By Henrylito D. Tacio
“The day the child realizes that all adults are imperfect, he becomes an adolescent; the day he forgives them, he becomes an adult; the day he forgives himself, he becomes wise.” – Alden Nowlan
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People worldwide are living longer. Today most people can expect to live into their sixties and beyond. Every country in the world is experiencing growth in both the size and the proportion of older persons in the population.
“By 2030, one in six people in the world will be aged 60 years or over,” the World Health Organization (WHO) reports. “At this time the share of the population aged 60 years and over will increase from 1 billion in 2020 to 1.4 billion.”
By 2050, the world’s population of people aged 60 years and older will double to 2.1 billion, the United Nations health agency forecasted. The number of persons aged 80 years or older is expected to triple between 2020 and 2050 to reach 426 million.
Burgeoning elderly population
Here in the Philippines, the percentage of senior citizens – people aged 60 years and above – in the population has surged in the last two decades, the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) data showed.
Senior citizens doubled – from 4.5 million 20 years ago to 9.2 million in 2020, said the PSA data.
“The number of seniors is on the rise due to better health and socioeconomic conditions. Seniors are better educated and have healthier lifestyles,” said the Commission on Population and Development (Popcom) in a statement.
“Longer life expectancy is not necessarily matched with increased health,” observed the Journal of Sport and Health Science.
Exercise for good health and longer life expectancy
One of those that can help these older people maintain good health is through exercise. The journal Public Health Reports defines exercise as “planned, structured and repetitive physical activity.”
“Engagement in exercise has multiple health benefits and can slow some of the negative effects of aging,” said the journal which published a study, “Exercise interventions for older adults: A systematic review of meta-analyses.”
For example, exercise improves physiological outcomes in older people who have gone through long periods of sedentary lifestyle, nonagenarians, and older individuals with frailty or sarcopenia.
The study said that guidelines have been developed for exercise levels appropriate for older adults in recent years. The World Health Organization, for one, recommends that older adults engage in more than 50 min of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise or more than 75 min of vigorous-intensity aerobic exercise per week or an equivalent combination of the two.
“To produce numerous benefits, including cardiorespiratory and muscular fitness, this exercise should be performed in bouts of 10 minutes or more,” the study said. “Weight-bearing activities can help maintain bone and functional health.”
Based on several studies, it said that “staying physically active also reduces non-communicable disease, depression, and cognitive decline. Additional health benefits can be obtained by gradually increasing the weekly time dedicated to exercise.”
The UK Chief Medical Officers’ Physical Activity Guidelines state that “even a minimal level of physical activity (e.g., standing), as opposed to being sedentary, generates some health benefits.”
Exercising with others
A recent feature published by Medscape Medical News urged senior citizens to start an exercise regimen with others as it can be “a powerful fitness motivator.” The source of information was a new research that spotlights the strategy’s particular importance for older adults.
“In a randomized clinical trial in JAMA Network Open, older adults who talked with peers about their exercise program were able to increase and sustain physical activity levels much better than those who focused on self-motivation and setting fitness goals,” wrote Sean Hyson, author of the feature.
Self-focused – or “intrapersonal” – strategies has been seen to be more common in health and fitness than interactive (“interpersonal”) ones. Unfortunately, intrapersonal strategies “have been studied as part of a bundle of behavioral change strategies – a common limitation in research – making it difficult to discern their individual value.”
“We’re not saying that intrapersonal strategies should not be used,” study author Siobhan McMahon, PhD, associate professor and co-director of the Center on Aging Science and Care at the University of Minnesota, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, was quoted as saying.
But their study showed otherwise. They found out that “interpersonal strategies are really important.”
The study recruited more than 300 participants aged 70 years and older who did not meet physical activity guidelines. They were given a wearable fitness tracker and an exercise program.
The participants were randomly split into four groups: one using intrapersonal behavior change strategies; another using interpersonal strategies; a group combining both intrapersonal and interpersonal strategies; and a control group that received neither intervention.
“For 8 weeks, all participants exercised in meetups and discussed their progress in their groups,” Hyson reported. “Afterward, they were left to their own devices and monitored for the remainder of the year.”
Here’s the findings of the study:
· The intrapersonal strategies group involved personal reflection. They set personal goals (increasing daily step count or exercise repetitions) and developed action plans for implementing physical activity into their daily routines.
· The interpersonal group involved more peer-to-peer conversation, collaborative learning, and sharing. Participants talked among themselves about how they could sustain doing the prescribed exercises at home.
“Through those conversations, they learned and experimented,” McMahon said. They problem-solved, determining what barriers might stop them from exercising and brainstorming ways around them.
The researchers evaluated the participants after 1 week, 6 months, and 12 months.
*The interpersonal group exhibited significant increases in physical activity — including light, moderate, and vigorous activity — for the entire year. They increased their average physical activity per day by 21-28 minutes and their daily step count by 776-1058 steps.
*The intrapersonal group exhibited no significant changes in total physical activity.
* The third experimental group, the intrapersonal plus interpersonal condition, had results similar to the interpersonal one.
McMahon reportedly conducted a similar study in 2017. The findings of the new study were similar to the previous study.
“We followed people over a longer period of time in this (new) study,” she said, “12 months instead of 6 months. This is important in physical activity studies because a lot of evidence shows that after 6 months, people’s activity drops off.”
Whether you’re an adult or still younger, you ought to exercise. And, of course, take note of the foods you are eating. As Jack LaLanne puts it, “Exercise is king. Nutrition is queen. Put them together and you’ve got a kingdom.” – ###
