As we age, we are inevitably going to lose some of our fitness and strength, but the rate of decline isn’t as clear. A normal decline in muscle is about 3-5% every decade after 30. Meaning, if all things stayed the same, you could lose 9-15% of your muscle mass and endurance from ages 30 to 60. However, most of us aren’t tracking our fitness well enough to really know what that percentage of decline actually looks like. Regardless, it is always important to ask yourself why you might be struggling more than you used to?
Reflecting on this is important because a decline in exercise capacity can be a sign of something more serious going on. In fact, I have had patients coming in complaining of reduced exercise capacity alone. When I investigated further with one of my patients, we found out that their risk of heart attack and stroke was increase by 7x. In this case, their decreased ability to exercise was an early warning sign of heart disease.
The increased risk was coming from advanced plaque in their arteries. Fortunately for them, we caught everything in time to get proactive. However, most people don’t go into the doctor for this. They think it’s normal, or that it is a consequence of not trying hard enough!
I strongly believe that we dismiss signs in our body way too much and tend to wait until things are very progressed. This certainly doesn’t mean that you need to panic; But if you notice the changes in your fitness seems rapid, or disproportionately large, it’s worth looking into.
So, what is normal?
As mentioned above, a loss of 3-5% every decade can be normal. That being said, in elderly years you can still improve your strength by approximately 20% and delay immobility by 10-20 years. So, even though your capacity to exercise won’t necessarily be the same, exercise is important at every age.
Some things that can happen as we age:
- Reduced blood flow to the muscles. As we age, our arteries do become progressively stiff and plaque builds up. This process is inevitable to an extent. However, this process can be drastically increase by many things!
- If you are feeling significantly winded by standard exercise this you may want your cardiovascular health assessed. I routinely run panels to assess the health of arteries and they can be incredibly useful for understanding my patients risk.
- Our hormones can shift, making it harder to put on muscle mass. This is also inevitable, but can be helped. For example, drops in testosterone can decrease ones capacity to put on and maintain muscle mass. The solution isn’t necessarily giving testosterone, but once you know it is an issue you can start to determine why it might be abnormally low.
- Malnourishment can become more common as we age. This can mean lack of eating enough, lack of eating a variety of foods, poor absorption or increased demand of certain nutrients.
- Exercise is a very energy demanding process and so is recovery from exercise. These aches and pains you feel can be heightened by malnourishment. This then begs the question: Am I getting enough of the nutrients that I need to repair my muscles and nourish my bones, ligaments and cartilage?
- If these demands can’t be met, degradation will start. This is where healthcare providers that are very well versed in nutrition become crucial. We all have different demands and meeting those demands is crucial for health optimization.
- Exercise is a very energy demanding process and so is recovery from exercise. These aches and pains you feel can be heightened by malnourishment. This then begs the question: Am I getting enough of the nutrients that I need to repair my muscles and nourish my bones, ligaments and cartilage?
- Chronic pain can get in the way of exercise for obvious reasons. The pain can be too great for the activity being performed. And for those of us with injuries, sometimes we are worried about making things worse.
- For any type of pain, you want a doctor behind you that is going to deep dive into why! It’s not normal to wake up every day in pain, even as we age.
A final note on fatigue
Fatigue is a very vague symptom, but still deserves proper investigation. This is especially true if it is daily.
It is normal to feel tired in response to things such as a poor night’s sleep, or when work picks up. But, we should not feel like there is ‘no gas in the tank’ all of the time.
If you feel like you have no energy, I highly recommend seeing a healthcare provider who is going to spend the time to look into that for you.
Unfortunately, I hear from my patients all too often that these less serious symptoms go ignored or dismissed by their doctors. If that happens to you, find a doctor that will listen!
Lastly, if you haven’t prioritized getting back to your exercise routine, you should. The amount of lean body mass you have as an elderly is directly correlated with your risk of death. Not only that, healthy exercise will give you the best chance at a high QUALITY life.
References
- Wolfe, R. R. (2006). The underappreciated role of muscle in health and disease. The American journal of clinical nutrition, 84(3), 475-48RegB