British researchers have established something that athletes in countries around the world have known for quite a while: extreme fitness keeps you young. The Tufts Health & Nutrition Letter reports on a recent study that recruited 85 men and 41 women, ages 55 to 79, who were serious recreational cyclists. Participants were put through a battery of physical and cognitive tests, with results compared against standard benchmarks of normal aging. On most of the tests, the highly fit cyclists performed more like young adults. Even participants in their 70s scored decades “younger” in metabolic health, balance, memory and reflexes. On one standard test called Timed Up and Go (test times how long it takes someone to stand up from a chair without using his arms, briskly walk 10 feet, turn, walk back and sit down again) older adults considered on the edge of frailty might take 9 or 10 seconds to perform the test, while a typical score for a healthy senior is 7 seconds. But even the oldest cyclists in the study whipped through the test in an average of 5 seconds—well within the norm reported for healthy young adults.
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