South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Catching up to lifelong exercisers likely a stretch
But experts say late starters still able to reap health benefits
PHILADELPHIA — David Pallett, 77, who began exercising seriously about six months ago, started a workout by donning a
15-pound vest and climbing
100 stairs — two at a time. After that little warm-up, personal trainer Jim Hart, who specializes in working with older adults, led Pallett through an hour of exercises meant to improve strength, balance, power and metabolic health. The semiretired lawyer gamely worked his abs while perched precariously on a
72-cm ball. Hart combined such movements as punches and lunges so that Pallett was using his arms, abs and legs all at once. That required the kind of whole-body coordination needed to avoid falls or do physically demanding work at home. They finished with some upper-body work on weight machines set at about 45 pounds.
Pallett has increased the weights he’s using by about
30% since he began these workouts. Hart thinks his client is still in the “beginning stages of his potential.” It will likely be at least six more months before Pallett plateaus.
Could he catch up to similar men who have exercised their entire lives?
Hart, 61, thinks that is sometimes possible if older exercisers work hard enough and have the right genes, but most experts say people who put off exercising until their retirement years are at a disadvantage. They enter late life — a time when strong muscles and good aerobic capacity can make the difference between independence and disability — with poorerquality blood vessels, nerves and muscles than
peers who have always been fit. New exercisers can repair much of the damage, but, probably, not all of it.
“We can’t undo 20 years of terrible living,” said Dan Ritchie, co-founder and president of the Functional Aging Institute, where Hart trained to work with elders.
The good news is that you don’t have to catch up to the lifelong runners and gym rats to improve your health and quality of life. “You can take really unfit people at 70,” Ritchie said, “and get them really fit and doing amazing things.”
Physical activity is one of the most important things people can do to increase the number of healthy years in their lifespan, and experts say it’s better to start young.
“I’m a huge fan of exercise because, without question, it’s the most effective means that we have today to counter the fundamental
biology of aging,” said Nathan LeBrasseur, a physiologist and physical therapist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, who studies muscle growth and metabolism.
Aging, he said, is the “accumulation of molecular and cellular damage.” It drives dysfunction and disease. Exercise can slow it down. Obesity, which often accompanies low activity, accelerates it.
People reach their physical peak about age 30, said Steven Austad, chair of biology at the University of Alabama-Birmingham and senior scientific director of the American Federation for Aging Research.
We lose about 30% of our muscle mass and 50% of strength in later life. Exercisers sustain higher levels of mass longer, so they start their decline from a higher point than sedentary peers. Although you can still add muscle in your 80s and 90s,
it becomes much harder, researchers said.
“You want to walk into your 80s with as much muscle mass as possible,” said Kevin Murach, an exercise physiologist and muscle biologist at the University of Arkansas. His recent research — in mice — suggests that people who exercise in early life but take a long break might build muscle more quickly if they start again than never-exercisers.
Increasing numbers of older Americans have exercised for decades thanks to fitness trends when they were younger, researchers said. That has given physiologists a group of high achievers to compare with lifelong couch potatoes. Scott Trappe, director of the Human Performance Laboratory at Ball State University, said that longtime exercisers have a bigger physiologic reserve that helps them bounce back from illness or injuries in their retirement years.
Lifelong exercisers in their 70s have cardiovascular capacities that are physiologically similar to those of recreationally active people 30 years younger. And, he said, the muscles of the lifelong exercisers have enzymes involved with aerobic metabolism that are the same as exercisers in their 20s.
LeBrasseur said people who study muscles have long been consumed with age-related decline in muscle mass, but are starting to look at other factors. “Have we oversold the importance of building mass as opposed to building muscle quality?” he said.
By that, he means that muscles don’t operate independently. They need a good blood supply and well-connected nerves that tell them when to contract and relax. These things decline with age, too, and they decline more in people who haven’t exercised.
A healthy brain is key to strong muscles because that’s where the signals that control muscles start, said Brian Clark, an Ohio University exercise physiologist who directs the Ohio Musculoskeletal and Neurological Institute. Our brains typically atrophy with age and that affects parts that control motor function as well as thinking. This can make habitual motions like walking more challenging. Nerves are also dying, and they become less connected.
The best activity for your brain is aerobic exercise. However, weightlifting can slowly build better connections between nerves and muscles.
Most older people, of course, don’t start exercising in retirement with the idea that they’ll become champions. Some have had a health scare that left them with a stark choice: Change or die early. Some want to have the energy to travel. Some want to keep up with the grandkids. They might not like the way they look or feel. “They literally feel their age,” Hart said. “I hear that a lot.”
At any age, exercise as simple as walking can help them avoid catastrophic falls and stave off the day when they’ll need a walker or wheelchair. “There’s never a time in your life when increasing your physical activity is not beneficial,” Austad said. “The thing about weak flabby muscles,” he said, “is if you change them just a little, it can have enormous impact.”
Matthew Silvis, division chief of primary care sports medicine at Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center, said the goal in older age is to maximize what you have.
“We can’t halt the aging process, but we can slow it,” he said.