So I'm starting to get older and it depresses me. I've heard exercise can slow the rate of biological aging to some extent. True?

No I don't believe exercise can slow the rate of aging. You need to do Calorie Restriction to do that.... there is always a chance resveratrol 'might' work though.

Well it can increase your length of life about 10 years according to most studies.Talking about the rate of aging it is hard to quantify and measure.

First of all, if the thought of getting older depresses you then you better get used to it. Not the depression but rather the getting older. At the moment, that's inevitable. Best thing do you is to change the way you think of getting older. Old does not mean pain and suffering.

Second, what do you mean by the "rate of biological aging"? Are you referring to intrinsic aging?

Re. exercise and slowing the rate of aging....well I don't think that we are referring to aging per se in this situation. We're referring to the accelerated aging that comes from the mis/disuse of the various organs and organs systems. Exercise keeps the body growing by forcing it to adapt to it's environment. These adaptations help us deal with the stress(es) that we face in life. For example, aerobic exercise stresses the body increases it's demand for oxygen. The oxygen is needed to fuel the aerobic exercise and without it the body struggles. So, because the body is a learning machine very much like a network computer, and learns to adapt to a stimulus so that can function in it's environment, aerobic exercise increases our cells ability to utilise oxygen. Not just for aerobic exercise but across the board. An increase in the cells ability to utilise oxygen (measure by VO2max) helps us deal with fight or flight stress situation. Another great example can be given with skeletal muscle. As we age there is a certain degree of muscltrength training increases the muscles cross sectional area but also wakes up the motor neuron that stimulates the muscle. Waking up the motor neuron increases the muscles response time and hence can help prevent falls in the elderly because the muscle ability to sense and correct change is increased. Preventing falls in the elderly prevents possible hip fractures. A hip fracture in advanced age is a devastating insult to the bodies physiology.

So, to answer your question, I think exercise will make you feel young again. Finding that youthful vigor is the important first step IMO. Exercise will also help you in the following ways;
1. increased muscle mass means increased basal metabolic rate. This will keep your weight in check. It will also minimise you chance of diabetes because muscle is the largest glucose store in the body.
2. Keep you agile so that you can quickly adapt to your environment and prevent injury and illness. This statement stands for both the skeletal muscle, cardiac muscle and cardiovascular system.
3. If your not exercising already, exercise will help you become more aware of your body. You will naturally become more aware of your health as well. You become more health conscious and less lazy. LESS LAZY!



Matt you are a very strong proponent of CR but I do not think that CR is for everyone. In fact I read a few studies in 2007 (can't find them now) that demonstrated that whilst the research data in animals/primates is proposing, adherence to a calorie restricted diet for long periods of times in humans is not common.

Anyhow....matt what's the latest research re. humans and CR.

adherence to a calorie restricted diet for long periods of times in humans is not common.

What do you mean by that?

Jack LaLanne is a good example of what exercise can do and not do...He hasn't escaped the aging process and I don't know how and if it has been slowed down for him.Let's see if he continues to live and exercise for the next few years...

I don't know why resveratrol would work and exercise wouldn't, since exercise boosts sirtuin activity (in rats, at least). Of course, I'm not up to date on resveratrol stuff.

There are a couple of good articles in this month's Iron Man about exercise for the aged. One is a big article on Frank Zane, who looks decent at 65. But, the real value is in Bill Starr's article. There are quite a few under the radar guys that still lift heavy up to their 70s. Paul Kelso posts on some other boards, and he says that he still loads up the bar once in a while.

Isn't muscle strength one of the things that remains relative unaffected by the aging process?The flexibility and reaction time reduces a lot but an old man can often e.g benchpress surprisingly much.

You can also try Intermittent Fasting. IMO it's less painful than CR. I find when i'm alone in my house for a few days i only need one meal (a big one of course but still...) every 18 hours or so. I could go for 24 hours without eating easily.

Most Master's lifters are hindered by past injuries more than anything else. But, some (natural) competitors/lifters put up some of their best numbers at 45+. I'm not sure other types of strength hold up as well as maximum strength. But, LaLanne doesn't seem to have any trouble with muscular endurance (although, that is the type of training he's been doing for a long time).

I mean that it's pretty hard to voluntarily stick to CR. I look for the study that mentioned this. It's a different story in controlled environments such as though seen in animal and primate model. They get feed a very controlled amount of food per day.



It is affected by the aging process. What can be changed is the rate at which you lose muscle. Most aged individuals undergo an accelerated form of aged-related muscle loss. This is due mainly to disuse atrophy and other things such as diet, low-grade chronic inflammation and so on. So to answer the question.....muscle strength is affected by age. The losses in muscle strength cannot be explained by the loss in muscle size alone. Motor neuron changes have also been implicated with a change from the faster type II to the slower more oxidative type I transition seen with aging.

In short, if you lift weights all your life, as you age you will lose muscle size and strength. Especially from your 6th decade onwards. This is inevitable.

Welcome to the forum, Ivanhoe! If you are a typical sedentary person, exercise will provide some incredible gains. If exercise were a drug, it would outsell anything on the market. If you are not using any supplements or drugs, there's a lot that can be done in that area as well. If you are starting from a typical diet, then even without CR, improvements in diet can also do a lot for you. Reducing your glucose load can slow the rate of glycation, which is one aspect of aging. If you smoke, quitting or even switching to a different nicotine delivery system will slow the rate of oxidative damage. There's a lot you can do, so cheer up! The news is good and getting better.

well said niner.

It's all about aging well

Ditto what niner said. Exercise is the closest thing we have to a 'magic bullet' (to stay healthy) right now.

Welcome Ivanhoe.

Zoolander:
"Second, what do you mean by the "rate of biological aging"? Are you referring to intrinsic aging?"

I think Ivanhoe means this.
http://www.imminst.org/forum/Sedentary-Lif...ing-t20127.html
or the direct link...
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...8012802081.html

This post has been edited by Roe Williams: 6-May 2008, 03:15 AM

I thought CR was superior to exercise

There is this article
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/...80512120958.htm
about research involving skeletal muscle, stem cells, glucose, calory
restriction, Nampt, NAD+, AMPK, SIRT1, ... Yeah, all that. The first paragraph is:

ScienceDaily (May 12, 2008) — A new study finds that restricted
nutrient availability prevents muscle stem cells from growing into
mature muscle cells. The research, published by Cell Press in the May
issue of the journal Developmental Cell, provides exciting new
information about how developing muscle cells sense and respond to
nutrient levels. The study adds a new twist to ongoing research into
the effects of caloric restriction on physiology and aging and may
lead to new therapeutic avenues for muscle wasting.

There must be an implication as to the relation of CR and exercise, which
is not clear from that article. So I was looking for the published
paper but couldn't find it.

Original study, "Effect of exercise and calorie restriction on biomarkers of aging in mice", PMID: 18321952.

Stephen

This post has been edited by stephen_b: 15-May 2008, 04:03 PM

Interesting paper. The work referred to at Sciencedaily is actually:

Dev Cell. 2008 May;14(5):661-73.
Glucose restriction inhibits skeletal myoblast differentiation by activating SIRT1 through AMPK-mediated regulation of Nampt.Fulco M, Cen Y, Zhao P, Hoffman EP, McBurney MW, Sauve AA, Sartorelli V.
Laboratory of Muscle Stem Cells and Gene Regulation, National Institute of Arthritis, Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases, National Institutes of Health, 50 South Drive, Bethesda, MD 20892, USA.

It is intuitive to speculate that nutrient availability may influence differentiation of mammalian cells. Nonetheless, a comprehensive complement of the molecular determinants involved in this process has not been elucidated yet. Here, we have investigated how nutrients (glucose) affect skeletal myogenesis. Glucose restriction (GR) impaired differentiation of skeletal myoblasts and was associated with activation of the AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK). Activated AMPK was required to promote GR-induced transcription of the NAD+ biosynthetic enzyme Nampt. Indeed, GR augmented the Nampt activity, which consequently modified the intracellular [NAD+]:[NADH] ratio and nicotinamide levels, and mediated inhibition of skeletal myogenesis. Skeletal myoblasts derived from SIRT1+/- heterozygous mice were resistant to the effects of either GR or AMPK activation. These experiments reveal that AMPK, Nampt, and SIRT1 are the molecular components of a functional signaling pathway that allows skeletal muscle cells to sense and react to nutrient availability.

PMID: 18477450 [PubMed - in process]

A related work is:
Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab. 2008 Apr;294(4):E668-78. Epub 2008 Jan 29. Links
Ambient glucose levels qualify the potency of insulin myogenic actions by regulating SIRT1 and FoxO3a in C2C12 myocytes.Nedachi T, Kadotani A, Ariga M, Katagiri H, Kanzaki M.
Division of Biomaterials, Tohoku University Biomedical Engineering Research Organization, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan.

Nutrition availability is one of the major environmental signals influencing cell fate, such as proliferation, differentiation, and apoptosis, often functioning in concert with other humoral factors, including insulin. Herein, we show that low-serum-induced differentiation of C(2)C(12) myocytes is significantly hampered under low glucose (LG; 5 mM) compared with high glucose (HG; 22.5 mM) conditions, concurrently with nuclear accumulation of SIRT1, an NAD(+)-dependent deacetylase, and FoxO3a, both of which are implicated in the negative regulation of myogenesis. Intriguingly, insulin appears to exert opposite actions, depending on glucose availability, with regard to the regulation of SIRT1 and FoxO3a abundance, which apparently contributes to modulating the potency of insulin's myogenic action. Namely, insulin exerts a potent myogenic effect in the presence of sufficient glucose, whereas insulin is unable to exert its myogenic action under LG conditions, since insulin evokes massive upregulation of both SIRT1 and FoxO3a in the absence of sufficient ambient glucose. In addition, the hampered differentiation state under LG is significantly restored by sirtinol, a SIRT1 inhibitor, whereas insulin abolished this sirtinol-dependent restoration, indicating that insulin can function as a negative as well as a positive myogenic factor depending on glucose availability. Taken together, our data reveal the importance of ambient glucose levels in the regulation of myogenesis and also in the determination of insulin's myogenic potency, which is achieved, at least in part, through regulation of the cellular contents and localization of SIRT1 and FoxO3a in differentiating C(2)C(12) myocytes.

PMID: 18230695 [PubMed - in process]

They discuss how the availability of nutrients (like glucose), and NAD+
and SIRT1 affect skeletal muscle maintenance, increase or decrease.

Do you think constantly exercising people with healthy eating habits like Jack Lalanne and Madonna seem to have aged more slowly than normally or do you think they look their age but just more fit.What are your opinions?