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Fitness & Exercise for Senior Citizens
Senior Citizens Can Decide to Become More Active,
Also Live Longer by Walking Faster
Two studies seem to prove that aging does not
necessarily mean sedentary lifestyle
 Nov. 16, 2007 Too many senior citizens assume
that becoming inactive - sitting around doing not much of anything most
of the time - is just what happens with getting older. Two research
reports out this month seem to prove this is just not true life can be
different with changing our mindset and, the second study finds, we will
live longer if we just walk a little faster.
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The program testing the results of changing the
mindsets of older people was by UCLA researchers. Seniors in the pilot
program became more physically active, increasing their walking by about
24 percent - an average increase of 2.5 miles per week.
The second study on speed of walking, which found
that improvement in usual gait speed predicts a substantial reduction in
mortality, is from the Division of Geriatric Medicine, School of
Medicine, University of Pittsburgh.
Both studies which looked at people aged 65 or
older appear in the November issue of the Journal of the American
Geriatrics Society.
Changing Mindset Works
"We can teach older adults to get rid of those old
beliefs that becoming sedentary is just a normal part of growing older,"
said Dr. Catherine Sarkisian, assistant professor of geriatrics at the
David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the study's lead author. "We
can teach them that they can and should remain physically active at all
ages."
The researchers used a technique known as
"attribution retraining" to effect a change among study participants
about what it means to age and what to expect out of it.
"The exciting part is that, to our knowledge, this
attribution retraining component hasn't been tested in a physical
activity intervention," Sarkisian said. "It's been very successful in
educational interventions."
The researchers worked with 46 sedentary senior
citizens age 65 and older from three senior centers in the Los Angeles
area.
The participants attended four weekly, hour-long
group sessions led by a trained health educator who applied an
attribution retraining curriculum. The participants were taught to
reject the notion that becoming older means becoming sedentary and to
accept that they can continue engaging in physical activity well into
old age.
Each attribution retraining session was followed by
a one-hour exercise class that included strength, endurance and
flexibility training.
Participants were fitted with electronic
pedometers, to be worn at all times, which measured the number of steps
they took each week. They also completed surveys that gauged their
expectations about aging higher scores indicated that participants
expected high functioning with aging, while lower scores meant they
expected physical and mental decline.
As a result of the program, participants increased
the number of steps they took per week from a mean of 24,749 to 30,707
a 24 percent increase and their scores on the age-expectation survey
rose by 30 percent.
Also, their mental health-related quality of life
improved, and they reported fewer difficulties with daily activities,
experienced less pain, had higher energy levels and slept better.
"An intervention combining attribution retraining
with a weekly exercise class raised walking levels and improved quality
of life in sedentary older adults in this small pre-post community-based
pilot study," the researchers wrote. "Attribution retraining deserves
further investigation as a potential means of increasing physical
activity in sedentary older adults."
Live Longer by Walking Faster
The study on walking speed looked at 439 senior
citizens to estimate the relationship between 1-year improvement in
measures of health and physical function and 8-year survival.
Six measures of health and function were checked
quarterly over 1 year.
Participants were classified for each measure as -
● improved at 1 year,
● transiently improved, or
● never improved.
Mortality was ascertained from the National Death
Index.
Of the six measures, only improved gait speed was
associated with survival.
Mortality after 8 years determined by the gait
speed measurement was
31.6% - for improved,
41.2% - for transiently improved, and
49.3% - for never improved,.
The authors concluded, "Because gait speed is
easily measured, clinically interpretable, and potentially modifiable,
it may be a useful 'vital sign' for older adults."
But, they also said, "Further research is needed to
determine whether interventions to improve gait speed affect survival."
Editor's Notes:
About study on changing mindset
Other co-authors were Bernard Weiner of the UCLA
Department of Psychology, Thomas R. Prohaska of the department of
community health sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago's
School of Public Health, and Connie Davis of the Fraser Health Authority
in Abbotsford, British Columbia.
The study was supported by grants from the National
Institute on Aging (NIA) through the UCLA Older Americans Independence
Center and the UCLA Mentored Clinical Scientist Program in Geriatrics,
and an NIA Paul B. Beeson Career Development Award in Aging.
About faster gait speed
"Improvement in Usual Gait Speed Predicts Better Survival in Older
Adults," was by Susan E. Hardy MD, PhD, Subashan Perera PhD, Yazan F.
Roumani MS, MBA, Julie M. Chandler PhD, Stephanie A. Studenski MD, MPH
(2007)
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