Could Running Mitigate Age-Related Deterioration?
Researchers from the University of Colorado, Boulder and Humboldt State University have found that senior citizens who run several times a week expend the same amount of energy as a 20-year-old when walking.
In a study of 15 men and 15 women—with an average age of 69—who ran regularly or walked for exercise, the authors defined “regularly” walking or running as an average of at least 3 times a week for a minimum of 30 minutes per workout, for at least 6 months. The researchers required study participants to walk on a force-measuring treadmill, after undergoing preliminary health screenings at the University of Colorado Boulder Clinical and Translational Research Center.
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The team measured participants’ oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide production while the subjects used the treadmill across 3 speeds: 1.6 miles per hour, 2.8 miles per hour, and 3.9 miles per hour. Additional data for the study came froma dissertation on energy expended during treadmill tests by sedentary adults of a variety of ages, conducted by lead author Justus Ortega, PhD, an associate professor and director of the biomechanics lab at Humboldt University.
Ortega and colleagues found that older adults regularly taking part in “highly aerobic activities” such as running have a lower metabolic cost of walking in comparison to older, sedentary adults and seniors who regularly walk for exercise.
Describing the finding that older adults who regularly run for exercise are better walkers than elderly individuals who regularly walk for exercise as “surprising,” the authors concluded that frequently running for exercise can slow down the aging process, and enable older adults to move more easily and improve their quality of life.
While walking for exercise has a variety of positive health effects, such as helping to stave off heart disease, diabetes, depression, and weight gain, for example, “walking efficiency does not seem to be one of them,” according to the authors, who note that the higher efficiency of senior runners may be coming from their muscle cells, as their study found no external biomechanical differences between the older walkers and runners.
—Mark McGraw
Reference
Ortega J, Beck O, et al. Running for exercise mitigates age-related deterioration of walking economy. PLOS ONE. 2014.