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A great way to remain young as you get older

This post was written by admin on June 24, 2009
Posted Under: health

A recent scientific study suggests the more time older people spend engaged in social activity, the slower their motor function declines.

"Everybody in their 60s, 70s and 80s is walking more slowly than they did when they were 25," says Dr. Aron Buchman, a neurologist at the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago and lead author of the study, published in the Archives of Internal Medicine. "Our study shows the connection between social activity and motor function — and opens up a whole new universe of how we might intervene."

We already know from the nun study (Aging With Grace: What the Nun Study Teaches Us About Leading Longer, Healthier, and More Meaningful Lives ) that mentally stimulating activities, optimism and physical activity help protect against age-related decline — especially cognitive decline such as senility and Alzheimer’s.

Carl Cotman, a University of California at Irvine neuroscientist, who studies aging and dementia, has demonstrated that physical exercise (in human beings) produces a protein that helps keep neurons from dying and spurs the formation of new neural connections in the brain. He has also studied elderly dogs and mice and recently showed that enriching their social environment is associated with improvement in brain function.

So it is of no surprise to note that social interactions in human beings keeps you younger.

In Buchman’s study, which looked at 906 seniors, average age 80, in northeastern Illinois over a five-year period, increased social activity was associated with adeptness in a range of physical tasks, including walking in a straight line, standing one-legged and on tiptoes, turning full circle without falling and placing pegs on a board. These are well established signs of aging. They indicate both the aging of the mind and the body (need coordination and ballence as well associated muscular/skeletal strength).

Buchman assigned a social-activity scale of 1 to 5 — 1 meaning participation in various social activities at most once a year, and 5 every day or nearly every day — a one-point decrease in social activity corresponded to:

a five-year decrease in motor function
increased of physical decline by 33 percent

In participants whose score fell one point over the course of a single year, there was a 40% increased risk of death and a 65% higher risk of a disability.

So as you are getting older go to senior clubs, play bridge, gulf, and other participatory games and sports. Take up that old hubby again. Teach and mentor younger persons. Contribute to others and do yourself good and remain young in body and mind as well as in heart.