Feel Younger As You
Grow Older
By Jessica Elsner
hat is it about exercising and eating a balanced diet that is so awful, so unbearable, that we’d rather choose shortening our lives just to avoid one or both? Surely at the start of 2017 we can all agree that a lack of exercise and a poor diet is killing more people around the world than drugs, alcohol, and unprotected sex put together, as concluded by the Global Panel on Agriculture and Food Systems for Nutrition.
W When you think about your future, how far ahead do you
look? Kids, grandkids, world-travel? Do you plan for retirement? Have you ever factored regular exercise and healthy eating into your plan to get you to old-age? This article explains the toll that a lack of exercise takes on the body in an effort to make sure that you’re not unknowingly taking years off your life. Years that could be spent with family and loved ones, or simply doing the things that make your life worth living.
Age is but a Number, or Two We all have our chronological age that is based on our birth-
date. We also all have a fitness or physiological age that indicates roughly how old we are on the inside. Our fitness age is directly related to how healthy and active we are. The reality is that our fit- ness age is likely much older than our chronological age. Accord- ing to Doctor Joseph Mercola, “How your body and mind work at the age of 60, 70, 80, and beyond is the result of a small part of genetics and a large part of lifestyle habits, particularly those that have persisted over the years.” Take Sy Perlis, for example, who at age 91 broke a weightlifting record.
24 Essential Living Maine ~ January/February 2017
One’s fitness age is based on how much oxygen a person can take in while exercising, also known as V02 max.
• If your V02 max is below average as compared to other people your age, then your fitness age is actually older than your chronological age.
• If your V02 max is better than average for people your age then it means that your fitness age is actually less than your chronological age.
If you think being a young twenty-something means this
doesn’t apply to you, think again. Researchers at the University of Minnesota examined data collected over a 25-year period from 2,700 U.S. adults and highlighted a strong link between exercise, hearth health, and brain health at all points of life. Their conclu- sion was that people who had more cardiorespiratory fitness in their teens and twenties scored better on cognitive tests in their mid-forties and fifties. Simply put, how you treat your body in your teens and twenties sets the stage for your later years.
Further, the study showed that for each additional minute par- ticipants spent on the treadmill during the initial tests, they were able to accurately recall 0.12 more words at follow-up 25 years later. Those who were fitter in their early adulthood also scored better on tests designed to assess reaction speed and the mental agility needed to answer trick questions.
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