Are you keen on aging well? Do you have an idea of what you want to do at the age of 80? These are important questions that most people might take for granted. Innersight's program offers practical ways to age well, focusing on fitness and exercise as the backbone of healthy aging.
Living Well: The Mindset Behind Fitness and Exercise
Living well into your golden years requires more than just not dying. It involves being able to do things and live actively; sitting in a chair and doing nothing isn't living. Our program tests various aspects of fitness to ensure you can live well. There are four pillars we base our program on: strength, fitness, flexibility, and stability, and each is crucial for healthy aging.
As part of our program, we ask you, the client, what you want to do when you're 80. We often take certain things for granted in our 30s, 40s, and early 50s that might be a problem when we're older. Things like picking up your grandchild, walking upstairs or even walking your dog around the block. To be able to do all these when you're 80, you need to be strong enough, fit enough, flexible enough, and stable enough.
Exercise: The Golden Ticket to Healthy Aging
The best way to live well into your golden years is through exercise. Exercise is the biggest lever we can pull to ensure healthy aging; the fittest people live the longest. Exercise contributes to things like cardiovascular health and reducing the risk of diseases. Essentially, the fittest individuals have a significantly lower risk of dying compared to those unfit.
At Innersight, we test various aspects of fitness to guide our clients on what to do. We help establish whether your aerobic exercise fitness is low, your flexibility is low, or your stability is low. By identifying these aspects, we can develop a program that suits your specific needs. For instance, someone who has been exercising their whole life might discover they have an imbalance problem on one side, affecting their muscle power. Through our testing, we can identify such issues and work on fixing them.
Balance: A Critical Aspect of Fitness
One of the most important aspects of fitness that most people neglect is balance. If you fall and break a hip when you're old, you have up to a 50% chance of dying within the next year. Therefore, maintaining stability is crucial. Stability, like all other aspects of fitness, plays into each other. You need the stability, muscle power, and fitness to age healthily.
Understanding the Importance of Strength and How to Maintain It
Strength is an essential aspect of overall fitness and health, and it becomes even more critical as we grow older. The ability to perform simple tasks such as lifting a suitcase, carrying shopping bags or even bracing yourself during a fall can be significantly influenced by your muscle strength. In fact, strength is such a fundamental part of our physical well-being that it's said we lose about 3 to 8% of our muscle mass per decade, starting at age 30. This figure increases further after 60. Therefore, if we do nothing, we will inevitably see a decrease in our muscle mass.
Our muscles are made up of different types of fibers - slow twitch or Type 1 fibers and fast twitch or Type 2 fibers. As we age, we tend to lose a lot of the fast-twitch fibers. These are the fibers that contribute to our ability to perform quick, explosive movements, which is perhaps why we often see middle-aged dads pulling a muscle during a 100-meter sprint at a school event. We tend to retain our slow-twitch fibers, which are responsible for endurance, for a longer period. Endurance athletes can still participate in races at an older age, but sprinters often struggle due to the loss of these fast-twitch fibers.
Just like how we need more muscle power and have to work harder to maintain our VO2 max, it's essential to start with more muscle and work harder to retain it. The primary focus should be on two things: maintaining our mental capacity (as discussed in podcast #6 about dementia) and preserving muscle mass. This is key to combating sarcopenia and maintaining strength as we age. Interestingly, strength is more important than muscle size, however, muscle size can sometimes correlate with strength, so it's also a factor to consider in our fitness regimen.
One simple way of testing muscle strength is a grip strength test. For every five kilograms that you drop in your grip strength, there's a 15 to 20% increase in all-cause mortality. By comparing grip strength year after year, we can monitor muscle mass and make adjustments as necessary to maintain muscle strength. Exercises like carrying bags or hanging from a pull-up bar can help improve forearm strength.
Other tests include push-up tests and sit-and-stand tests. These tests are screening tools that can give us a baseline of muscle power. For more in-depth testing, biokineticists can assess each muscle individually. This is particularly useful for tracking improvements or changes over time.
A study conducted in Brazil in 2002 demonstrated the importance of muscle power. In the study, participants aged 50 to 80 were asked to sit on the ground and stand up without using their hands or knees. Those unable to perform the task had a sevenfold increase in death over the next ten years.
Supplements can also play a role in maintaining strength. Creatine and protein are often recommended to support muscle strength and mass. Maintaining muscle strength is crucial for healthy aging. By staying active and incorporating strength training into your fitness routine, you can help preserve your muscle mass and maintain your strength as you age.
The Four Pillars of Healthy Aging: A More Comprehensive Discussion
As we age, we tend to lose muscle and gain fat, causing a shift in our body composition. This is particularly noticeable in women around menopause. Although the scale may not reflect weight gain, the body's composition changes, often leading to a higher incidence of insulin resistance. Having more muscle mass is beneficial as it is more metabolically active and promotes overall health.
Cardiovascular Fitness
Another aspect of healthy aging is cardiovascular fitness. It is crucial to maintain both strength and cardiovascular fitness to prevent issues such as falls in old age. However, it's equally important to realize that cardiovascular fitness alone is not enough. We need to combine it with muscle strength to be a healthy 80-year-old.
Strength Training
Strength training is beneficial not only for building muscle but also for improving insulin resistance. Regular exercise helps improve glucose transport and is beneficial for the brain. It helps the body better manage stress and can even use lactic acid as a fuel source. The core message here is the importance of regular exercise for healthy aging.
Flexibility
Flexibility plays a significant role in our ability to move freely. Lack of flexibility can lead to an awkward gait, difficulty in moving the hips and knees, and an inability to perform simple tasks such as picking up objects from the ground. One way to maintain flexibility is by sitting on the floor as much as possible. This simple exercise can help maintain hip flexibility.
However, our modern lifestyle often discourages such movements. The use of chairs, toilets, and other conveniences has led to a decrease in our overall flexibility. As a result, we experience an increase in issues such as lower back pain. To counter this, consider incorporating flexibility exercises into your routine, such as pilates or yoga. Alternatively, simply sitting on the floor with your legs open can help maintain flexibility.
Balance and Stability
Another critical factor in healthy aging is maintaining balance and stability. Many people overlook this aspect, but it's essential to prevent falls, especially in older adults. Balance tests can help determine whether there's a problem with your balance, allowing you to take corrective measures if needed.
There are two forms of balance: base stability (keeping your position over your base) and dynamic stability (moving out of your base across the midline). Both are necessary for maintaining balance. Along with these, it's also important to engage your core muscles to keep your body in a balanced position.
By practicing balance exercises, athletes can gain a better sense of their center of gravity, leading to more power generation. For older adults, it can help reduce the risk of falls by up to 40%. Therefore, incorporating balance exercises into your fitness regime is a good idea.
Finally, it's important to note that balance is not just about physical strength. It's also linked to other aspects like cardiovascular fitness and flexibility. Regular testing can help identify potential issues and allow for timely intervention.
To sum up, the four pillars of healthy aging - strength, cardiovascular fitness, flexibility, and balance. are all interconnected and equally important. Regular exercise, along with a balanced diet and regular health check-ups, can help ensure healthy aging.
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