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March 14, 2006

Vital Signs

Aging: Make Exercise Easier: Just Exercise More

By ERIC NAGOURNEY

Many people take it for granted that as they become older, they will

slow down and find it harder to exert themselves.

But a new study suggests that the explanation for the slowdown may not

be simple aging and that much of the loss can be erased with training.

The report, in The Journal of the American College of Cardiology, says

that part of the problem appears to be that older people use oxygen

less efficiently when they exercise.

The researchers, led by Dr. J. Susie Woo of the University of

Washington, found that the older people they looked at, in their 60's

and 70's, used about a fifth more oxygen than younger study

participants did when walking three and a half miles an hour.

For older people, it is a " double whammy, " said the senior author of

the study, Dr. Wayne C. Levy, also of Washington.

To begin with, as hearts slow with age, they deliver less blood and

oxygen to the body. But the authors of the new study found evidence

that changes at a cellular level make the elderly use more oxygen to

perform the same amount of work as the young.

The encouraging news, however, is that much of this can be reversed

with exercise. When the researchers split volunteers into older and

younger groups and had them walk or jog, bicycle and stretch for 90

minutes three times a week, the improvement was greater among the old

than among the young.

" What was new and unexpected in our study, " the authors wrote, " was the

disproportionately greater response to training in the elderly

subjects. "

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/14/health/14agin.html?

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