Aging can be defined as the time-related deterioration of the physiological functions necessary for survival and fertility.

1. Aging in Sport and Exercise
BY- TUSHAR JOSHI
PHD SCHOLAR, LNIPE

2. Entropy always wins
1. It is the rise in disorder of all the energy and matter in the
universe.
2. Each multicellular organism, using energy from the sun, is able to
develop and maintain its identity for only so long.
3. Then deterioration prevails over synthesis, and the organism ages.
4. Aging can be defined as the time-related deterioration of the
physiological functions necessary for survival and fertility.

3. Effect of Aging on Height
1. As we age, we tend to lose height and gain weight
2. The reduction in height is primarily attributable to
compression of the intervertebral disks and poor posture
early in aging
3. At about age 40 to 50 years in women, and 50 to 60 years
in men, osteopenia and osteoporosis become a factor.
4. Genetic factors and poor diet and exercise habits
throughout the life span contribute to the development of
osteoporosis in both men and women, while decreased
estrogen concentrations after menopause appear to be
responsible for the greater rate of bone loss in women.

4. Effect of Aging on Weight & Body
Composition
1. Gain in weight typically occurs between
age 25 and 45 and is attributable to both
a decrease in physical activity levels and
excess caloric intake.
2. Beyond the age of 45, weight stabilizes
for about 10 to 15 years and then
decreases as the body loses bone calcium
and muscle mass.

5. 1. Beginning at about 20 years of age, humans tend to gain fat with
aging.
2. This is largely attributable to three factors: diet, physical inactivity,
and reduced ability to mobilize fat stores.
3. In addition, with primary aging there tends to be a shift in the
location where body fat is stored, from the periphery toward the
center of the body around the organs. This centralized adiposity is
associated with cardiovascular and metabolic diseases.
4. Fat-free mass decreases progressively in both men and women
beginning at about the age of 40.
5. The rate of muscle protein synthesis is reduced while the rate of
muscle protein breakdown is unchanged or accelerated with aging,
leading to net loss of muscle. This is called as sarcopenia

6. Cross-Sectional
Study on
Changes in
Muscle Mass
with Aging

7. BALANCING BODY COMPOSITION
1. The most significant changes in body composition result from a
combination of diet and exercise, with a modest reduction in caloric
intake of 500-1,000 kcal/ day
2. A more substantial reduction in caloric intake (>1,000 kcal/day) is
likely to result in a loss of fat-free mass as well as fat mass.

8. Effect of Aging on Strength and
Neuromuscular Function
• A person’s maximal strength decreases steadily with aging. Eventually,
strength may decline to the point where simple activities become
challenging.
• The reduction in strength with aging was highly correlated with the
reduction in the cross-sectional area of the involved muscles
• The reductions in strength with aging appear to be modality specific,
in that losses in isokinetic strength are greatest at high angular
velocities and losses in concentric strength are greater than losses in
eccentric strength

10. 1. Aging slows the nervous system’s ability to respond to a stimulus,
process the information, and produce a muscular contraction.
2. Motor unit activation is lower in aged adults.
3. Bengt Saltin a Swedish professor in exercise physiology noted that
despite the loss of muscle mass in active aging men, the structural
and biochemical properties of the remaining muscle mass are well
maintained.
4. The number of capillaries per unit area is similar in young and old
endurance runners. Oxidative enzyme activities in the muscles of
endurance trained older athletes are only 10% to 15% lower than in
endurance-trained young athletes
5. Exercise training cannot arrest the process of biological aging, but it
can lessen the impact of aging on performance.

11. Aging Effects on Cardiovascular Function
1. Cardiovascular function declines as we age. One of the most
notable changes that accompanies aging is a decrease in maximal
heart rate (HRmax).
2. HRmax = [208 – (0.7 * age)]
3. The reduction in HRmax with aging appears to be similar for
sedentary and well-trained adults.
4. This reduction in HRmax might be attributable to morphological
and electrophysiological alterations in the cardiac conduction
system, specifically in the sinoatrial (SA) node and in the bundle of
His, which could slow cardiac conduction

12. 5. Maximal stroke volume (SVmax) is modestly reduced ~10-20%
reduction in highly trained older adults.
6. The responses to catecholamine stimulation and myocardial
contractility are reduced, and recent evidence provided with more
sophisticated Doppler imaging techniques indicates that the heart
does not fully retain the FrankStarling mechanism.
7. The decrease in maximal cardiac output with aging in highly trained
men and women is primarily attributable to decreased heart rate
and to a lesser extent a decrease in stroke volume.
8. Studies of endurance runners have shown that the lower V.O2max
values observed in older athletes result from a reduction in maximal
cardiac output, despite the fact that heart volumes of older athletes
are similar to those of young athletes, confirming that a decreased
maximal heart rate is the primary cause of reduced V.O2max

13. 9. Peripheral blood flow, such as to the
legs, decreases with aging, even though
capillary density in the muscles is
unchanged.
10. This attenuation in blood flow is due to
a number of peripheral factors including
blunted functional sympatholysis (i.e., a
greater sympathetic outflow to the
exercising muscle) and a reduction in
local vasodilators.
11. But the reduced blood flow to the legs
of these middle-aged and older
endurance runners during submaximal
exercise was apparently compensated
for by a greater arterial– mixed venous
oxygen difference

14. AGING EFFECTS ON RESPIRATORY FUNCTION
1. Both vital capacity (VC) and forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1)
decrease linearly with age, starting at age 20 to 30.
2. Residual volume (RV) increases, and the total lung capacity (TLC) remains
essentially unchanged.
3. RV accounts for 18% to 22% of the TLC, but this increases to 30% or more
as we reach age 50. Smoking appears to accelerate this increase.
4. Lung tissue and chest wall as we age loses elasticity , which increases the
work involved in breathing. The resulting stiffening of the chest wall is
responsible for most of the reduction in lung function.
5. But despite all these changes, the lungs still hold a remarkable reserve
and maintain an adequate diffusion capacity to permit maximal exertion,
and do not appear to limit exercise capacity

15. 6. Endurance-trained older athletes have only slightly decreased
pulmonary ventilation capacities. More importantly, decreased
aerobic capacity among these older athletes cannot be attributed
to changes in pulmonary ventilation
7. Also, during strenuous exercise, both normally active older people
and athletes can maintain near-maximal arterial oxygen saturation.
8. The primary limitation is apparently linked with oxygen transport
to the muscles, that is, cardiovascular changes.

16. VO2MAX CHANGES WITH AGING
To determine how VO2max changes with aging, there are several
important issues to consider-
1. First, one must decide how to express the V. O2max values—in
liters per minute (L/min) or in liters per minute per kilogram of
body weight to adjust for size (ml · kg–1 · min–1)?
In some cases, V. O2max expressed in liters per minute does not
decrease much over a 10- to 20-year period, but when the same
subjects’ values are expressed relative to body weight, there is a
relatively large decrease.

17. 2. A second issue relates to whether change values in variables with
aging should be expressed as an absolute change (L/min or ml · kg–
1 · min–1) or as a percentage change, where
% change = [(final value – initial value)/initial value] * 100.

18. • Study by Sid Robinson showed that VO2max in normally active men
declined steadily from age 25 to age 75. His cross-sectional data show
that aerobic capacity declines an average of 0.44 ml · kg–1 · min–1
per year up to age 75, which is about 1% per year or 10% per decade.
• In a study, athletes were studied for 20 to 28 years, during which time
some continued to train for competition whereas others became
quite sedentary. Those athletes who continued high-volume and -
intensity training experienced a 5% to 6% decline in V. O2max per
decade. On the other hand, elite runners who stopped training
experienced nearly a 15% decline in aerobic capacity per decade
(1.5% per year), the combined effect of deconditioning and aging.

19. V. O2max declines with age, and the rate of decline is approximately 1%
per year. Many factors influence this rate of decline, including the
following:
• Genetics
• General activity level
• Intensity of training
• Volume of training
• Increased body weight and body fat mass, decreased fat-free mass
• Age range, with older individuals experiencing greater declines

20. Physiological Adaptations to Exercise Training
• Aging appears to neither impair the ability to improve muscle
strength nor prevent muscle hypertrophy
• Older resistance-trained athletes tend to have higher muscle mass,
are generally leaner, and are ~30% to 50% stronger than their
sedentary peers.
• Research indicates that endurance training produces similar gains in
aerobic capacity in healthy people throughout the age range of 20 to
70 years, and this adaptation is independent of age & sex.

22. FORMS OF CARDIOVASCULAR DISEASE

23. Coronary Heart Disease
1. As we age our coronary arteries become
progressively narrowed as a result of the
formation of fatty plaque along the inner
wall of the artery.
2. This is called as atherosclerosis; and when
the coronary arteries are involved, it is
termed coronary heart disease.
3. The portion of the myocardium that is
supplied by the narrowed arteries becomes
ischemic.

24. 4. Ischemia of the heart often causes severe chest pain, referred to as
angina pectoris.
5. When blood supply to a part of the myocardium is severely or
totally restricted, ischemia can lead to a heart attack, or myocardial
infarction.
6. Cardiac muscle cells that are deprived of blood for several minutes
are thus deprived of oxygen, which leads to irreversible damage and
necrosis (cellular death).
7. Atherosclerosis is classified as paediatric disease
8. The rate at which atherosclerosis progresses is determined largely
by genetics and lifestyle.

25. BLOOD PRESSURE
• Blood pressure is the pressure exerted by the blood on the vessel
walls.
• The more blood your heart pumps and the narrower your arteries,
the higher your blood pressure.
• A blood pressure reading is given in millimeters of mercury (mm
Hg). It has two numbers-
Systolic pressure
Diastolic pressure

26. HYPERTENSION
• Hypertension is the medical term for high blood pressure
• Blood pressure depends primarily on body size.

27. • Isolated systolic hypertension
• Isolated diastolic hypertension
• White coat Hypertension (WCH)
• Hypertension is diagnosed if, when it is measured on two different
days, the systolic blood pressure readings on both days is ≥140 mmHg
and/or the diastolic blood pressure readings on both days is ≥90
mmHg.
• To measure WCH a system is used called AMBULATORY BLOOD
PRESSURE

29. CAUSES OF HYPERTENSION
• Primary/Essential Hypertension (95% of cases)-
Essential HT occurs in 25-55 age group. The exact reason for its
occurrence is unknown but some phenomena are-
o Hypersensitive Sympathetic Nervous System
oHyperactive Renin Angiotensin Aldosterone Axis
oLow Renin Hypertension

31. • Secondary Hypertension (5% of cases)-
Secondary hypertension is high blood pressure caused by another
condition or disease such as-
o kidney diseases
oCongenital defect of the aorta.
oAdrenal tumor

32. STROKE
Stroke is a form of cardiovascular disease that affects the cerebral
arteries, those that supply the brain.
Strokes generally fall into two categories-
• Ischemic stroke- It results from an obstruction within a cerebral blood
vessel that limits the flow of blood to that region of the brain.
Obstructions have one of two causes:
 Cerebral thrombosis
Cerebral embolism

33. • Hemorrhagic stroke are of two types
Intracerebral hemorrhage, in which one of the cerebral arteries
ruptures in the brain
Subarachnoid hemorrhage, in which one of the brain’s surface vessels
ruptures, dumping blood into the space between the brain and the
skull
In both cases, blood flow beyond the rupture is diminished because the
blood leaves the vessel at the site of injury.
Brain damage from a stroke can affect the senses, speech, body
movement, thought patterns, and memory. Paralysis on one side of the
body is common, as is the inability to verbalize thoughts.

35. Heart Failure
• Heart failure is a chronic and progressive clinical condition in which
the heart muscle becomes too weak to maintain an adequate cardiac
output to meet the body’s blood and oxygen demands.
• Hypertension, atherosclerosis, valvular heart disease, viral infection,
and heart attack are among the possible causes of this disorder.
Hypertension precedes heart failure in about 75% of all heart failure
patents.

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