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Fitness & Exercise for Senior Citizens
Great News for Fatter Senior Citizens in Great Shape
Its the Fitness that Counts
Study finds fitness level is a stronger predictor
of longevity that body fat for older adults
Dec. 4, 2007 Weight gain is often associated with
aging and many senior citizens in good physical condition have assumed
the worse about their health as the pounds continued to climb despite
long-term rigorous exercise. A new study has brightened their day,
however, with the discovery that adults over age 60 with high levels of
cardiorespiratory fitness live longer than unfit adults, regardless of
their body fat.
Previous studies have provided evidence that
obesity and physical inactivity each can produce a higher risk of death
in middle-aged adults. But, this had never been proven for older adults,
according to the study in the December 5 issue of
the Journal
of the American Medical Association.
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Cardiorespiratory fitness refers to the ability of
the circulatory and respiratory systems to supply oxygen to skeletal
muscles during sustained physical activity. Regular exercise makes these
systems more efficient by enlarging the heart muscle, enabling more
blood to be pumped with each stroke, and increasing the number of small
arteries in trained skeletal muscles, which supply more blood to working
muscles, according to Wikipedia.
Since the mid-seventies, the prevalence of
overweight and obesity has increased sharply for both adults and
children, according to the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Data from two
government surveys show that among adults aged 2074 years the
prevalence of obesity increased from 15.0% (in the 19761980 survey) to
32.9% (in the 20032004 survey).
Xuemei Sui, M.D., of the University of South
Carolina, Columbia, and colleagues examined the associations between
cardiorespiratory fitness, various clinical measures of adiposity (body
fat) and death in older women and men.
The study included 2,603 adults age 60 years or
older (average age, 64.4 years; 19.8 percent women) enrolled in the
Aerobics Center Longitudinal Study who completed a baseline health
examination during 1979-2001.
Fitness was assessed by a treadmill exercise test
and adiposity was assessed by body mass index (BMI), waist
circumference, and percent body fat. Low fitness was defined as the
lowest fifth of the sex-specific distribution of treadmill exercise test
duration. There were 450 deaths during an average follow-up of 12 years.
The researchers found that those who died were
older, had lower fitness levels, and had more cardiovascular risk
factors than survivors. However, there were no significant differences
in adiposity measures.
Participants in the higher fitness groups were for
the most part less likely to have risk factors for cardiovascular
disease, such as hypertension, diabetes, or high cholesterol levels.
Fit participants had lower death rates than unfit
participants within each stratum of adiposity, except for two of the
obesity groups.
In most instances, death rates for those with
higher fitness were less than half of rates for those who were unfit.
Higher levels of fitness were inversely related to
all-cause death in both normal-weight and overweight BMI subgroups -
those with a normal waist circumference and in those with abdominal
obesity, and in those who have normal percent body fat and those who
have excessive percent body fat.
The researchers found that fit individuals who were
obese (such as those with BMI of 30.0-34.9, abdominal obesity, or
excessive percent body fat) had a lower risk of all-cause mortality than
did unfit, normal-weight, or lean individuals.
Our data therefore suggest that fitness levels in
older individuals influence the association of obesity to mortality,
the authors write.
Our data provide further evidence regarding the
complex long-term relationship among fitness, body size, and survival.
It may be possible to reduce all-cause death rates
among older adults, including those who are obese, by promoting regular
physical activity, such as brisk walking for 30 minutes or more on most
days of the week (about 8 kcal/kg per week), which will keep most
individuals out of the low-fitness category.
Enhancing functional capacity also should allow
older adults to achieve a healthy lifestyle and to enjoy longer life in
better health.
Making a difference
To improve your cardiorespiratory
endurance, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
try activities that keep your heart rate elevated at a safe level for a
sustained length of time such as walking, swimming, or bicycling.
The activity you choose does not
have to be strenuous to improve your cardiorespiratory endurance. Start
slowly with an activity you enjoy, and gradually work up to a more
intense pace, advises the CDC.
Exercise and Age-Related Weight Gain, a 1999
report by the American College ofSports Medicine, written by Loretta
DePietro, Ph.D., M.P.H., reported on a large survey of over 5000
middle-aged men and women. DiPietro and colleagues compared two-year
improvements in cardiorespiratory fitness (determined by performance on
a maximal exercise test on a treadmill) with changes in body weight over
seven and a half years.
The found that simply maintaining a given fitness
level was not sufficient to ward off the slow increase in body weight
through middle age.
She wrote, Indeed, these and other recent findings
by Paul T. Williams, Ph.D. in The American Journal of Clinical
Nutrition, suggest that increasing amounts of physical activity may be
necessary to effectively maintain a constant body weight with increasing
age.
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