Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, June 13, 1990 TAG: 9006130145
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CHICAGO LENGTH: Short
Researchers say that giving frail 90-year-olds a regimen of high-intensity weight-training can dramatically increase their muscle strength and may help them avoid accidents associated with weak muscles.
The findings, reported in today's Journal of the American Medical Association, are based on a study of 10 residents of a Boston nursing home, ages 86 to 96.
"Our findings suggest that a portion of the muscle weakness attributed to aging may be modifiable through exercise," wrote the researchers, who were led by Dr. Maria Fiatarone of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging at Tufts University in Boston.
"Because muscle strength decreases by perhaps 30 percent to 40 percent during the course of the adult life span, it is likely that at the end of training these subjects were stronger than they had been many years previously," the researchers wrote.
They called it the first study to examine the effects of weight-training in such an old population.
But Kim Herling, who works with the elderly as director of cardiovascular rehabilitation at the University of Chicago Medical Center, said the number of subjects in the study was too small to apply to the general population.
"The last thing you'd want to have happen is have a group of 60- to 90-year-old people going out and weight lifting" because of the risk of injury, Herling said. She said elderly people who want to lift weights should consult a physician.
by CNB