Health and Longevity

10 Biomarkers of Aging You Can Control Through Exercise

(Research at the Human Physiology Laboratory at the USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (HNRCA) has shown that people can reverse many of the physiological declines associated with aging through a regular aerobics, flexibility and strength training exercise program. Aging doesn’t have to be synonymous with illness or disability. By making positive changes in you own biomarkers you can prolong vitality, postpone disability and prevent development of “sarcopenia”—weakening of the body’s muscles, loss of balance, reduced mobility and frailty.)

1. Muscle Mass. No matter what your age, you can increase the strength and mass of your muscles through resistance training. If you don’t do this, your muscle mass will decline, accelerating at an alarming rate after you are 45 years old. The higher your ratio of muscle to fat, the higher your metabolism will be and the less you’ll have to worry about how much you eat.

2. Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). BMR is simply the rate of your metabolism when you are sitting still or resting. Starting at age 20, your BMR declines so that you burn fewer calories when you’re not moving. Every decade you age reduces the number of calories you need daily to maintain a constant body weight by roughly 100 calories. Since most people continue to eat the same amount of food (if not more) this is one of the reasons they get fat. Aerobic exercise will speed up your BMR. Do enough of it and you can eat like a 20-year-old!

3. Body Fat Percentage. Just as people with a greater ratio of muscle to fat enjoy a higher metabolism, the opposite is true. The fatter you get, the less efficient your ability to burn off calories; plus, you drastically increase your risk of heart disease.

The two most common methods used for measuring body fat are the skin-fold method and bioelectrical impedance analysis. Your doctor or a trained specialist at your gym can measure you or you can get a home “fat percentage scale,” which incorporates a bioelectrical system.

The best way to attack excess body fat is a combination of exercise and moderate calorie restriction. In other words, exercise more and eat less.

5. Aerobic Capacity. For healthy lungs, a strong heart and an effective vascular network, you need good aerobic capacity, which is the amount of oxygen your body can process within a given time. In both men and women, this capacity typically declines by 30-40% by age 65. Regular exercise can increase your aerobic capacity, but the positive change in older people comes almost entirely in the muscles ability to utilize oxygen (“oxidative capacity”). Thus, you need strengthening exercises as well as aerobic exercises because when you build muscles you create more muscle cells to consume oxygen. The more your body demands oxygen, the greater you utilize it and the higher your aerobic capacity.

6. Blood-Sugar Tolerance. By age 70, some 30% of women and 20% of men have an abnormal glucose-tolerance curve, increasing their risk for type-2 diabetes (if they don’t already have this). Unfortunately, aging is one of the factors in the changing of your glucose metabolism; however, there are three factors you can control:

1. Increase in body fat
2. Inactivity
3. Diet high in saturated fat

Resistance training is once again critical. Besides lowering body fat, resistance training has been shown to increase your muscles’ insulin sensitivity.

7. Total Cholesterol/HDL Ratio. To compute your total cholesterol to HDL ratio, you simply divide the total cholesterol number by the HDL-cholesterol number. Of course, it helps to know these numbers in the first place. For middle-aged and older men and women, the ratio goal should be 4.5 or lower.

LDL cholesterol can be lowered by the use of statins such as Atorvastatin or by supplements including niacin and red yeast rice. Or it can be lowered by reducing the amount of saturated fat in your diet. To increase HDL, however, you need to exercise and lower your body fat. Aerobic exercise seems to be particularly effective for raising HDL.

8. Blood Pressure. Controlling blood pressure is absolutely vital and there are many strategies for doing this. Regular, vigorous exercise is one of the best tools for preventing and even treating high blood pressure.

9. Bone Density. On average, a person loses 1% of bone mass per year. When this decline reaches the point where risk of bone fracture is substantial, we call is “osteoporosis.” The effectiveness of calcium supplements to fight this is the subject of much debate in the health and scientific communities; however, the effective of weight-bearing exercise is not.

Stress repeatedly placed on your bones through exercise makes them grow. Any number of studies has shown that a prolonged span of weight-bearing exercise including walking, running, or bicycling reduces the rate of bone loss. Research at Tufts University has even indicated that exercise can increase your body’s ability to absorb dietary calcium.

To prevent bone loss from becoming a serious problem, you need to exercise.

10. Internal Body Temperature. Your body’s thermoregulatory ability is one more thing that diminishes with age. This means you have a harder time cooling off when you’re hot or warming up when you’re cold. The reasons for the decline is complex, but include a reduced sensation of thirst, a requirement for a warmer internal body temperature before sweating sets in, dehydration caused by impaired kidneys, and a lower overall amount of sweating. By exercising on a regular basis, you can actual increase your total body water content and of course, you sweat more. However, exercise does nothing for thirst, so you need to remind yourself to drink lots of water.