Exercise Studies: Is Jogging Healthy after Age 35?

If you’ve passed the age of 35, and you’ve been paying attention to the plentiful advice available on the subject of health, you’re well aware that you ought to be exercising regularly. Health and exercise seem to be very intimately connected. Just to review some of the myriad benefits:

• According to one of many exercise studies,* regular, moderate exercise can prolong life – prolonging it by 24%, in fact, in men who engaged in light sport for 1-2 hours each week, as compared to those who were inactive. 
• Helps avoid degenerative arthritis by lubricating and feeding cartilage
• Decreases the risk of tendonitis (painful inflammation of the tendons, which connect muscles to bones)
• Helps keep weight down
• Increases HDL (good cholesterol) which helps carry off fatty deposits that rest in blood vessels
• Helps prevent osteoporosis (weakened bone)
• Combats depression by stimulating the release of endorphins – antidepressant chemicals formed in the brain (studies have suggested that walking  outperforms antidepressants and this outdoor therapy is often referred to as ecotherapy)

Here are a few more, especially pertinent to those of us above the 35-year line:

• Exercise has been found to help you convert ageing tissue to a healthier, more youthful state.
• Past the age of 35, every week you go without exercise, you lose 10% of your fitness; in other words, inactivity rapidly de-conditions the body.
• The de-conditioning mentioned just above (the kind you avoid by regular exercise!) takes such forms as dangerous decrease in blood supply to muscle and bone, loss of muscle bulk, weakening and inflammation of ligaments and tendons, and damage to cartilage.

 

A Great Read

For an enormously informative and helpful read on exercise and aging, I strongly recommend a book by the founding father of rehabilitative medicine, Dr. René Cailliet: Growing Young: The Fitness Strategy to Reverse the Effects of Aging. 

 

Exercise and Sarcopenia

Here’s yet another salient bit for those who have advanced (or intend to) beyond 35. Exercise has been found to reduce the effects of sarcopenia. This rather scary-sounding term comes from the Greek for poverty or shortage of flesh. The condition itself is described as the loss of muscle mass and strength that occurs with aging. And as one authority put it, “Decreased physical activity with aging appears to be the key factor involved in producing sarcopenia.” ** 

All right. So there’s no question about it: exercise really is a must, if we’re to maintain good health. Health and exercise go hand in glove. Or should I say, “foot in shoe”?

 

Jogging

One exercise that has been in vogue for decades is jogging. Exercise “fashions” come and go, but jogging seems to maintain an unwavering popularity. Not too surprising – it’s simple, and doesn’t require all sorts of special clothing, equipment, memberships, classes and so on.

On the whole, jogging is reputed to be terrific. People pride themselves on how religiously they do it. There are whole magazines devoted to it. You can (if you like) purchase all manner of spiffy stuff to enhance the experience: pricey, super-high-tech shoes, chic outfits, heart-rate monitors, audio devices, hydration systems, special foods and supplements – you name it. It’s true, of course, that jogging IS exercise, and almost any sort of exercise is far better than couch-potato-ism!

As it turns out, though, once you’ve passed age 35 (more or less), there are downsides to jogging that begin to mount up. You see, aging is a natural process. The body does change as the years go on, regardless of what anyone does or wishes. That’s just the genetic design and pattern we’re born with. Bone density, muscle mass, circulation, lung capacity and other factors naturally decline from the peaks they reached in our late twenties. And the structures most directly involved in walking, running or jogging have also lived through all those years of use – the affects of physical activity do mount up and take their toll.

None of this means we’re doomed to inactivity or discomfort. It just means we need to understand and make adjustments to the natural changes in our only indispensible piece of exercise equipment – the body.

One conclusion authorities such as Dr. Caillait have reached regarding exercise for older adults is that once past the age of 35, it is not in your best interest to work out as hard as you can, no matter how good you might feel at the time.

 

So what’s an aspiring exerciser to do??

Fortunately, there is some happy news on the subject of jogging: rapid walking offers the same great benefits, and then some. In fact, rapid walking burns more calories than jogging the same distance, and works the upper body as well. All without the damaging effects of repeated impact which jogging subjects us to.

 

Stay tuned!

In researching this post for you, I’ve discovered or been reminded of quite a few items of interest in the field of exercise, all intimately connected with your posture, posture improvement and general health. I’m quite excited at all there is to share, so be sure to check back with me here soon – there’s definitely more to come. (Would you be interested in learning the secrets of a group of runners who’ve been known to run as much as 16 marathons’ distance in two days? Yes, I thought so…)

I must be running along now, but first let me ask you: What experiences have you had with this subject of jogging? Particularly if you’ve passed 35, I’d be very interested to know what you’ve observed, and how you’ve dealt with exercise challenges as time has marched on.

 

 

* New England Journal of Medicine, March, 1986

**Journal of Laboratory and Clinical Medicine