Staying Healthy in Your 60s, 70s and Beyond
"People don't die of old age, they die of inactivity." It's an amazing statement from the Godfather of Fitness, Jack La Lanne. Amazing because in 10 words it sums up a lifetime of advice.
When you're in your 20s and 30s, muscle loss isn't much of an issue. There aren't many 20 or 30 year olds that can't carry a bag of groceries or walk up a flight of stairs. But when you get into your 40s, you can start to lose a significant amount of muscle mass.
Aging is the primary cause and there's nothing you can do about that. Part of the aging process is losing muscle mass. As you get older, the ability to synthesize muscle protein decreases so it becomes harder and harder for your body to make new muscle tissue. You can still increase the size of the muscles you already have, but new muscle gets increasingly difficult to add.
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Learn more about Jack La Lanne by Clicking Here and visiting his website.
(Photo of Jack La Lanne from JackLaLanne.com.)
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A sedentary lifestyle or lack of resistance exercise is the other big reason. Today it's common for people to get up in the morning and stand while they're taking a shower, drying off and dressing. Then they get in a car, sit down and drive to work. They walk from their car to their office and sit down again, for the bulk of the day, with the exception of a break for lunch and maybe a meeting or two. Then they walk to their car, sit down and drive home. When they get home they might throw something in the microwave for dinner, but then they'll walk to a comfortable chair in front of the computer or television and spend the rest of the night "unwinding."
Their muscles slowly waste away from neglect.
Don't pat yourself on the back and think you've got it all beat because you work a more physical job like waitperson, chef, clerk or landscaping. Those can all keep you cardiovascularly fit, but they don't prevent you from losing muscle mass.
You're probably thinking, "So what? I might be slowing down a little, but I can still do everything I need to do." You're right. It might not be a problem, today. But over time, your abilities will continue to decline, until you cross a threshold. Suddenly you can't get up that flight of stairs, picking up a grocery bag may be too much to handle or you'll need help getting out of a car.
Now you've gone from being independent, to relying on others for your well being.
The loss of muscle tissue as we age has a name, it's called sarcopenia. For people in their 60s, it's estimated that 45 percent suffer from age-related muscle wasting. If you don't engage in some kind of regular physical activity, that number can soar as high as 80 or 90 percent of people in their 70s and older.
If you're a woman, it gets worse because you're hit with two things. First, women have less muscle mass than men to begin with, so even small amounts of muscle loss can have devastating consequences. Second, women live longer than men. That means women will have to deal with the effects of sarcopenia longer than men. On average, women and men lose 10% of their muscle strength each decade, with women losing a greater percentage at a younger age than men because of gender differences.
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Are you already suffering from age related muscle loss?
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Then there are the dietary considerations. As people age, they tend to eat less. If your body isn't getting the nutrients (or more specifically muscle building protein) that it needs, muscle loss is accelerated even more.
There is hope. Scott Trappe, PhD and his colleagues wanted to find out the least amount of exercise someone in their 70s could engage in and still stay strong. So they put ten 70-year-old men who didn't exercise, through a 12-week, 3 sessions per week resistance training program. At the end of the 12-week program the men had increased their size and strength by an astonishing 50%. Those subjects reversed more than 20 years of muscle loss in three short months.
Then half the subjects were sent home and told to stop working out. The remaining half followed the same resistance training program as before, but only once a week. The men who stopped exercising started to get weaker again. But, incredibly the men who only worked out one day a week, kept their strength!
There are a few things we can learn from all this.
- If you start a resistance-training program early in life, you'll have more muscle mass to work with as you get older.
- It's more important for women to engage in some kind of weight training because they start out with less muscle mass than men and they'll have to deal with the effects longer.
- You have to eat nutritionally balanced meals, which includes enough protein, so your body has the nutrients to build muscle.
- Even if you're in your 50s, 60s or 70s, you can make dramatic changes to your body with a good resistance-training program.
