Originally published in Village Eye Magazine:
You have more power over how your body ages than you may realise. This is important whether you’re 18, 28, or 68. It’s never too late to get started on turning back the clock, but the more work you put in at a young age, the less you’ll be affected as time passes by.
Starting in your 30’s your body starts losing muscle at a rate of 1-2% per year-this is called sarcopenia. As you lose muscle, your metabolism slows down, making it easier to gain body fat. Loss of muscle around the joints leads to aches and pains, and activities of daily living become harder or tiring. Most people assume that these things are an inevitable part of aging, even if they’re keeping active, but it doesn’t have to be this way.
Most types of exercise and physical activity can’t stop sarcopenia because they don’t tap into a specific type of muscle fiber that we lose the most of as we age. Strength training changes everything though because it uses and builds all of our muscle fibers-including the ones we’d naturally be losing. As you re-build lost muscle, your metabolism will speed up, your joints will regain their muscular support and you’ll also strengthen your tendons, ligaments and bones.
We even know that strength training turns back the clock on over 100 of our genes, making them behave like those of people up to 20 years younger!
Other types of exercise are important too for maintaining lung capacity and flexibility, enhancing blood flow and slowing down the aging of our DNA but it’s hard to get the most out of a run or swim if your joints are aching. Strength training makes all other activities feel easier and gives us the muscular resilience to keep our joints supported no matter what we’re doing.
One particular study demonstrated how powerful the anti-aging benefits of strength training are. A group of adults (average age 89) living in assisted care were all able to spend less time in their wheelchairs after only 14 weeks of strength training. They all gained muscle and strength and lost fat. As well as one participant who was able to stop using their wheelchair completely, another was actually able to leave the care home and return to independent living! While strength training is a powerful tool to reverse the effects of physical aging and painful conditions, my message is always that I’d rather you avoid getting problems than wait until you have them to get started.
If you’d like to learn more about this amazing form of exercise, please feel free to get in touch, I’d be happy to answer any questions you might have.
-Steve Shreeve