Healthy Aging And Fitness

A few weeks ago, I wrote about growing old, and how we deal with this subject.  Over the last few weeks, I’ve been watching friends deal with their aging parents, and the mobility of their parents has drastically impacted the choices they’ve been forced to make.  For me, it has highlighted the importance of healthy aging and fitness.

How To Tackle Healthy Aging & Fitness

The two popular ages for heckling your friends about getting “old” are 40 and 50.  At least, those are the birthdays that people seem to dread.  I would daresay that most of us expect to see some declines in fitness and health with aging.  Even Mark Sisson recently wrote that “…at this point in my life…I’m instead focusing on maintaining my current performance…”  The question becomes, how severe and how fast should those declines be?  And, more importantly, what can be done to stem the tide?

Turns out the challenges of healthy aging and fitness start to show up around 45.  Recent work by scientists looked at data generated by a 32-year study of nearly 20,000 people, ranging in age from 20 to 96 years old.  What they found was a more dramatic decline in “cardiorespiratory fitness” after age 45, with men suffering a steeper decline than women.

Probably not surprisingly, they also discovered that those people who had higher levels of fitness were able to maintain a greater degree independence and mobility later into life.

A separate study highlighted the benefits of starting exercise for older Americans.  Participants age 65 and older having high blood pressure, Type 2 diabetes, and high cholesterol who started an exercise regimen showed health benefits after just 3 months of light aerobic activity.  Participants were able to lower high blood pressure naturally, and made significant inroads in reducing cholesterol and blood pressure.  It goes to show that anyone can benefit from making fitness a priority in life.

For me, 45 is a mere 7.5 years off.  It’s something to think about.  Most of us have families, jobs, and the stresses of everyday life.  As our kids get older and our jobs get more demanding, its easy for me to see how fitness and health concerns could take a back seat to the more immediately pressing demands of everyday life.

And there are times when it must.

But, lurking in the background is the fact that if we neglect those things over a longer term, it will come back to bite us.  The good news is that there’s evidence that, no matter what our position in life, we can all benefit from getting back on task with fitness and health.  It may not be the same kind of goals we pursued at 20 or 25 years old, but we can make progress toward healthy aging.

Where do you stand in your journey with fitness and health?  Has it taken a back seat to other demands in life?  One thing I’ve discovered is that once I get out of the habit of making better eating choices, it takes a focused effort to get back in the zone.  Ditto for exercise and fitness.  Think about it.