November 5, 2009 by Jim
I know that sometimes, some of my readers (really, it’s not all of you, all of the time…) get tired of hearing me talk about how exercise is the most powerful medicine available to us, sort of like taking a magic pill or a drink from the fountain of youth. So it’s nice when some prominent physicians and recent research comes out in support of this view as well.
Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum, director of women and heart disease for Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City and a spokeswoman for the American Heart Association, states it quite clearly, “You have to exercise. It’s now becoming established fact, and if you don’t incorporate it, you’re going to see the effects. You will get sicker sooner.”
And if listening to me and Dr. Steinbaum isn’t enough, how about the results of a recent study that were published in the Oct. 26 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine? The study group included 3,429 women and 16,889 men aged 20 to 96 who had undergone two to 33 health exams with lifestyle counseling between 1974 and 2006.
While previous research had indicated that cardiorespiratory fitness declines with age, it was thought to be a steady decrease. However, this most recent study indicates that after age 45 this decline actually speeds up, accelerating even further with increases in BMI (body-mass index), smoking, and lower levels of activity.
Study author Andrew Jackson, professor emeritus of health and human performance at the University of Houston, feels the results make sense. “When things aren’t working right, we tend to go down at faster rates. This was true for both men and women [although the rate of decline was faster for men than for women].”
But people can slow the inevitable by staying lean, exercising and refraining from smoking. “If you were overweight, inactive and smoked, your aerobic capacity would be lower at a given age as compared to other people who were healthy weight, active and nonsmokers,” Jackson said. “The data showed that if people had that advantage when they were in their 30s and 40s and maintained that lifestyle, their aerobic capacity as they aged was, in fact, higher.”
“It could delay the age when these health problems start to spring up,” he continued. “If people are very overweight, inactive and smoke, they might see … health problems in their 50s and 60s, whereas people who maintain a healthy lifestyle, it’s going to be more like their 70s, 80s and possibly even their 90s.”
In other words, taking care of yourself could make you, in a sense, younger than your years, or stated another way, 90 could be the new 50.
To your health and happiness…
Videos of the week: Video 1 - Here’s a 2-minute video that summarizes a Stanford University School of Medicine study on the benefits of exercise for older people. Not surprisingly, the results are consistent with the study discussed above. Video 2 - “Here’s to the crazy ones… Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.” If you can’t recall what company made those lines famous, perhaps watching the commercial will help. It’s one of my all time favorites; in fact I just showed it to my students this week as part of a discussion on groupthink.
