New Research highlights the lifelong benefits of regular exercise

The fact that exercise is good for your health is generally recognised. Most of us know in the back of our mind that the couch potato lifestyle is not very healthy. But recent research has shown the remarkable difference this makes to the heart and muscular health of 75-year olds who have been exercising regularly.

The lead researcher in this study, Scott Trappe, who is an exercise physiologist, explained how surprised they were by the results: “We saw that people who exercise regularly year after year have better overall health than their sedentary counterparts. These 75-year-olds — men and women — have similar cardiovascular health to a 40- to 45-year-old.”

They decided that the marked improvements observed were probably due to the body’s ability to process oxygen more efficiently when stimulated by regular exercise. Generally this capacity to utilize oxygen begins to decline by nearly one percent each year after the age of 30. This tendency becomes more noticeable as people approach their 50s, and this is often accompanied by shortness of breath and increased difficulty in performing any type of exercise.

The study also found that people in their 70s who had been exercising regularly during their adult life had muscle health that was virtually at the same level as the muscles of people in their 20s: “50+ years of aerobic exercise fully preserved capillarization and aerobic enzymes, regardless of intensity. These data suggest that skeletal muscle metabolic fitness may be easier to maintain with lifelong aerobic exercise than more central aspects of the cardiovascular system,” the researchers said.

You can read the full study here: “Cardiovascular and skeletal muscle health with lifelong exercise”