Aging and exercise

An encouraging article in the excellent NY Times health section. hit the link for the whole article – after all, it's your body. 

(FULL DISCLOSURE: I graduated from my fifties this past summer.)

Is physical frailty inevitable as we grow older? That question preoccupies scientists and the middle-aged, particularly when they become the same people.

… a growing body of newer science suggests that such decline may not be inexorable. Exercise, the thinking goes, and you might be able to rewrite the future for your muscles.

Then some interesting results of recent studies, and the final musings –

Other questions about the impacts of exercise on aging muscle also remain unanswered. “We don’t know what kinds of exercise are best,” Dr. Wright says and, in particular, whether endurance exercise is necessary for muscle sparing or whether weight training might be as good or better. Scientists also haven’t determined just how much activity is required to maintain muscle mass, or how intense it needs to be.

“What we can say with certainty is that any activity is better than none,” Dr. Wright says, “and more is probably better than less. But the bigger message is that it looks as if how we age can be under our control. Through exercise, you can preserve muscle mass and strength and avoid the decline from vitality to frailty.”