Paul “Pinkhouse” Camerer at age 93 rides 41 Miles

clipped from an email sent by Sally Edwards of HEARTZONES

OK – it’s time to brag about one of the healthiest 93 year old cyclists on the planet – Pinkhouse.  At the Heart Zones Conference last year, he raced the 30-something Mandy LeBlanc  in an indoor bike challenge – and won by 10 watts/pound! Watch this video and listen to the short interview of how 93 year old Pinkhouse does it, finishing a 40 mile ride on a tandem, near his hometown of Sacramento.

ABOUT HEART ZONES USA/strong>
This is the company that created the original and is now the world leader in heart-rate training branded and patented systems beginning in 1993. The company leads events, publishes content, and develops new mobile technologies as a consultant or hands-on like the Blink, the flashing zones heart rate monitor.

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Exercise Helps Arthritis

Reprinted with permission from the American Council on Exercise. Based on: Hoffman, DF Arthritis and Exercise Primary Care 20:895-9100, 1993.

From NPR’s Morning Edition

If you suffer the pain and stiffness of arthritis, you may not be enthusiastic about exercising. But arthritis specialists say that’s exactly what you need to do.

It’s advice that 65-year-old Sibyl Zaden has taken to heart. A former marathon runner and triathlete, Zaden now suffers from osteoarthritis in her shoulders and knees. “My problem is lifting my arm,” she says. “It’s very painful. I can lift it halfway and that’s it.”

Her knees hurt, too. But that doesn’t stopped Zaden from going to the gym and getting on a treadmill for 15 to 30 minutes. Her doctor, UCLA Medical Center rheumatologist Roy Altman, says more people with arthritis should follow her lead.

“The one thing that people don’t understand is that you have to do something,” Altman says. “When you don’t do anything with osteoarthritis of the knee, arthritis actually gets worse.”

Three years ago, federal health officials recommended that people with arthritis exercise moderately every day for about 20 minutes. But that’s not what’s happening.

A recent study at Northwestern University looked at activity among 1,000 adults, between 49 and 84 years old, who had osteoarthritis of the knee. Ninety percent of the people were not exercising, according to lead scientist Dorothy Dunlop.

“That means they did not participate in any moderate activity lasting at least 10 minutes at any point over the course of a week,” she says.

Even more alarming, 40 percent of men and nearly 60 percent of women were total couch potatoes, Dunlop says.

“Two-thirds of their day was being sedentary,” she says. “It was sitting — might have been sitting at the office, might have been sitting in front of television. We don’t know details of exactly what they were doing, but it was very clear that a large portion of that day was spent very close to zero” exercise.

So why is moving, and exercise, so important?

Arthritis slowly breaks down the body’s natural shock absorbers, the cartilage, that jelly-like substance between our bones and in our joints. When that happens, blood doesn’t circulate as freely and doesn’t deliver adequate nutrition to the cartilage. All the cartilage nutrition, says Altman, comes through the joint. Massaging the joint through exercise helps get the blood supply going which, in turn, helps cartilage take in nutrition.

Another big plus for exercising through arthritis pain: Muscles surround the joint, and when muscles are bigger and stronger, the joint is more protected.

By exercising, “you actually reduce the stressors on the joint itself,” Altman says. “The muscles take up the weight and take up the pressures, instead of the joint taking up the weight and the pressures.”

Exercise doesn’t reverse damage that’s already done. But it helps prevent arthritis from getting worse, and it has the added benefit of keeping excess pounds off. That can make a huge difference on the joints that support most of the body’s weight: the hips and knees.

“Six times your body weight goes through the inside of the knee,” Altman says. “If your muscles are weak, that adds direct pressure that’s not very good for the knee. If the muscles are stronger, you reduce that pressure that goes through the knee and improve the function.”

The heavier you are, the greater the pressures on both your knees and hips.

Altman says if you have arthritis and don’t exercise, it’s time to start. But begin slowly. You need exercises like walking to build endurance, and Pilates or yoga to build strength.

 

Hear The Full Story HERE

The Role Of Exercise In Arthritis Management on Johns Hopkins ArthritisCenter.org

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Exercise & Diet Combo: Better Than Either Alone

Our friend Christopher J. Boynton of the American Diabetes Association/New England clipped this for us from The New England Journal Of Medicine

For obese seniors, dieting and exercise together are more effective at improving physical performance and reducing frailty than either alone. The research, by a team at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, is reported March 31 in The New England Journal of Medicine.

Older adults who are obese face severe health risks, including high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes, which can be compounded by a lack of mobility.

“We wanted to tease apart the effects of dieting and exercise in older people who are obese,” says principal investigator Dennis T. Villareal, MD, adjunct associate professor of medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. “In older adults, obesity exacerbates declines in physical performance and leads to frailty, impaired quality of life and increases in nursing home admissions. Given the increasing prevalence of obesity even among older people, it is important to find ways to combat the problem and help seniors remain healthier and more independent.”

In this study, Villareal and his colleagues evaluated the effects of dieting and exercise in more than 100 obese seniors over a one-year period. Although weight loss alone and exercise alone improved physical function by about 12 percent and 15 percent, respectively, neither was as effective as diet and exercise together, which improved physical performance by 21 percent.

The investigators used the Physical Performance Test, a test that evaluates an individual’s ability to perform tasks, such as walking 50 feet, putting on and removing a coat, standing up from a chair, picking up a penny, climbing a flight of stairs and lifting a book.

In addition, the researchers evaluated peak oxygen consumption during exertion with treadmill walking. On that test, obese elderly people who both dieted and exercised improved 17 percent from their baseline. The diet-only group showed a 10 percent gain, and the exercise-only group improved about 8 percent.

All subjects in the study were over 65, with some as old as 85 when the study began. Their average age was about 70. Volunteers were randomly assigned to one of four groups. One set of seniors was placed on a low-calorie diet to help them lose weight. Members of a second group attended exercise sessions three times a week, doing balance work, resistance training and aerobic exercise. A third group combined both the low-calorie diet and the exercise. The last group made no changes in diet or exercise habits.

All subjects had medically significant obesity, defined as having a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or more. BMI measures the relationship between a person’s height and weight.

At the study’s outset, participants had evidence of frailty and impaired physical function based on their Physical Performance Test and on measures of their peak aerobic capacity using an exercise stress test and a questionnaire about their physical function.

Villareal and his team also surveyed study subjects about their quality of life, and again, those in the combined diet-exercise group had the biggest improvements. Their scores improved by 15 percent, compared to 14 percent in the diet-only group and 10 percent in the exercise-only group. By every measure, strength, balance and gait all showed the most consistent improvement in the diet-exercise group.

“In older, obese people, it may be more important to improve physical function and quality of life, rather than to reverse or treat risk factors for cardiovascular disease,” says Villareal, now chief of geriatrics at the New Mexico Veterans Affairs Health Care System and professor of medicine at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, both in Albuquerque. “Combining exercise and weight loss isn’t designed so much to extend their life expectancy as it is to improve their quality of life during their remaining years and to help seniors avoid being admitted to a nursing home.”

There is some debate, however, about whether it’s good for elderly people to lose weight, even if they are obese. Some studies have found an association between weight loss in seniors and mortality risk, but Villareal says many of those studies did not distinguish between voluntary weight loss and involuntary weight loss that may be related to illness.

But even if voluntary weight loss carries no significant risk of shortening life, another potential drawback is that when older people lose fat, they also tend to lose muscle and bone.

In this study, the researchers did find slight reductions in lean body mass and bone mineral density among those who lost weight, but the decreases were smaller in the combined diet-exercise group than in those who dieted or exercised alone. The diet-exercise group participants lost 3 percent of their lean body mass, with a 1 percent bone mineral loss in the key area of the hip. Those who only dieted lost 5 percent of their lean body mass and 3 percent in bone mineral density at the hip.

Just as in younger people, the prevalence of obesity has increased in the elderly. About 20 percent of people 65 and older are obese, and that is expected to continue rising as more baby boomers become senior citizens. Elevated weight is known to be associated with impairments in daily living, limitations in mobility and an increased risk for physical decline and frailty.

“Although losing weight is beneficial and exercise also is good, when seniors do both, they get a greater improvement,” he says.

______________

Villareal DT, Chode S. Parimi N, Sinacore DR, Hilton T, Armamento-Villareal R, Napoli N, Qualls C, Shah K. Weight loss, exercise or both and physical function in obese older adults, The New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 364(13), pp. 1218-1229. March 31, 2011.

This work was supported by grants from the National Institute on Aging, the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases and the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development of the National Institutes of Health and by the Foundation for Physical Therapy.

NEJM: Why exercise, diet combo are better than either alone

Stop Diabetes Now / The American Diabetes Association

Learn how FT Gets Results with success stories from our FT Clients

Aerobic Exercise May Improve Memory In Seniors

by Michelle Trudeau for NPR (February 21, 2011)

Listen To “Aerobic Exercise May Improve Memory In Seniors” NPR Feature

There’s a very small structure deep in the center of our brains called the hippocampus. It’s smaller than your pinkie, but it plays an absolutely essential role in learning and memory. The hippocampus encodes new information so that we can recall it later. Without a hippocampus, we would be unable to form new memories; we’d only be able to remember the old ones.

As part of normal aging, the hippocampus shrinks. And this shrinkage speeds up as we grow older, foreshadowing memory problems and dementias like Alzheimer’s disease.

But there’s been some good news in the past decade: Scientists have discovered that in certain areas of the aging brain, new cells are born and grow throughout through life. Neuroscientist Peter Snyder, a researcher at Brown University’s Alpert Medical School and Rhode Island Hospital, says the hippocampus is one of those brain areas that continue to form new cells and make new connections between cells.

“What we’re finding is that of all of these noninvasive ways of intervening, it is exercise that seems to have the most efficacy at this point — more so than nutritional supplements, vitamins and cognitive interventions,” says Snyder, who studies what we can do to maintain memory as our brains age.

Power Of Exercise

Snyder says several studies have been published recently on the power of exercise on the aging brain.

“The literature on exercise is just tremendous,” he says. “What we find is that with exercise — with aerobic exercise, a moderate amount on a regular basis — there are chemical changes that occur in the brain that promote the growth of new neurons in [the hippocampus].”
The major chemical change in the hippocampus during aerobic exercise is an increase in a brain protein called BDNF, which acts like a fertilizer during the birth of new brain cells by nourishing new connections between neurons.

Some of the most provocative evidence on the power of exercise on the brain comes from a study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by neuroscientist Art Kramer at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Kramer and his colleagues have documented the impact of exercise on the growth of the hippocampus in a small group of elderly people over the course of one year.

“The participants in our study were 120 very sedentary people,” Kramer says.

He adds none had dementia or memory problems when they entered the study. “They were relatively healthy, but certainly ‘couch potatoes’ would fit as a label.”

Getting Couch Potatoes Moving

One of those “couch potatoes” who volunteered for the study was Gregory Stanton, a 66-year-old semi-retired college professor. He admits to not exercising regularly but counters that he was physically quite active remodeling his home. So he refers to himself as “a semi-couch potato.”

Stanton and the other 120 men and women in the study ranged from 60 to 80 years old. When they entered the study, they were randomly divided into two groups.

“One was the aerobic exercise group,” Kramer says. “Those were people who walked further and faster as time went on. And the others in our control group were in a toning, stretching and light-strengthening group.”

Stanton was randomly assigned to the aerobic exercise group.

“Basically, it’s walking a track in one of the gym facilities,” Stanton says. He and the others in the aerobic group walked the track for about 40 minutes three times a week for a year. Stanton says he averaged about 3 miles each session. After each session, he was breathing hard and had worked up a sweat, he says.

The idea was for each participant to walk fast enough to reach aerobic exercise level, Kramer explains, which is generally considered to be 70 percent of one’s maximum heart rate.

Walkers Fared Better

All the participants in the study had MRI brain scans done before the study began and again a year later when the study ended. Then the researchers analyzed the MRI data.

“What we found,” Kramer says, “is that individuals in the aerobic group showed increases in the volume of their hippocampus.”
The increase in volume — again for the aerobic but not for the non-aerobic group — was about 2 percent.

Scientists are trying to figure out how physical and mental exercise protects the brain.

“The 2 percent increase we can think of as turning back the clock about two years,” Kramer says.

The increased volume was found in the anterior, or front part, of the hippocampus. That’s the area of the hippocampus that has been shown to grow as a function of exercise in several animal studies.

By comparison, “the individuals in the control group — in the toning and stretching group — lost about 1.5 percent [of their hippocampal volume],” Kramer says. “So we can think of it as about a 3.5 percent difference compared to those individuals who didn’t benefit aerobically.”

The results are small but suggestive. This finding shows that not only did the aerobic exercise protect against normal shrinkage, but also that new cells were added to the hippocampus. The researchers also saw a significant increase in that important brain-fertilizing chemical BDNF in the plasma of those in the aerobic exercise group — but not in the control group.

Impact On Memory

But did the growth in the hippocampus translate into improvements in memory? Both groups were given memory tests before and after the yearlong exercise program. Kramer says these tests looked specifically at a type of memory called “spatial memory,” which records information about our environment, like the layout of the neighborhood or the interior of the grocery store.

At the start of the study, both the aerobic and the non-aerobic group scored similarly on the spatial memory test. But after the yearlong program, the group that did aerobic exercises had improved significantly on its spatial memory tests, bettering its own scores from a year earlier. The non-aerobic group had not improved in memory after a year of stretching, toning and lightweight lifting.

As for “semi-couch potato” Stanton, who’d been in the aerobic group, he says he didn’t notice any improvement in his memory. He still has problems remembering people’s names. But he did notice he had more physical stamina after the yearlong aerobic walking program.

In spite of this, Stanton says he still doesn’t maintain a regular exercise regimen. He says while he knows it’s good for him, he, like many of us, can’t find the time. He’s just too busy.

npr.org

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Aerobic Exercise May Improve Memory In Seniors

by Michelle Trudeau for NPR (February 21, 2011)

Listen To “Aerobic Exercise May Improve Memory In Seniors” NPR Feature

There’s a very small structure deep in the center of our brains called the hippocampus. It’s smaller than your pinkie, but it plays an absolutely essential role in learning and memory. The hippocampus encodes new information so that we can recall it later. Without a hippocampus, we would be unable to form new memories; we’d only be able to remember the old ones.

As part of normal aging, the hippocampus shrinks. And this shrinkage speeds up as we grow older, foreshadowing memory problems and dementias like Alzheimer’s disease.

But there’s been some good news in the past decade: Scientists have discovered that in certain areas of the aging brain, new cells are born and grow throughout through life. Neuroscientist Peter Snyder, a researcher at Brown University’s Alpert Medical School and Rhode Island Hospital, says the hippocampus is one of those brain areas that continue to form new cells and make new connections between cells.

“What we’re finding is that of all of these noninvasive ways of intervening, it is exercise that seems to have the most efficacy at this point — more so than nutritional supplements, vitamins and cognitive interventions,” says Snyder, who studies what we can do to maintain memory as our brains age.

Power Of Exercise

Snyder says several studies have been published recently on the power of exercise on the aging brain.

“The literature on exercise is just tremendous,” he says. “What we find is that with exercise — with aerobic exercise, a moderate amount on a regular basis — there are chemical changes that occur in the brain that promote the growth of new neurons in [the hippocampus].”
The major chemical change in the hippocampus during aerobic exercise is an increase in a brain protein called BDNF, which acts like a fertilizer during the birth of new brain cells by nourishing new connections between neurons.

Some of the most provocative evidence on the power of exercise on the brain comes from a study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by neuroscientist Art Kramer at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Kramer and his colleagues have documented the impact of exercise on the growth of the hippocampus in a small group of elderly people over the course of one year.

“The participants in our study were 120 very sedentary people,” Kramer says.

He adds none had dementia or memory problems when they entered the study. “They were relatively healthy, but certainly ‘couch potatoes’ would fit as a label.”

Getting Couch Potatoes Moving

One of those “couch potatoes” who volunteered for the study was Gregory Stanton, a 66-year-old semi-retired college professor. He admits to not exercising regularly but counters that he was physically quite active remodeling his home. So he refers to himself as “a semi-couch potato.”

Stanton and the other 120 men and women in the study ranged from 60 to 80 years old. When they entered the study, they were randomly divided into two groups.

“One was the aerobic exercise group,” Kramer says. “Those were people who walked further and faster as time went on. And the others in our control group were in a toning, stretching and light-strengthening group.”

Stanton was randomly assigned to the aerobic exercise group.

“Basically, it’s walking a track in one of the gym facilities,” Stanton says. He and the others in the aerobic group walked the track for about 40 minutes three times a week for a year. Stanton says he averaged about 3 miles each session. After each session, he was breathing hard and had worked up a sweat, he says.

The idea was for each participant to walk fast enough to reach aerobic exercise level, Kramer explains, which is generally considered to be 70 percent of one’s maximum heart rate.

Walkers Fared Better

All the participants in the study had MRI brain scans done before the study began and again a year later when the study ended. Then the researchers analyzed the MRI data.

“What we found,” Kramer says, “is that individuals in the aerobic group showed increases in the volume of their hippocampus.”
The increase in volume — again for the aerobic but not for the non-aerobic group — was about 2 percent.

Scientists are trying to figure out how physical and mental exercise protects the brain.

“The 2 percent increase we can think of as turning back the clock about two years,” Kramer says.

The increased volume was found in the anterior, or front part, of the hippocampus. That’s the area of the hippocampus that has been shown to grow as a function of exercise in several animal studies.

By comparison, “the individuals in the control group — in the toning and stretching group — lost about 1.5 percent [of their hippocampal volume],” Kramer says. “So we can think of it as about a 3.5 percent difference compared to those individuals who didn’t benefit aerobically.”

The results are small but suggestive. This finding shows that not only did the aerobic exercise protect against normal shrinkage, but also that new cells were added to the hippocampus. The researchers also saw a significant increase in that important brain-fertilizing chemical BDNF in the plasma of those in the aerobic exercise group — but not in the control group.

Impact On Memory

But did the growth in the hippocampus translate into improvements in memory? Both groups were given memory tests before and after the yearlong exercise program. Kramer says these tests looked specifically at a type of memory called “spatial memory,” which records information about our environment, like the layout of the neighborhood or the interior of the grocery store.

At the start of the study, both the aerobic and the non-aerobic group scored similarly on the spatial memory test. But after the yearlong program, the group that did aerobic exercises had improved significantly on its spatial memory tests, bettering its own scores from a year earlier. The non-aerobic group had not improved in memory after a year of stretching, toning and lightweight lifting.

As for “semi-couch potato” Stanton, who’d been in the aerobic group, he says he didn’t notice any improvement in his memory. He still has problems remembering people’s names. But he did notice he had more physical stamina after the yearlong aerobic walking program.

In spite of this, Stanton says he still doesn’t maintain a regular exercise regimen. He says while he knows it’s good for him, he, like many of us, can’t find the time. He’s just too busy.

npr.org

Success Stories from our FT Clients on FTGetsResults.com, including many Seniors

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