‘Young forever’ is now not just a state of mind. It is possible for 70-year-olds to have muscles as healthy as those of fit 25-year-olds, says a new study.
As reported in The New York Times, the study showed that older men and women who have exercised for decades have higher aerobic capacities than most people their age, making them about 30 years younger than their actual ages.
Scott Trappe, the director of the Human Performance Laboratory at Ball State and the senior author of the study, said,
We were very interested in people who had started exercising during the running and exercise booms of the1970s.
Studies have earlier found that older athletes have healthier muscles, brains, immune systems and hearts than sedentary old people. This study is different in this area because it looked at old men and women who took up exercise as a hobby and were not necessarily competitive master athletes.
The subject of study were the men and women who maintained their hobbies for the next 50 or so years. 28 of them were found through local advertisements and other recruitment methods, seven out of which were women.
For the purpose of comparison, a second group of similar aged people who had not exercised during adulthood and a third one of active young people in their 20s was made.
Each person was brought to the lab and their aerobic capacities were tested. Tissue samples were collected and measured to arrive at the number of capillaries and certain enzymes in the muscles.
The focus of the study was on cardiovascular system and muscles because they are believed to decline with age. However, it was revealed that old people who had exercised all their lives were only slightly weaker on both the counts than young people.
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)