Senior citizens who reported exercising at least four times a week throughout their lives showed decreased age-related arterial stiffness when compared to more sedentary individuals, according to a study published May 20 in the Journal of Physiology.
Senior study author Benjamin D. Levine, MD, and colleagues studied 102 individuals in their 60s or older who reported the weekly frequency of workouts lasting at least 30 minutes. The researchers categorized the participants as sedentary (less than two exercise sessions per week), casual exercisers (2-3 sessions per week), committed exercisers (4-5 sessions per week) and masters athletes (6-7 sessions per week).
While casual exercise was enough to minimize stiffening in midsized arteries, the researchers found only committed exercisers and masters athletes were able to keep their larger, central arteries more youthful.
“This work is really exciting because it enables us to develop exercise programs to keep the heart youthful and even turn back time on older hearts and blood vessels,” Levine said in a press release. “Previous work by our group has shown that waiting until 70 is too late to reverse a heart's aging, as it is difficult to change cardiovascular structure even with a year of training. Our current work is focusing on two years of training in middle-aged men and women, with and without risk factors for heart diseases, to see if we can reverse the aging of a heart and blood vessels by using the right amount of exercise at the right time.”
Levine’s research group has already published a study in Circulation showing 53 previously sedentary adults without heart disease were able to increase their maximal oxygen uptake and decrease their cardiac stiffness with a two-year aerobic fitness program. Levine said late middle-age might be a ‘sweet spot’ for reversing the effects of a sedentary lifestyle, before it’s too late.
The researchers acknowledged their measurement of weekly exercise frequency was imprecise. Other elements of the workouts, such as the intensity, duration and type of exercise, could also play a role in vascular changes.
Daniel joined TriMed’s Chicago editorial team in 2017 as a Cardiovascular Business writer. He previously worked as a writer for daily newspapers in North Dakota and Indiana.