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Age-Defying
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The Fountain of Youth, it turns out, flows with exercise and attitude
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By Stacey Colino
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REMEDY Fall 2005
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What’s the secret to staying youthful with the passing years? It’s not lying about your age or engineering tight cheeks and a frozen forehead. If you want to stay young at heart and elsewhere, it’s best to cultivate energy, agility and an upbeat outlook.
“The key to aging well is an attitude that understands that you can control your genes if you want to,” says Michael F. Roizen, M.D., author of You: The Owner’s Manual and Real Age and chair of the division of anesthesiology, critical care medicine, and pain management at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. “More than 75 percent of how long and how well you live is under your control.”
In fact, he says, if you do just five major things in your life—control your blood pressure, get lots of physical activity, avoid smoking, manage stress, and eat a nutrient-rich, calorie-poor diet—you can dramatically reduce your risk of dying prematurely or becoming disabled. It all starts with a can-do attitude that you have the will and the way to stay truly youthful from head to toe.
If you’re like many people, you may be confused by exercise recommendations that seem to contradict each other. That’s not surprising: The message that’s been lost is that the optimal workout for you depends on your personal goals and physical limitations.
Depending on what you want to achieve by exercising, the workout formula that suits you will likely vary—in terms of the exercise type, the length and intensity of your workout, and so on. Here are four different exercise prescriptions, each designed to help you meet a specific goal.
Exercise Rx: Go for a minimum of 30 minutes of moderate-intensity aerobic activity, such as cycling or brisk walking, or 20 minutes of vigorous activity, such as running, on most—preferably all—days of the week.
Rationale: Barry Franklin, Ph.D., director of cardiac rehabilitation and exercise laboratories at William Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak, MI, says, “People who exercise regularly have up to half the risk of developing heart problems as their sedentary counterparts.”
Exercise Rx: Fit in strength-training two or three times per week, using weights or another form of resistance that fatigues targeted muscles within about 10 repetitions. Do one to three sets of reps.
Rationale: Studies have found that strength-training at this intensity can help you gain three pounds of new muscle in 10 weeks as well as prevent bone loss—and even reverse it to some degree—after six months, says Wayne Westcott, Ph.D., fitness research director at the South Shore YMCA in Quincy, MA.
Exercise Rx: Do at least three hours of moderate-intensity aerobic activity per week, such as brisk walking or cycling, split into three to five sessions a week.
Rationale: Recent research at The Cooper Institute in Dallas found that when mildly to moderately depressed people exercised three to five times a week intensely enough to burn off 17.5 calories per kilogram of body weight each week—for a 140-pound person, this would be about 1,100 calories, which could be burned by cycling or hiking for three hours—they saw their symptoms reduced by nearly 50 percent. “We think the effects are due to exercise-related neural adaptations and the release of the stress hormone norepinephrine and the feel-good brain chemical serotonin,” says lead author Andrea L. Dunn, Ph.D., now a research scientist at Klein Buendel, Inc., in Golden, CO. “Many will start to experience significant symptom relief in six to eight weeks.”
Exercise Rx: A combination of one to three sets of strength-training exercises three times a week to build muscle and 30 minutes of endurance exercise—such as walking, cycling, or stair-climbing—six times a week will burn calories and boost aerobic fitness.
Rationale: “If you add three pounds of muscle after ten consecutive weeks of strength-training, you will increase your resting metabolic rate by about 7 percent,” Westcott says. This can help you burn more calories even when you’re not exercising. Incorporating aerobic exercise will help you slim down by using up extra calories during the workouts. “Alter your activities so that you don’t get physically or psychologically burned out,” he suggests.
To keep your mind strong and agile, you need to challenge it in various ways. When you stretch your mind, you regrow nerve cells and dendrites—which helps preserve brain function as you get older. There are several ways to do this:
• Flex your mental muscles: How? By doing difficult crossword puzzles, playing chess, reading a challenging book or learning a new language.
• Take the road less traveled: "Get lost intentionally when you're not in a hurry and try to find your way back without a GPS," Dr. Roizen says. This can activate new brain circuits.
• Surprise your senses: "Get dressed or take a shower with your eyes closed, or listen to a specific piece of music while smelling a particular aroma," suggests Lawrence C. Katz, Ph.D., coauthor of Keep Your Brain Alive. These kinds of activities, he explains, provide nerve cell stimulation and produce more brain-growth molecules.
Research suggests that emotional stability and being actively engaged with life are key factors in growing older gracefully and happily.
Stay socially connected
A study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that having plenty of social support is linked with better mental health and better health-related quality of life among older adults.
Engage in meaningful activities
People who keep busy with work and friends tend to have fewer depressive symptoms, and they may take better care of themselves.
Give your marriage TLC
It will pay off. Having a stable marriage—one that is free of serious problems or friction—is associated with good health and happiness throughout life.
Cultivate coping strategies
When life gets rough, try to maintain a sense of humor, anticipate other people's responses and swing into problem-solving mode.
Make time for pleasure
Not only can this infuse your life with a sense of joy, it can also set you up for gratifying experiences.
Look on the bright side
Research from the Netherlands found that having a high level of optimism has a protective effect against all-cause mortality in old age.
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