Old Beat Young in Workout Gains

March 8, 2006 - Exercise is good -- make that essential -- for everyone. But it's even better for old people than for young people, a new study suggests.

The findings come from a provocative new study by J. Susie Woo, MD, and colleagues at the University of Washington and the Veterans Affairs Puget Sound Health System in Seattle.

"With only moderate changes in [aerobic] fitness, the elderly appear to achieve greater relative gains in exercise efficiency and other exercise-responsive aerobic parameters compared to the young," Woo and colleagues write.

The findings appear in the March 7 issue of the Journal of the American College of Cardiology.

Exercise Reduces Aging

Woo's team studied youthful (aged 20-33) and elderly (aged 65-79) women and men. They were all couch potatoes -- none had exercised in the past year. However, none was a smoker and all were in relatively good health.

The researchers put the volunteers through a six-month exercise program. Three times a week, they walked or jogged for a half hour, bicycled for a half hour, and stretched for a half hour -- a total of 90 minutes of exercise for each session.

Before, during, and after the exercise program, the researchers tested the volunteers for exercise efficiency. They defined exercise efficiency as how much energy a person could put out compared to how much energy was used.

After exercise training, the elderly volunteers increased their energy efficiency by a whopping 30%. That was far better than the 2% improvement seen in their young peers.

What happened?

Old people, Woo and colleagues note, go downhill fast when they don't exercise. Young people don't deteriorate as quickly.

"A significant portion of the changes that are seen with aging may in fact be due to lower fitness levels in the sedentary elderly as compared to the sedentary young," the researchers suggest. "These changes may in large part be due to inactivity."

Exercise training, the study suggests, reduces this effect. That's the bottom line, notes a commentary by National Institute on Aging researchers Edward G. Lakatta, MD, and Paul D. Chantler, PhD. Lakatta and Chantler note the many ways in which age takes away a person's get-up-and-go.

"The good news is that all of these age-associated deficits can be substantially reduced by regular exercise!" they write.