FITNESS / KATHLEEN DOHENY : Exercise Can Take the Sting Out of Aging
Don’t bother telling Richard Molnar that old yarn about fitness being the exclusive province of youth.
The 70-year-old mortgage broker gets up at 5:30 every day for a brisk six-mile walk on the beach near his Oxnard home. He supplements the walk with half an hour or more of calisthenics, finishing the workout in time to log a full day of work. “I’d like to add strength-training with free weights,” he says.
Lee Haskell probably won’t listen either.
At 50, she’s in training for her first road race and is a little amazed at her transformation. “I was a couch potato and overweight,” she confesses. But when she began work last year as executive director of the Fifty-Plus Fitness Assn. in Stanford, she was infected with the members’ enthusiasm.
Haskell and Molnar are the anecdotal evidence behind a growing body of scientific research that strongly suggests that age is not a reason to quit exercising and that you’re probably not too old to start exercising.
Consider some of the latest findings:
* Older exercisers can expect the same percentage of improvement in cardiovascular functioning as much younger exercisers.
Washington University researcher Wendy Kohrt recruited 100 sedentary but otherwise healthy men and women, ages 60 to 71, to participate in a rigorous one-year exercise program. At the end of the study, every participant was exercising 45 or 50 minutes a day, five days a week. Some walked; others jogged. They exercised vigorously enough to raise their heart rates to 80% of maximum.
Even Kohrt was surprised by some of the results. For instance, she thought the subjects pushing 70 would not respond as well to the exercise as subjects in their early 60s. But the older exercisers seemed to achieve similar results; everyone improved cardiovascular function about 20% to 25%, says Kohrt, whose study was published late last year in the Journal of Applied Physiology.
Besides the physical changes, Kohrt noticed attitudinal shifts. One 73-year-old woman entered the program agreeing to walk but refusing to jog. That was before she caught the spirit and logged a six-mile run.
* Older people who have been sedentary can improve muscular strength and aerobic conditioning.
Elaine Cress, a research assistant professor in the division of geriatrics at the University of Washington, Seattle, compared two groups of women, average age 73. The 10 women in the control group continued their normal daily activity level during the one-year study; 17 women in the exercise group did a low-impact program. The exercising group also climbed stairs for a few minutes each session, strapping on backpacks filled with sand. They exercised three times a week for an hour each time.
The exercisers increased their thigh strength 6.5% while the control group had a 12% decline in thigh strength, says Cress, whose results appeared in the journal Medicine and Science in Sports and Exercise. She attributes part of the control group’s decline to seasonal activity variations. Her subjects lived in Wisconsin and tended to be less active during colder weather.
“Exercise is necessary, at least in inclement climates, just to stay even throughout the year,” Cress concludes. “The type of muscle cell associated with strength decreased in size in the control group and increased in the exercising group.”
* Strength-training by using hand-held weights, weight machines or free weights can help adults of any age improve muscles, retard aging and reduce disease risk.
Pioneering studies by William Evans, chief of the human physiology lab at the Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University, show that even men and women over 90 can begin strength training programs. Weight training might also reduce risk of diabetes and colon cancer, other researchers have found.
* Moderate exercise can help older people reduce high blood pressure and might be better than more vigorous exercise in helping to normalize blood pressure.
University of Maryland exercise physiologist Jim Hagberg compared the effects of exercise at different intensity in 30 hypertensive seniors, ages 60 to 69. One group walked four times a week, 50 minutes a session.
Another group did cardiac rehabilitation-type exercises three times a week for about 50 minutes a session. The control group did neither exercise program.
“The lower-intensity exercisers had a drop in their systolic pressure that was greater than the higher-intensity exercisers,” says Hagberg. “The drop in diastolic pressure between the two groups was about equal.”
(Normal blood pressure is around 120/80, although readings vary depending on age and other factors. The top number is known as systolic; the bottom diastolic.)
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Older exercisers might be reducing more than just diabetes and colon cancer risk, Kohrt says. “A lot of diseases attributed to age are really related to sedentary lifestyles.”
Then there are the psychological benefits.
“It’s the feeling of well-being that keeps me going,” says Molnar, the Oxnard walker.
Achieving goals keeps Haskell motivated. Last year, she stood at the finish line of a road race, cheering the participants and vowing she’d be one of them next time around. She’s in training now.
If you’re older and want to start an exercise program, get an OK from your doctor. (A stress test is recommended for women over 50 and men over 40 who plan to exercise vigorously.)
Nowadays, physicians are tuned in to the value of exercise for older patients. Last year, the American College of Sports Medicine introduced the “Staying Fit After Forty Program,” a kit developed by the college in cooperation with the Advil Forum on Health Education.
“About 50,000 physicians have the kit,” says a college spokesman. It includes tear-off tip sheets on exercise facts, walking and nutrition.
Once you start a workout, go slow at first; work up gradually to your goals. Be sure to warm up and cool down. Stop if you get dizzy or feel nauseated.
If exercise sounds too intimidating or exhausting, focus first just on increasing your activity level, Kohrt suggests.
Take the stairs, not the elevator. Walk to the store instead of driving. “Then work up to making exercise part of your daily habit,” she suggests.
Overcoming inertia can start with attitude adjustment, Kohrt says. In healthy older people, she says, “up to age 70 or 80, age is not a limiting factor for exercise.”
For MoreInformation
* For exercisers age 50 and older, a quarterly newsletter is published by the Fifty-Plus Fitness Assn. An annual $20 membership includes a newsletter subscription and a list of local members. Write Fifty-Plus Fitness Assn., P.O. Box D, Stanford, Calif. 94309.
* A brochure on senior fitness, “Get Moving, America,” is available from the American Running and Fitness Assn., 9310 Old Georgetown Road, Bethesda, Md. 20814. Include a business-sized envelope with 52 cents of postage.
* For an information packet on exercise for older people, write the National Institute on Aging, “Age Page: Don’t Take It Easy--Exercise!” NIA Information Center/Exercise, P.O. Box 8057, Gaithersburg, Md. 20898-8057.
