Is there an age when a person is more or less unable to do physically demanding tasks anymore? I have seen alot of people in their 60s doing things that require physical labor like mountain hiking but I don’t think I’ve seen many 70 year olds doing that.
What if a person does aerobics, stretching exercises and weight lifting, can they maintain their ability to do physically demanding tasks into their 80s or until they are near death?
I am past my mid- 80s and have two partially paralyzed legs.
With the aid of a walker and/or a rollator I still do my own work about the house,
and in the 1/2 acre yard.
Admittedly ,I did have a painter in to redo the vaulted ceilings.
Things such as driving[hand controls],running the riding mower,repairs of all sorts, shopping -------and eating out with my lady wife EVERY day are still regular functions.
I don’t know how long I’ll keep this up but from here I see no end in sight[in spite of macular degeneration in one eye.]
Please ignore the obvious pun in the previous paragraph.
In the area where I’m located there are a dozen or more of us who are still self sufficient.
Maybe we’re just too stubborn to be bothered by old age!
When it gets here I’ll hang up my tool belt and put my hooks in the coffee table!
EZ
This really depends on the individual. Something like arthritis or a herniated disk can pretty much ruin your physical abilities at any age.
My father in law is 81. He was a carpenter. His knees are shot now but he still has tremendous upper body strength and can use a hammer and saw as well as ever. If he braces himself, he can still hustle a load of sheetrock.
My 91 year old grandmother still mows her lawn and maintains a vegetable garden.
There is research which shows that even very old, frail people are still capable of building muscle and improving strength and getting stronger with appropriate exercise.
It’s been suggested that one of the reasons people lose strength and ability, apart from illness, is that they buy into the idea that if you are older you can’t do physical things, and so they lose strength and muscle, and the less they do, the weaker they get.
Some examples:
99 year old wins 100 metre sprint at Masters Games
In the 2004 Masters Games in Alice Springs the oldest competitor was 94 year old Margot Bates
Tom Hafey is 74 and he “runs between 8-10km’s a day, performs 200 sit ups and push ups and goes swimming EVERY day of his life.”
In 1983 a 61 year old, Cliff Young won the Melbourne to Sydney race.
I know an endurance rider (horses) who is in her eighties and regularly competes in the 80km rides, doing her own strapping and preparation.
I know a couple of otherwise healthy high school students that couldn’t walk around the block without getting winded. Ability is often related to interest.
I’ll try and find a link for you, but I’ve seen on TV and read seperately that there are a group of Chinese folks who have the highest proportions of centenarians in the world (I used to think it was the Okinawans off Japan - but oh well).
They showed some video footage of these guys (a group of folks all over 100) and I got to say, they were in pretty great shape.
Thier secret? They still work with thier hands, even into thier ripe old 100’s. They live rather stress free lives (one woman actually mentioned one of her much younger relatives dying due to the pressures of being a stock trader or something). And thier diet tends to be full of healthy wholesome foods - rich in vegetables and fruits. No available “junk” foods.
I think that anecdotally sums up the list pretty well. Your chances of old age health increase if you live by these three rules:
Eat well
Avoid stress
Stay active
A little less anecdotally, there are those caloric restriction studies. I remember reading about them in Sci American a few years ago. Apparently controlled studies had shown that monkeys (I forget which type) that were restricted in thier consumption of food (i.e. they ate fewer total calories than the other “fully stuffed” monkeys) tended to be in better shape as they aged. They would reach sexual maturity a little later than the well-fed group, which indicates that it had “slowed” the ageing process.
Exactly how this process works is not yet understood, but it has to do with free radicals pairing with the molecules of living cells in your body. The full explanation is in much greater detail than this and you’d probably better do a search on the Sci Am website for more details since I’m feeling real lazy today.
Oh and just another thought – the article claimed there wasn’t really all that much evidence that fruits and veg reduce the risk of cancer by pairing with the harmful free radicals. Apparently certain mice fed a daily nosh of blueberry’s did show signs of reduced mental retardation/senility in old age - but they couldn’t determine whether that was due to the average “vitamins and minerals” yap, or whether it was a particular ingredient or combination in the blueberry’s themselves.
The point is that it’s not just the daily supplement of Vit’s that is essential to us in fruits and veg. Individual items contain many compounds that are useful for us. Lutein in tomatoes, for example.
Just something to think about next time you feel your supplement pill is adequate.
Yeah there is this too. I think there was an article by Eric Tytell in New Scientist. It was concerning the biomechanics of how people react to a sudden obsticle in the middle of thier immediate walking path. It gauged whether older people fell more frequently, and why they would if they did.
Short end of it - older people did fall more frequently, but those with strong back muscles and more confidence gave themselves more chance of avoiding a fall because they were able to “spring up” more after thier initial stumble.
Google James Ashton Miller and see if you get anymore details. Otherwise I’ll come back and try to fill in more. This guy agrees that any age muscle group is trainable (biomechanist I believe - not some weightlifting dude ICYWT).
God I’m feeling lazy today.
MadderMitch - yeah. Fruits & vegetables contain hundreds of phytochemicals and sterols, and probably other things that we don’t even know about yet that are good for health.
So is it safe to say that an older person is perfectly capable of physically intensive activities as long as they maintain an active lifestyle and don’t suffer from a debilitating illness?
I guess my grandma was physically active up until a couple of years ago when she was 81 and had some major health problems. She wasn’t an athlete, but she could take care of herself, drive herself and walk wherever she wanted to.
More or less. Bear in mind there will be some physical deterioration, your muscles won’t have the same type of regerative “T-juice” they had when you were in your twenties.
But yeah, good grub and healthy exercise should keep you in great shape till your older, as a general rule.
Bear in mind this can still apply to people with certain diseases too. My grandfather has cancer, and though he still has periodic reoccurences of illness (stuff like dizzy spells, not feeling too well, some trips to the hospital etc.) he’s in better shape than my father. He can actually outpace me in my jog (I’m not THAT slow), and some of his leg muscles are defined better than mine.
Generally speaking he’s quite muscular for an old guy. He’d whop my ass for saying that though.
Well, if there is such an age, I haven’t reached it yet, even though I turn 78 next month. I ran 10 marathons in my 50s and 60s, but did have to stop running when bunged up my knee at 65.
I now climb a 3400-foot local mountain almost every day, even in the Arizona summer, climbed Mt Whitney and three other 14,000-foot mountains in my mid-70s, and do daily weight work for upper body strength.
For some reason I don’t understand, I can’t climb them dad-blamed mountains as fast as I used to though, so something must be wrong. 
Keeping physically and mentally exercised, eating right, and picking your parents carefully all help. Being crazy probably helps too.
Klondike