Thursday, 8 January 2015, NEW YORK, NEW YORK - A new study on the effects of aging published this week in The Journal of Physiology reached the surprising conclusion this week that active older people resemble much younger people physiologically. What they found is what we presently assume about the inevitability of physical decline with advancing years may be incorrect and "that how we age is, to a large degree, up to us".
They found that more mature active adults in the 55-79 age range who exercised by bicycling as "serious recreational riders but not competitive athletes" rather than resembling people their own age on standard tests instead were more like people who were much younger physiologically.
In order to qualify the men in six and a half hours had to be able to ride at least 62 miles (that is just less than ten miles per hour) while the women in five and a half hours had to be able to ride at least 37 miles (that is about seven miles per hour). These are indicators of what typically is found to be in older people a "high degree of fitness".
As part of the study volunteers who were and were not at this "high degree of fitness" measured through cylcing went through a variety of physical and cognitive tests. This group of cyclists afterwords simply not only "did not show their age" but instead showed stable functioning from passing of decade to decade and which "was much closer to that of young adults than of people their age." Even the oldest among the cyclists "had younger people’s levels of balance, reflexes, metabolic health and memory ability".
But even more encouraging was that it was their "Timed Up and Go" test results "that were exemplary". On average at least 7 seconds were needed by older people to accomplish this, and those needing 9 to 10 seconds considered "to be on the cusp of frailty". Incredibly among the cyclists even the oldest on average took just five seconds to get up and walk which remarkably is “'well within the norm reported for healthy young adults'”.
In sum the senior author of the study who is the director of the Centre of Human and Aerospace Physiological Sciences at King’s College London Dr. Stephen Harridge concluded that “'[if] you gave this dataset to a clinician and asked him to predict the age'” based on one of the test cylcists' test results he said “'it would be impossible.'” Gretchen Reynolds author of the New York Times "Well" Column linked to below concludes that "[o]n paper, they all look young".
Finally for the information of interested readers there has been another quite recent study unfortunately to which the Ninth Amendment cannot at this time provide either a direct link nor a citation that has reached a similar conclusion to that above as to "serious recreational" bicycle riders for mature adults who rather than walk instead merely jog at the slowest of paces even taking walking breaks as necessary whereby their physiological test scores put them on a par with that of the average college student. That certainly sounds encouraging to us.
Copyright 2015 Martin P. All World Rights Exclusively Reserved
They found that more mature active adults in the 55-79 age range who exercised by bicycling as "serious recreational riders but not competitive athletes" rather than resembling people their own age on standard tests instead were more like people who were much younger physiologically.
In order to qualify the men in six and a half hours had to be able to ride at least 62 miles (that is just less than ten miles per hour) while the women in five and a half hours had to be able to ride at least 37 miles (that is about seven miles per hour). These are indicators of what typically is found to be in older people a "high degree of fitness".
As part of the study volunteers who were and were not at this "high degree of fitness" measured through cylcing went through a variety of physical and cognitive tests. This group of cyclists afterwords simply not only "did not show their age" but instead showed stable functioning from passing of decade to decade and which "was much closer to that of young adults than of people their age." Even the oldest among the cyclists "had younger people’s levels of balance, reflexes, metabolic health and memory ability".
But even more encouraging was that it was their "Timed Up and Go" test results "that were exemplary". On average at least 7 seconds were needed by older people to accomplish this, and those needing 9 to 10 seconds considered "to be on the cusp of frailty". Incredibly among the cyclists even the oldest on average took just five seconds to get up and walk which remarkably is “'well within the norm reported for healthy young adults'”.
In sum the senior author of the study who is the director of the Centre of Human and Aerospace Physiological Sciences at King’s College London Dr. Stephen Harridge concluded that “'[if] you gave this dataset to a clinician and asked him to predict the age'” based on one of the test cylcists' test results he said “'it would be impossible.'” Gretchen Reynolds author of the New York Times "Well" Column linked to below concludes that "[o]n paper, they all look young".
Finally for the information of interested readers there has been another quite recent study unfortunately to which the Ninth Amendment cannot at this time provide either a direct link nor a citation that has reached a similar conclusion to that above as to "serious recreational" bicycle riders for mature adults who rather than walk instead merely jog at the slowest of paces even taking walking breaks as necessary whereby their physiological test scores put them on a par with that of the average college student. That certainly sounds encouraging to us.
Copyright 2015 Martin P. All World Rights Exclusively Reserved
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