The Report to the Surgeon General on Physical Activity and Health issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia shows alarming statistics that most older adults aren’t getting enough exercise. It states that one in three men and half of women by age 75 are completely sedentary in their leisure time. Though so many of us neglected taking care of our bodies throughout the busy years while we were raising children and working, there is no excuse (for those reasonably healthy enough) for inactivity now in our retirement years. You’ve often heard the expression “use it or lose it,” which doctors everywhere are telling their senior patients. Dr. Michael Pratt, the active chief for the Physical Activity and Health Branch in the Division of Nutrition and Physical Activity at the center in Atlanta, tells us the good news is that “It’s never too late to begin exercising. Most of the benefits of exercise that accrue for younger adults also apply to older adults….”
Dr. Pratt is also a member of “Partnership for a Walkable America,” a coalition of private, state, and federal organizations united with the common cause of spotlighting the benefits of walking.
The doctor adds, “What health experts have now discovered is that regular exercise can help prevent many of the conditions that frequently lead to a ride in an ambulance to the hospital.” For instance, one recent study conducted at San Diego State University’s Department of Physical Education completed a 23 year study involving two groups of middle-aged men. One group exercised for the entire 23 years, while the other group exercised for 5 years and then stopped. The findings on the fitness of the men revealed that the exercising group had only lost 13 percent of their maximal aerobic power (oxygen use proficiency), while the non-exercising group had lost 41 percent of their aerobic strength.
Dr. Pratt comments, “These results were interesting since decreased aerobic power has long been thought to be a natural product of aging.”
It obviously is not!
Further supporting these exercise findings in studying the strength of the aging brain, another study was performed at Scripps College in Claremont, California. Here researchers compared 62 exercisers from 55 to 91 years of age with an equal number of people in the same age bracket who didn’t exercise. Both groups were given a one hour series of tests assessing memory, reasoning, and reaction-time. The results proved conclusively that exercise is critical in preserving our mental abilities as we age. The exercisers performed significantly higher in all reasoning tests, all reaction-time tests, and two of the three memory tests.
What about the improvement in physical functioning a walking program can produce, especially for the elderly? In 2008, a research study at the University of Georgia took place, where 24 participants, 60 years or older in age, completed a 4-month walking program and non-walking program. At first, the walkers walked for 10 minutes, which was increased to 40 minutes a walk, three times a week with 10 minutes of warm-up and cool-down exercises for stretching. At the beginning and end of the study, the randomly-selected walkers and non-walkers control group (which attended nutrition education classes) were given a battery of tests to assess aerobic capacity and physical function to do everyday tasks. The physical function scores increased by 25% for the walkers, but decreased by 8.3% for the non-walkers. Also the walking group’s disability risk decreased by 41%. At the same time, peak aerobic capacity increased 19% for the walkers and decreased 9% for the control group. With their new increase in physical strength and lung/oxygen capacity, the walkers were able to complete numerous tasks throughout their days’ routines, thus becoming more independent and improving their quality of life.
