Exercise Benefits for Seniors
Exercise has a ton of benefits for all ages but especially for seniors. Here are some of the benefits of exercise for seniors.
- Improve Mood
- Prevent Falls
- Decrease Joint Pain
- Decrease Inflammation
- Improve Brain Health
- Maintain Independence
- Slow Aging Process
Let’s discuss each of these benefits in more detail below.
Improve Mood
Exercise provides seniors with many psychological benefits.
According to some recent studies, exercise can be as effective against depression as medication. Additionally, exercise is a meaningful activity that can help provide structure, meaning and purpose for older adults.
Working out regularly can help release endorphins that boost mood and feelings of well-being.
Exercise is also a good defense against stress, helping to reduce stress levels both in the short term and the long term. Not only does physical activity improve stress, but it also improves the capacity to deal with stress.
Not surprisingly, exercise improves self-esteem and self-confidence in older adults.
Finally, exercise improves psychological well being by improving sleep. Older people already tend to have disrupted sleep schedules, and exercise can improve both the quality and quantity of sleep.
Prevent Falls
Exercise can also help older adults to prevent falls. Falls can leave older adults wheelchair bound or even cause death. Prevention is so important.
Exercise improves muscle strength so that older adults can brace themselves better. Regular exercise also improves balance and coordination which helps reduce falls. And finally, consistent exercise strengthens the muscles, bones and joints, which can make falls less serious when they do happen.
Decrease Joint Pain
Regular exercise can actually reduce the pain of arthritis. Regular exercise helps to lubricate joints and keep them healthy. Exercise is a powerful treatment for joint pain. And regular exercise also strengthens muscles, tendons, joints and ligaments which helps to keep joints healthier for a longer time.
Finally, regular exercise helps older people to maintain a healthy weight, which reduces stress on both weight baring and non weight baring joints.
Decrease Inflammation
Exercise helps to decrease inflammation that may play a role in many disease processes. Inflammation may also play a role in joint pain for weight bearing joints and even for non weight bearing joints. This is just another reason older adults should continue to exercise regularly.
Improve Brain Health
Exercise improves brain health, memory and may even reduce the risk of developing dementia by up to 30 percent or Alzheimer’s Disease by up to 45 percent.
Maintain Independence
Not surprisingly, exercise may help older adults maintain independence in old age. When you exercise regularly, you boost your physical potential. If you lift weights or play sports regularly, activities of daily living seem easy by comparison.
And by reducing the risk of falls and other accidents, regular exercise can also help prevent injuries that make independent living near to impossible.
Slow Aging Process
Last but certainly not least, regular exercise may even slow the aging process and help you to live longer.
Calculations from the Harvard Alumni Study estimate that every hour of exercise prolongs life by about two hours.
According to this study in the journal Nature, regular exercise training can improve and preserve mitochondrial function and prevent age-related deterioration of skeletal muscle.
One study found that cyclists aged 55 to 80 who had remained active over their entire lifespan aged better than those who did not stay active. The cyclists did not lose muscle mass, increase body fat or increase cholesterol level in older age. They also maintained their immune system function as well.
Another study also found that exercise could prevent or slow aging of almost every organ system in laboratory rats. Old rats that ran on a wheel three times a week maintained their normal brain mass and almost all their muscle mass. These active rats also did not go gray. The inactive control group of rats went gray, lost muscle and brain mass, and died earlier than the active mice. While we don’t know for sure what would happen if this study were replicated with human participants, we can guess that the active humans would fare better in old age than a sedentary control group.
It seems clear that if you want to have a long, active and healthy life, exercise is your best bet!
Final Thoughts
Exercise provides older adults with huge benefits to overall health and well-being. Are you an older adult who exercises regularly? If so, let me know how exercise has benefited you in older age in the comment section below.
