A recent study by the University of Missouri-Columbia has confirmed something many have known for quite some time: regular exercise staves off the effects of age on physical health. Using 38 residents at TigerPlace, a community home for the elderly in Columbia, Missouri, over the course of a year, university researchers determined that those older adults who exercise regularly show less signs of aging than their counterparts who report not exercising much of their own volition.
The More Studies Done, the More Exercise is Proven a Panacea
The results of the experiment aren’t exactly news, but they are important in strengthening the link between exercise in older adults and their continued health. Only an estimated 5% of women and 3% of men currently above the age of 65-years-old will make it to 100-years-old. On the other hand, according to estimates from the U.S. Social Security Administration, 39% of women and 29% of men in the same age group will live to their 90th birthdays. As more research is done and the link between regular exercise is linked to longer, healthier lives — effectively acting as the Fountain of Youth — we may well see those numbers begin to shift to show adults are more likely to live to 100 than before.
Exercise works to ward off the effects of age in a number of ways. Physically, the segment of health the University of Missouri-Columbia study focused on, exercise promotes bone density, helping to fight off osteoporosis, increases oxygenation of the blood that can lead to healthier hearts and brains, and helps develop and maintain muscle tissue that ensures older adults can continue to get around on their own steam. Mentally speaking, exercise isn’t without its benefits, either. Regular exercise coupled with cognitive training is shown to increase overall cognitive performance. In other words, as exercise is studied and well-funded universities continue to come out with their findings that seem common sense to the rest of the world, physical activity, for the elderly and everyone else, is increasingly found to be a panacea.
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