News :
Age Takes Its Toll on Aerobic Fitness
Forbes - USA, July 25 2005 (HealthDay News) -- There's
good news and bad news for seniors in a new study: Their aerobic capacity
declines steeply with age, but regular exercise can stave off and even
reverse those declines.
"In the senior years, if you do exercise regularly,
such as participating in community-based programs, you can improve your
aerobic capacity," said Dr. Nieca Goldberg, chief of women's cardiac
care at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City. "In some studies,
the improvement was as much as 15 to 25 percent."
In the latest study, researchers tracked more than 800
men and women and found that aerobic capacity declined steadily with
age, with the rate of decline increasing as the participants got older.
Aerobic capacity declined 3 percent to 6 percent per decade in the 20s
and 30s, but more than 20 percent per decade after age 70, according
to the report in the July 26 issue of Circulation.
"This translates into frailty and difficulty with
independent living," explained lead researcher Dr. Jerome L. Fleg,
a cardiologist at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. "For
example, if you have to use 75 percent or more of your aerobic capacity
just to make the bed or climb the stairs, you will be quite fatigued
trying to do these activities on a regular basis."
The decline is aerobic capacity was greater for men than
for women, regardless of their reported physical activity, the report
said. Men lost an average of 8.3 percent of their aerobic capacity in
their 40s, and 23.2 percent per decade in their 70s.
The situation probably is worse in the real world, since
the study included only participants who had not suffered a heart attack
or stroke and were healthy enough to do the treadmill testing that measured
their capacity, Fleg added.
"Many older people will have disease-related deficits
in addition to those brought on by age," he said.
But this decline is not an inevitability, Fleg stressed.
Regular exercise could bring about a 15 percent to 25 percent
improvement in aerobic capacity that "would be equivalent to being
10 to 20 years younger," he pointed out. "Over time, your
aerobic capacity will decline, but at any given age someone who exercises
will have a higher capacity than someone who is a couch potato."
Exercise also helps by countering age-related loss of muscle
strength, he said.
According to Fleg, work is needed at the community level
to help bring the benefits of exercise to older people.
"We know that supervised exercise training can bring
major improvements, but we need to determine what kind of community
programs can get older people up and moving," he said.
(source : www.forbes.com)
