Exercising in middle age reverses impact of a sedentary lifestyle, restoring your heart's youthfulness, study shows
Research shows surprisingly big pay-off for couch potatoes who start sustained exercise in middle age; another study shows benefits of boosting fitness from your late 40s onwards, while a third shows a lower death rate among old people who walk every week
For middle-aged adults struggling with exercise after years of inactivity, three new studies might rekindle their motivation. All conclude that mid-life (and older) adults can sustain an exercise routine and gain a range of health benefits.
The most remarkable of the papers, “Reversing the Cardiac Effects of Sedentary Ageing in Middle Age” was published in Circulation, the journal of the American Heart Association. It went where no previous exercise study has gone before, taking two years rather than the more customary three to four months. The researchers employed a randomised, prospective design with an experimental group and controls. For precise results, they probed into their subjects’ heart ventricles.
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Individuals in the exercise group, who had an average age of 53 when they started working out after years of sedentary living, increased their aerobic fitness by 18 per cent. They also improved their cardiac compliance, or elasticity, by 25 per cent.
The improvement in cardiac elasticity was deemed particularly noteworthy, as it had never been seen before in mid-life adults. Loss of elasticity is a major cause of heart failure, which results in many hospitalisations and deaths in the over-65 population.
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The control group practised yoga, balance exercises or strength training three times a week for two years – much more than many inactive adults. Yet their aerobic fitness declined by 3 per cent, and their cardiac compliance didn’t change.