So when you are trying to get back to normal you are also going against the tide of aging. Your doctor needs to know this and counsel you appropriately.
http://corporate.dukemedicine.org/news_and_publications/news_office/news/physical-declines-begin-earlier-than-expected-among-u-s-adults
By Duke Medicine News and Communications
Contact: Sarah Avery
Phone: 919-660-1306
Email:
sarah.avery@duke.edu
https://www.dukehealth.org
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE on Thursday, July 21, 2016
DURHAM and KANNAPOLIS, N.C. –
Physical declines begin sooner in life than typically detected, often
when people are still in their 50s, according to a Duke Health study that focused on a large group of U.S. adults across a variety of age groups.
The finding suggests that efforts to maintain basic strength and
endurance should begin before age 50, when it’s still possible to
preserve the skills that keep people mobile and independent later in
life.
“Typically, functional tests are conducted on people in their 70s and
80s, and by then you’ve missed 40 years of opportunities to remedy
problems,” said
Miriam C. Morey,
Ph.D., senior fellow in the Center for the Study of Aging and Human
Development at Duke University School of Medicine. Morey is senior
author of research published in the Journals of Gerontology: Medical
Sciences.
Morey and colleagues studied a group of 775 participants enrolled in
the Measurement to Understand the Reclassification of Disease Of
Cabarrus/Kannapolis (
MURDOCK)
Study. The MURDOCK Study is Duke Health’s longitudinal clinical
research study based at the North Carolina Research Campus in
Kannapolis, N.C. The MURDOCK community registry and bio-repository
includes more than 12,000 participants and nearly 460,000 biological
specimens.
For the
MURDOCK Physical Performance Lifespan Study,
the Duke-led team enrolled participants ranging in age from their 30s
through their 100s, with broad representation across sexes and races.
All
participants performed the same simple tasks to demonstrate strength,
endurance or balance: rising from a chair repeatedly for 30 seconds;
standing on one leg for a minute; and walking for six minutes.
Additionally, their walking speed was measured over a distance of about
10 yards.
Men generally performed better than women on the tasks, and younger
people outperformed older participants. But the age at which declines in
physical ability began to appear – in the decade of the 50s – were
consistent regardless of gender or other demographic features.
Specifically, both men and women in that mid-life decade began to
slip in their ability to stand on one leg and rise from a chair. The
decline continued through the next decades. Further differences in
aerobic endurance and gait speed were observed beginning with
participants in their 60s and 70s.
The study provides physical ability benchmarks that could be easily
performed and measured in clinical exams, providing a way to detect
problems earlier.
“Our research reinforces a life-span approach to maintaining physical
ability – don’t wait until you are 80 years old and cannot get out of a
chair,” said lead author
Katherine S. Hall,
Ph.D., assistant professor of medicine at Duke. “People often
misinterpret ‘aging’ to mean ‘aged’, and that issues of functional
independence aren’t important until later in life. This bias can exist
among researchers and healthcare providers, too. The good news is, with
proper attention and effort, the ability to function independently can
often be preserved with regular exercise.”
Hall and Morey said the next phase of research will be to study blood
samples of the participants to determine whether there are biological
markers that correlate with declines in physical ability. They are also
revisiting the study participants for two-year checkups.
In addition to Hall and Morey, study authors include Harvey J. Cohen,
Carl F. Pieper, Gerda G. Fillenbaum, William E. Kraus, Kim M. Huffman,
Melissa A. Cornish,Andrew Shiloh,Christy Flynn, Richard Sloane, and L.
Kristin Newby.
The study received funding from a philanthropic gift to Duke
University from the David H. Murdock Institute for Business and Culture.
Additional funding was provided in part by the Claude D. Pepper Older
Americans Independence Center program of the National Institute on Aging
(P30AG028716) and the National Center for Research Resources, a
component of the NIH (UL1TR001117).
The authors reported no conflicts of interest associated with this research.
Image: Norris Dearmon of Kannapolis, N.C., enrolls in the MURDOCK
Physical Performance Study, with Duke Health employee Chris Lewis.
Researchers using data from the study have found that physical declines
begin sooner in life than typically detected. Credit: Duke Health
###
About the MURDOCK Study
The MURDOCK Study, or the Measurement to
Understand the Reclassification of Disease of Cabarrus/Kannapolis, is
Duke University’s longitudinal clinical research study and precision
medicine initiative working to reclassify health and disease. The
MURDOCK Study began in 2007 at the North Carolina Research Campus in
Kannapolis, N.C., and is led by
L. Kristin Newby,
M.D., professor of medicine in the Division of Cardiology and
co-director of the Cardiac Care Unit at Duke University Hospital.
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