Judd Matsunaga
Everyone ages. However, we all don’t necessarily age at the same rate. Some 60-year-olds are in better shape than a lot of 40-year-olds, and there are 80-year-olds more active than a lot of 50-year-olds.
Biologically, you could be younger or older based on your physiological condition. While you can’t change your chronological age, there are a lot of factors that go into how you age biologically.
It’s not something we like to think about, but as we grow older, our health usually deteriorates. As a result, some of our functional abilities have declined. At some point, this decline becomes inevitable, but it’s not entirely uncontrollable. This article, taken from a Special Health Report from Harvard Medical School, “Discovering Functional Fitness,” is to help you maintain your functional abilities so that you can remain active as you age.
Even if you’re in good health, age brings certain age-related changes — and they often begin much earlier than you would expect. From the experts at Harvard, here are some age-related changes to be aware of:
- Muscles shrink. Muscle loss begins in your mid-30s, at a rate of 1 percent-2 percent a year. As you get into your 60s and 70s, muscle loss accelerates to 3 percent a year. These little changes make a difference over the years, contributing to achy joints, injuries and weight gain.
- Strength wanes. Beginning in your mid-30s, you lose about 1.5 percent of your strength a year, and that rate accelerates as you get older.
- Power declines. As muscles shrink, you lose not only strength, but also power, your body’s ability to exert force or strength quickly. Power plummets at more than twice the rate of strength — 3.5 percent a year for power compared to 1.5 percent for strength.
- Aerobic capacity decreases. A 25-year-old heart can pump 2.5 quarts of blood a minute, but after age 30, heart and lung function begin to decline at a rate of about 10 percent per decade. These changes affect your endurance.
- Joints stiffen. A decrease in flexibility and range of motion makes tasks like reaching overhead and stooping down problematic. Flexibility in the hip and shoulder joints declines about 6 percent per decade from age 55-85.
- Balance wobbles. As you become less steady on your feet, you’re more likely to fall.
- Body fat increases. As your muscles shrink, you’re probably gaining more fat, which can make it harder to get around and can tire you out faster.
All these problems add up, leading to a more sedentary lifestyle. Overall, you’re less active, which only accelerates functional declines. The good news is that this doesn’t have to be your reality.
Functional fitness, i.e., exercise for everyday activities, can boost your strength, endurance, coordination and balance.
In fact, some of the “side effects” of functional fitness training are positive, good things, such as better sleep, improved mood, reduced stress and protection against chronic conditions and diseases.
Here’s how functional training can improve your life:
- You’ll find it easier to perform everyday tasks. Based on the specificity principle, if you train to get up off the floor, climb stairs or walk on uneven surfaces, you’ll get better at performing those activities, “task-specific training.” That’s because you’re strengthening the specific muscles you need for those tasks, and you’re stretching the ones that need to be flexible. You’re building the endurance or power and enhancing the mobility or agility necessary for the activity.
- You’ll play better. Functional training can keep you enjoying activities longer and improve your performance.
- You’ll be less likely to get injured. Functional training improves your body’s ability to work as a unit — the way it was designed to — rather than relying on one part to carry out more work than it should.
- You can reduce some kinds of pain. Functional fitness training can help to ease pain. Stronger muscles take pressure off of painful joints. Stretching tight muscles can improve posture and biomechanics when you move. And honing your movement patterns can ensure you engage appropriate muscles throughout the day.
- You’ll be steadier on your feet. While balance training can help, functional training develops additional skills that complement better balance to save you from a fall.
- You can stay independent longer. As everyday tasks become more difficult, you may need help to perform some activities and may need to give up others altogether. These impairments can often necessitate moving into assisted living or another type of long-term care facility, but the fitter you are, the less likely you’ll need these services — or the longer you’ll be able to delay them.
In conclusion, there are medications for a host of health issues that become more common with age. However, there really aren’t any pills that are going to help you stand up from a chair, pick something up off the floor or get out of bed. That’s why you need to exercise, i.e., functional fitness training.
Finally, remember — safety first! The last thing you want to do is hurt yourself while exercising. It’s important to talk to your doctor before starting your functional fitness program.
Judd Matsunaga is the founding attorney of Elder Law Services of California, a law firm that specializes in Medi-Cal Planning, Estate Planning and Probate. He can be contacted at (310) 348-2995 or. The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the view of the Pacific Citizen or constitute legal or tax advice and should not be treated as such.
