Maintaining a healthy physique in the later decades

Tweet I remember that the last time Sylvester Stallone tried to enter Australia he got into "difficulties" with Customs and Immigration because he was bringing in some "illegal" substances. These turned out to be, again if my memory is correct, injectable Testosterone - a performance enhancing drug - that was for his personal use: and that use was to help maintain his muscle bulk. Well, according to press photographs, the testosterone has worked, and is one of the few treatments available for the inevitable muscle loss that accompanies aging. This muscle loss, known as Sacopaenia, begins around the age of 40 and becomes more pronounced after the age of 75: all the "motor" muscles lose bulk, speed and strength. In fact, scientist now believe that this process is similar to that which occurs in the pathological disease of Muscular dystrophy, because they have deciphered the role that Calcium plays in both process and the method by which it gets into, and out of, muscle cells.

Most of us associate Calcium with bones, but it's a much more ubiquitous chemical in the body and is found in many cell types - especially skeletal and heart muscle. If you can't control the status of calcium within you muscle cells, then it fails and weakens - a finding that the experts at Columbia University Medical Center have confirmed with their research. Apparently it's all to do with leaky ryanodine receptors according to Andrew R. Marks, M.D., chairman and professor of physiology and cellular biophysics and lead reasearcher for the team, who has been studying these receptors since 1989.

 He and his colleagues have developed a drug that stabilizes these receptors - well in mice anyway - and they are currently trialling a similar drug for heart failure, because  these same receptors leak in this condition too.

But back to Sylvester: "Most investigators in the field of aging have been saying that the way to improve muscle strength is to build muscle mass, using such therapies as testosterone, growth hormone, and insulin-like growth factor-1," says Dr. Marks. "But an increase in muscle mass is not necessarily accompanied by an increase in muscle function. Our results suggest that you can improve muscle function by fixing leaky calcium channels. And in fact, treating aged mice .... enhanced muscle strength without increasing muscle size, at least during the four-week treatment period."

So for all of you who got sand kicked in your face earlier on in life, if the experts come up trumps, you might just get your own back when it comes to retirement time.

 Story source: Science Daily Aug 3rd 2011

Growing old gracefully.

Tweet We've all heard that the western world is facing an "aging crisis":  the projections for Australia suggest that the population aged 65 years and over, is projected to increase from  13% in 2002, to between 29% and 32% in 2101. Currently most of the media and political "noise" has focused on how this is going to impact on the economy, with a reduced work-force having to work harder and longer to cover the increasing medical costs  "caused" by the grey and wrinkled generation. 

Being a parent becomes ingrained into one's psyche, and for most of us in the senior segment of our lives, we still passionately care about how life is going to pan out not only for our children, but also for our grandchildren. So the challenge for us is to not just shut up shop and go quietly into the retirement village, but to stay active, independent, involved and as healthy as we can so that, even though many of our bodily systems that we once took for granted, now take more time to grind into action, we can actually have a good quality of life. What we definitely don't want to do is to become any sort of a burden on our children, or our children's children. If we are successful at this, then our resultant health care costs will be less and then everyone's a winner!

Well, the good news is that the scientists and researchers have actually proved that this works!! It seems that plain common sense is scientific sense too! A study called The Well Elderly 2 trial was performed between 2004 and 2009, with the write-up appearing in the June 2 issue of the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, and this showed that with just small, healthy lifestyle changes and involvement in meaningful activities—going beyond just diet and exercise—are critical to healthy aging. Seniors participating in the study made small, sustainable changes in their routines (such as visiting a museum with a friend once a week) that led to measurable gains in quality of life, including lower rates of depression and better reported satisfaction with life. Of course one strategy does not fit all aging persons;  going to the gym 3 times a week would drive many up the wall, and so professional input was required from a very professional group known as Occupational Therapists to help guide the participants. OTs are a largely unsung band of amazing people who do so much to help many people live meaningful lives. They were a key part of The Well Elderly 2 Trial, just as they were before in the 1997 British Well Elderly 1 Trial that has been used to help develop British pubic health policies.

My belief is that there is so much more each individual, or family, or group could do to improve their health and quality of life, and it really only involves incremental changes that are carried out over long periods of time: good quality food, no tobacco, minimal alcohol, much physical activity and so on. Our senior years should not been seen as ones of inexorable decline, but years when we can still "value add" to ourselves, our families and our communities.

 See you at the beach ....... after you've been to the museum!