Why Life Extensionists Get it Wrong.
When it comes to extending one’s life, It is both nature and nurture. We can’t change who our parents are, but we can certainly make good lifestyle choices. Maintaining optimal body weight through the management of caloric intake has profound benefits. Through rat and short term human studies, restricting intake improves health markers. Comparing rat data to humans is troublesome. Restricting intake for a lifetime is a crap shoot and then one would be trading quality of life vs length of life. Most of the life extension data is rat based. Human experiments are difficult. However the need to find a panacea or magic bullet continues daily.
However the idea of adding movement and activity is rarely exploited by so- called “Life Extensionists”. In fact it is never mentioned. From what is practical and in terms of cost, it should be the first thing mentioned after avoiding accidents.
The mere ability to run, walk, or crawl to escape danger is, in fact, a method of life extension. At some point in your life the ability to climb out of a burning car, swim in a flood, or scale a fence may become more important than an exotic medication. Jumping out of the way of an oncoming vehicle or falling object is again, life extending. Aside from these dramatic examples, the decline of conditioning, health, and life force from a broken hip to bed bound, to death is quite alarming. When we can’t move or have limited movement, we are that much closer to death. No amount of expensive food supplements will address the ability to move.
There is mounting evidence that exercise and movement are not only an ingredient of the complete “Life Extension” equation, but perhaps the most powerful one. The effect is far-reaching, economical, and apparently quite potent. To ignore the age-reducing and health-giving effects of exercise is to turn a blind eye toward one of the most effective tools in the arsenal of those who want to age healthfully.
There are dramatic advantages to movement and exercise. A review called, “Does Physical Activity Increase Life Expectancy? A Review of the Literature.” [ https://www.hindawi.com/journals/jar/2012/243958/] contained this statement,
“All studies proved an increased life expectancy in endurance athletes ranging between 2.8 to 8.0 added years.”
This is rather significant. A lifestyle addition that not only improves the quality of life, but the length of it as well. That lifestyle addition is exercise.
The ability to exercise or move can also be a measure of aging. Certainly strength, endurance, and flexibility can be reduced by aging and inactivity. However, we also lose precious muscle mass. This is called “age-related sarcopenia”. It is, in fact, quite dramatic. While the scale may vary only 10 to 15 pounds from your youthful weight, what is going on with body composition is a different story.
According to the paper, “Sarcopenia: Causes, Consequences and Preventions”
[ http://biomedgerontology.oxfordjournals.org/content/58/10/M911.long ]
“The average adult can expect to gain approximately 1 pound of fat every year between ages 30 to 60, and lose about a half pound of muscle over that same time span; that change in body composition is equivalent to a 15-pound loss of muscle and a 30-pound gain in fat.”
One may ask if maintaining strength and muscle mass affect longevity as well as general health, appearance, and mobility. That answer is a resounding YES!
According to a study headed by Dr. Jennifer L. Kraschnewski, assistant professor of medicine and public health sciences, Penn State College of Medicine,
“Older adults who strength trained at least twice a week had 46 percent lower odds of death for any reason than those who did not. They also had 41 percent lower odds of cardiac death and 19 percent lower odds of dying from cancer.”
[ https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0091743516300160 ]
There is a simple test to determine aging through movement as designed by -
Brazilian physician Claudio Gil Araujo.
“A total of 2002 adults aged 51 to 80 years old participated in the study. The researchers timed how long it took them to sit up and then rise from the floor without any help. They told the participants to try and sit up with the least amount of support that they believe necessary, and not worry about their speed. They scored the participants’ ability to both sit and rise. For each time the participants used support from their hand, knee, or other part of their body the researchers would subtract a point. [A total composite score out of 10 was assigned to them.] Participants with scores below 8 had mortality rates 2 to 5 times higher than those with scores ranging from 8–10. The authors noted: a 1-point increment in the [sitting-rising] score was related to a 21% reduction in mortality.”
In fact grip strength is a much greater indicator than many other measurements to predict longevity. When was the last time an aging conference had presenters talking about grip strength? The study is here -
The association of grip strength from midlife onwards with all-cause and cause-specific mortality over 17 years of follow-up in the Tromsø Study
Weaker grip strength was associated with increased all-cause mortality rates, with similar effects on deaths due to CVD, respiratory disease and external causes, while a much weaker association was observed for cancer-related deaths. These associations were similar in both genders and across age groups, which supports the hypothesis that grip strength might be a biomarker of ageing over the lifespan.
The take away point from this data is that exercise is both low cost and effective. The ability to move, get up off the ground and climb, crawl are amazing predictors of aging and also tools to prevent it. Healthy aging is less about pills and injections, but more about using the body without abusing it.
