It’s never too late to start exercising
OLD IS THE NEW YOUNG
Older people who have never taken part in sustained exercise programs have the same ability to build muscle mass as highly trained master athletes of a similar age, according to new research.
RESEARCH SAYS THUMBS-UP
The research shows that even those who are entirely unaccustomed to exercise can benefit from resistance exercises such as weight training.
In the study, published in Frontiers in Physiology, researchers in the University of Birmingham’s School of Sport and Exercise Science compared muscle-building ability in two groups of older men. First, classed as ‘master athletes’ — people in their 70s and 80s are lifelong exercisers and still competing at top levels in their sport. Second, healthy individuals of a similar age, who had never participated in structured exercise programmes.
The researchers had expected that the master athletes would have an increased ability to build muscle due to their superior levels of fitness over a prolonged period of time. In fact, the results showed that both groups had an equal capacity to build muscle in response to exercise.
In the experiment, each participant was given an isotope tracer, in the form of a drink of ‘heavy’ water, and then took part in a single bout of exercise, involving weight training on an exercise machine. The researchers then took muscle biopsies from participants in the 48 hour periods just before and just after the exercise, and examined these to look for signs of how the muscles were responding to the exercise. The isotope tracer showed how proteins were developing within the muscle.
It doesn’t matter if you haven’t been a regular exerciser throughout your life, you can still derive benefit from exercise whenever you start. Needless to say, a long-term commitment to good health and exercise is the best approach to achieve whole-body health, but even starting later on in life will help delay age-related frailty and muscle weakness.
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