From: cpk@cray.com (Chris Kruell)
Newsgroups: rec.running
Subject: Re: Do we age in spurts?
Date: 29 Dec 92 15:41:17 GMT
Followup-To: rec.running
Organization: Cray Research, Inc.

Tangentially related to this, here's an article that appeared in the
28 Dec 92 Minneapolis Star-Tribune; it apparently originally appeared
in the LA Times.

--- 

Study wonders how old and fit we can become if we train as athletes

By Shari Roan
Los Angeles Times

As both a competitive runner in his 70s and as the president of a 
charity, Ed Stotsenberg seized the moment when University of Southern 
California gerontology researchers came to him for a funding grant.

"I said, 'Why donUt you study old runners like me?' recalls Stotsenberg, 
78, president of the Mary Pickford Foundation, a major donor to 
gerontological research.

"Find out what a heathy person is supposed to look like at this age," 
exhorted Stotsenberg, who told the researchers that he still felt "just 
as good as I did at 25."

His curiosity has translated into an intriguing long-term study on how 
aging affects athletes.

The study, which began in 1987, features almost 200 masters athletes -- 
people 40 and older who compete in at least one sanctioned event each 
year.  If the study unfolds as planned, the youngest of these athletes 
will be studied for at least 20 years.

Researchers hope that they can describe how those people who attempt to 
stay fit can forestall some of the consequences of aging.

"We want to know what the normal aging rate is for active people," says 
USC professor Robert Wiswell, director of the study.  "We know lots more 
about younger athletes and older inactive people than we do about older 
active people."

In other words, just how old and how fit can we become?

The study has already dropped some tantalizing hints:  Speed and muscle 
strength may endure longer than assumed.  Athletic performance may not 
decline significantly until age 60.

"We have no evidence that age sets a limit on fitness," Wiswell says.  
"Are these people (in the study) the exception or are people who are 
inactive capable of doing this but are just not motivated?"

"This is an area of research that is only now beginning to develop," 
said Dr. James Cooper, a geriatrician at the National Institute on 
Aging.  "We probably know less about the serious athlete, the marathon 
runner or the person who maintains a high level of fitness" than about 
older inactive people.

What research does show, said Cooper, is that 40 percent of people older 
than 65 are sedentary.  Those 60 percent who do some exercise have a 
lower death rate, have fewer falls and injuries, and are more mobile 
than their peers.

"There is nothing that can retard the aging process as much as 
exercise," Cooper says.

Wiswell hopes that the study will put some muscles behind the 
governmentUs highly publicized Healthy People 2000 program, which 
advocates lifelong exercise to prevent disease and to promote mobility 
and independence well into old age.

It's a standard belief in physiology that after ages 22 to 25, people 
begin losing function in most of the organ systems at a rate of about 1 
percent per year, or about 10 percent per decade, Wiswell says.  Other 
research indicates that men typically lose about one-half pound of lean 
tissue but gain one pound of weight per year after 35.  Women gain a 
half-pound of weight per year and lose about one-third of a pound of 
lean issue.

But, so far, Wiswell's subjects appear to be altering this picture of 
decline.  Some subjects who have been tested three times have shown no 
loss of aerobic capacity over five years, he says, indicating the lungs 
and heart may not be losing function as quickly as people thought they 
might.

For example, one man who ran the 100-yard dash in 10 seconds at age 20 
now clocks 12 seconds for the same distance at age 60.

"That's a 20 percent loss in time, but it's also less than the 1 percent 
per year you would expect," Wiswell says.

Wiswell and his team of student assistants are also interested in how 
exercise might affect a woman's risk of the bone-thinning disease 
osteoporosis.

Studies in younger women indicate that running does not prvent bone 
loss.  And, picking up an X-ray of one of the female runners in his 
study, Wiswell points to a spine almost devoid of the calcium deposits 
that keep bones strong.  But this woman has no symptoms of osteoporosis.

Wiswell says his study may show that maintaining muscle strength may be 
one way to counter the effects of aging bones.

---
Chris Kruell
cpk@cray.com
Newsgroups: rec.running