back clock on aging
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- Created on Monday, 12 September 2011 19:38
- Written by Dena Rosenberry
We've all seen - and probably been inspired by - athletes who push the performance envelope at 40, 50, even 60 years of age. Cyclists still burning up the rubber at 70 and swimmers doing their mile warm-ups at 80.
I'll never forget the 80-something-year-old couples I met on the Milford Track in New Zealand or the 66-year-old who led my first trip up Mount Whitney. I still want to grow up to be like them.
Who isn't cheering for Dara Torres to make the summer Olympics!? 42 and going strong! And I dare any 24-year-old to take on Matt Carpenter on the Incline or a distance run. He proved at the Pikes Peak Marathon that he's still got it at 47!
In two recent articles in the Los Angeles Times, Amanda Mascarelli looks at the anti-aging effects of athletics and just how much one can improve with age. I'm including snippets here and linking to the full articles.
Read them and absorb. Then hit the road, the trail, the gym, the yoga studio. And don't be shy about sharing your story. We can all use a bit of inspiration!
Older athletes push the limits
Amanda Mascarelli for the Los Angeles Times
For the last 20 years, Bob Unger has cycled or run religiously three or four times a week. As a gift to himself for his 65th birthday in November, he decided to begin working out every day, or nearly. "I feel so much better," says Unger, a Boulder, Colo., psychologist and an avid bike racer. "It helps everything,"
On an afternoon in August, Unger is at the Boulder Center for Sports Medicine. He's here to get a battery of tests — the kind that helps elite and hard-core athletes like him figure out their optimal workout intensity so they can train accordingly.
Electrodes are taped to his chest as he cycles in place; wires run from the electrodes to an electrocardiogram device that reads his heart rate and records any irregular blips.
Adam St. Pierre, an exercise physiologist, draws blood samples to obtain Unger's "lactate profile," which tells him how Unger's body is responding to the workload: The harder you work, the more lactate you produce.
And he tests Unger's VO2 max, or maximal oxygen consumption — a measure of aerobic potential. For more than an hour, Unger pedals at various intensities until finally, heaving for air and with rivers of sweat running down his arms and legs, he is close to collapse.
Unger's lactate profile and VO2 max numbers have improved since his last test in March — in fact, this is his best physiology performance since the center began testing him nine years ago. Unger's heart is pumping more efficiently with fewer beats, and that's impressive. As a rule, starting in the late 30s, VO2 max steadily declines.
"Bob is an anomalous example of how much improvement is possible after age 60," St. Pierre says. "He's a good example that with proper training — enough training — people of any age can get fitter. You can be better at 65 than perhaps you were at 45, even at 25."
These days, Mascarelli writes, runners in their 60s and 70s have surpassed the winning time for all ages for sprints and marathons at the first Olympic Games held in Athens in 1896.
AND
Exercise counteracts aging effects
Amanda Mascarelli for the Los Angeles Times
As we age, our bodies change in ways that challenge athletic ability. But exercise also can slow down — and in some cases even prevent — some of the physiological ravages of time. "A lot of things that we thought were just inherent to the aging process and were going to happen no matter what don't really have to happen if you maintain an appropriate lifestyle," says Jim Hagberg, a professor of kinesiology at the University of Maryland in College Park.
* Exercise, experts say, can reverse muscle loss that occurs as we age and motor neurons die.
* Hard aerobic training can offset the natural decline in VO2 max that begins in the late 30s.
* Exercise can partially prevent arterial stiffening that occurs with age and prevent the dysfunction of the arterial lining that develops with age.
One researcher says: "You're 100 times better … as an athlete training in your 40s and 50s than a sedentary person in your 20s, any way you look at it."
Read more about the effects of exercise on aging.
PHOTO: U.S. swimmer Diana Nyad, 61, set out to swim from Cuba to Florida on Aug. 7, 2011. She had to abandon that trip because of asthma, shoulder pain and choppy waters, but her determination illustrates a key facet of fitness for aging athletes. Courtesy of Enrique de la Osa, Reuters
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