Intense exercise can boost cellular health
I’ve written, previously, about “active aging” — having the ability to keep doing the things you love to do for as long as you can.
I know 50 year olds who play hockey, 60 year olds who run marathons, 70 year olds who go on longdistance cycling holidays and 80 year olds who belong to hiking clubs. As different as they are, there are two things these groups have in common. They’ve minimized their physical decline while they’ve maximized their physical capabilities. Specifically, successful “active agers” are good at maintaining their brains, their bones, their cardiovascular systems (the heart and lungs) and their muscles. Here are some ways they do it:
Aerobic exercise, especially of long, slow duration (like jogging) has been shown to increase “neurogenesis,” which is the creation of new cells in the adult brain. For those unable to jog due to arthritis, heart disease or for some other factor, it’s important to continue walking, swimming, cycling or doing some other type of low impact endurance activity to stimulate the effects that this type of movement has on brain tissue.
To maintain bone density and offset osteoporosis, the clear exercise choice is to work “against gravity.” This includes doing things like walking, stair climbing and especially weight lifting. Bones need to be placed under the stress that gravity provides to stay strong. Doing strength-training exercises also has the added benefit of building supporting muscles around joints, which can help minimize the pain and disability of arthritis. An appropriate weightlifting routine will provide enough stress to keep bones strong, while not so much that joints are damaged in the process.
While the long, slow endurance exercise described above is important for building brain tissue and helps with overall physical endurance, high-intensity exercise works best for building a strong cardiovascular system. The heart is a muscle and it gets stronger and more efficient when it is worked, just like any other muscle. Adding speed “bursts” to a walking routine can achieve this and can even help lower blood pressure and improve body composition. The important thing to remember is that the idea of “high intensity” is relative. Fast for one person is slow for another. Consulting with your physician is recommended before adding this element to your exercise routine.
Finally, the importance of building and maintaining muscles as we grow older can’t be ignored. As we age, our muscles waste away all the way down to the cellular level. This means that the part of the muscles that produce energy (the mitochondria) become smaller and die off. Unless something is done to maintain the cellular health of your muscles, you will become weaker and have less energy as the years go by.
According to a recent New York Times article that cites the findings of an experiment conducted at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, an answer may have been found to offset this physical decline. The study divided a group into three exercise programs (and one control group that did not exercise). The groups did intense weight lifting, brief interval training on a stationary bike and long, slow cycling with easy strength training.
As expected, the first group built the most muscle (important for maintaining independence) and the interval group gained the most endurance. The mild exercise group saw the least improvement in all areas. Aside from the expected results, there was an additional finding that was significant. The cells of the intense interval group showed increases in the number and health of their mitochondria (the part of the muscle that produces energy). Further, this improvement was most pronounced in the older exercisers (64 years of age and older). According to the lead researcher, it seems as if the decline in cellular health from aging can be “corrected” with exercise — especially if it is intense, and especially in older exercisers.