To Live to a Biblical Old Age,
Stay Physically Active
DECEMBER 2009
New proof that you’re never too old
to exercise comes from an Israeli
study that finds people over age 70
live longer and better if they’re physically
active at least four hours a week.
Physically active seniors were 31% to
58% less likely to die during the study
than their sedentary peers, and 72% to
92% more likely to remain independent
while performing the
activities of daily living.
“Recommendations
encouraging physical activity
set no upper age limit,”
noted Jochanan Stessman,
MD, of Hadassah Hebrew
University Medical Center
and colleagues, writing in
Archives of Internal
Medicine, “yet evidence
supporting the benefits of physical
activity among the very old is sparse.”
To test those possible benefits, the
Jerusalem Longitudinal Cohort Study
followed 1,821 people born in 1920
and 1921 for 18 years, from ages 70 to
88. Participants were classified as active
or sedentary based on self-reported
physical activity, which included regular
walking as well as vigorous exercise.
Those reporting activity totaling less
than four hours a week were labeled as
sedentary. Participants were also
grouped by whether their activity level
changed over time.
Between ages 70 and 78, 27.2% of
the sedentary group died, compared to
15.2% of the active group. From ages
78 to 85, 40.8% of sedentary participants
died, compared to 26.1% of the
active elderly. And from ages 85 to 88,
24.4% of the sedentary seniors died,
versus just 6.8% of their physically
active peers.
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Seniors who
started physical
activity between
ages 70 and 78
and even between
78 and 85
improved their
odds of survival.
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Even if you’re still a couch potato,
the study has good news: Seniors
who started physical activity
between ages 70 and 78 and even
between 78 and 85
improved their odds of
survival.
Physical activity also
helped stave off the decline
in the independent performance
of functions of
daily living with aging.
Among active seniors,
33.3% saw such a decline
between ages 70 and 78,
compared to 52.3% for the sedentary
group. Physical activity, Dr. Stessman
and colleagues noted, may be central in
staving off the “onset of a spiral of
decline” by maintaining cardiovascular health, improving immunity, suppressing
chronic inflammation and slowing
sarcopenia. (An overall weakening of
the body caused by a change in body
composition in favor of fat and at the
expense of muscle, sarcopenia was first
identified and named by Tufts scientists.)
The Israeli investigators concluded,
“Not only was the effect of this [physical
activity] benefit similar regardless of
increasing age, but the magnitude of
the difference between physically active
and sedentary participants actually
increased with advancing age.”
TO LEARN MORE: Archives of Internal Medicine, Sept.
14, 2009; abstract at www.alz.org.
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Even Being a Little More
Fit Improves Longevity
Your daily workout may help you
live longer than your sedentary
neighbor. New research on 4,384
middle-aged and older Ame ricans
finds that physical activity boosts
longevity—even beyond exercise’s cardiovascular
benefits and effects on
weight. And just a little extra exercise
may add years to your life.
Sandra Mandic, PhD, from the
University of Otago in New Zealand,
and a Stanford research team assessed
participants’ fitness using treadmill
tests, divided them into five groups
based on fitness, then followed them
for an average of almost nine years.
After adjusting for age, the least-fit
group was still more than four times
as likely to die during that span than
the most-fit group. Only 6% of the
fittest group died during the study
period. Even after adjusting for factors
like obesity, hypertension and diabetes,
fitness was the strongest predictor
of mortality.
But even being just a little more
physically active was associated with a
big longevity improvement: While
25% of the least-fit group died during
the study period, only 13% of the
next-fitter participants died.
Mandic noted that overall exercise
habits among participants didn’t
vary much during their adult lives—
but recent activity did: “Since it is
recent activity that offers protection,
it is important to maintain regular
physical activity throughout life.”
TO LEARN MORE: Medicine and Science in Sports and
Exercise, August 2009; abstract at dx.doi.org/
10.1249/MSS.0b013e31819ca063.
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