How To Stay Young BBC programme
how to stay young ABSTRACT
I recently enjoyed watching this BBC programme and wanted to share it on the Strength Rev news page. It highlights some interesting areas and thoughts into the ageing process. The programme has a few clinical methods that they use to measure ageing and they select a handful of people for the show to undergo these clinical tests.
They then map the results and present the volunteers with the projected age as they see it from their testing results and compare it to the actual age of the participants. There were a few shocked responses, when participants found out that their were biologically much older than their true age number. The programme attributed the presence of these advanced ageing reading to the lifestyle they led.
From memory they had a number of willing participants for the programme, but only selected a relatively small cohort (less than 5) to be featured and followed for the purposes of this show. In this case the selected participants were overweight, led a sedentary lifestyle or did not participate in exercise and didn't follow a very clean diet.
The methods used to calculate the estimated age included things such as:
VO2 max (your ability to use oxygen during intense exercise) grip strength, walking gait, body fat composition and cognitive abilities.
key takeaways from
how to stay young
Photo by Lumvox
It's important to note that at times the show was presenting entertainment for the viewer. I don't agree with everything they did and the cohort they selected for the programme but on balance the show was a force for good and highlighted some interesting points on the positive impacts of lifestyle changes to the general public.
Some of the key takeaways about the impact of a healthy lifestyle and ageing do relate to the way in which I work with Strength Revolution. Here they are:
Exercise. After the shock of seeing that they were biologically much older than their true age, it was revealed that the participants were in the most part lacking in physical activity in their current lifestyles. The programme reinforces the importance of staying active as you age in a way that maintains general fitness attributes such as smooth movements in joints, a good range of motion around joints and the benefits of cardiovascular health. That got a big tick from me.
Importance Of Strength In Ageing. One of the selected show participants was highlighted as having minimal muscle mass and a correspondingly much weaker grip strength, that of a person much more older than her. Her exercise recommendation consisted of weight training with the use of resistance machines, which is a start but is not optimal. I liked this part of the programme as it showed that women can most definitely weight train and it hit home about the importance that strength plays in the quality of life as you age. Also it showed that with correct coaching strength training can be performed safely. The one regret here was that they only applied it to this one person and therefore made it look like a "specialised" activity. In reality I view strength training as general and essential to everybody.
Body Fat Composition. The modern media loves to focus on body fat in health campaigns. Body fat and the role it plays is whole article in itself, the thing I want to highlight is health campaigns often overlook frailty. In my opinion being very frail, with minimal muscle mass and below a healthy body fat percentage can pose it's own set of problems which are as significant to the quality of life as being very overweight. BUT, documentaries and articles love to talk about the overweight. Why might this be? One explanation is that on camera you can present a person who has a very large frame that is noticeable. In the same show you can track their progress and then reveal the finished effect, which is noticeably different as they can look like a whole new person. This is great for television as it has a strong visual impact to the viewer. We must understand that this is where entertainment meets information. Sadly it risks sending a signal to the viewer that being very skinny must be healthy right?...Wrong.All cause mortality increases as muscle mass decreases.
“Healthy ageing is strong ageing”
Cognitive Ability. I really appreciated that they included this cognitive element to the programme. I have met a fair few medical doctors in my time and in conversation they all agree that exercise throughout life contributes to maintaining the mind.
You can click the button at the top of the page to see the programme on the BBC website (note it may only be available if you are in the UK).