Research indicates that low-level stress from moderate exercise or work can enhance our cognitive and physical abilities in later life
ew words in the English language conjure up more negative emotions than stress. The mere mention of those six letters might elicit mental images of looming work deadlines, unpaid bills, the pressure of exams or tense family Christmases, to list just a few scenarios.
Over the past 20 years, Dhabhar and others have shown that bouts of short-term stress can aid us in the modern world. Aby Dhabhar, now a professor at the University of Miami, on the positive effects of stress has garnered 30,000 views on YouTube. Exercise physiologists found that Marchand, who had begun serious competitive cycling in retirement at the age of 68, had an aerobic capacity for exercise – the gold standard means of measuring cardiovascular fitness –Scientists researching healthy ageing now regard him as an indicator of what can be possible if we continue to apply manageable stress to our muscles, blood vessels and heart as we age. But most humans are not like Marchand.
Søndenbroe has found that some forms of exercise-related stress are better than others for preserving muscle mass in later life. While some age-related deterioration is inevitable, as Marchand showed, it can be kept in check. One of the best ways of doing so is through resistance-based workouts, which involve training the muscles with weights or bands. Cycling is also considered a form of resistance training.
We know that our brain size decreases at a rate of about 5% a decade after the age of 40, with the rate of decline increasing once we pass 70. However, this shrinkage slows in older people who do regular aerobic exercise – forms of physical activity that get the blood pumping around the body, such as brisk walking, running, swimming and biking – to the extent that they have four fewer years of brain ageing.
“We’ve seen that people who started to take piano lessons in their 80s saw an improvement in brain function,” says Shaffer. “Staying on the job, or at least socially engaged in an activity, has a very good impact on maintaining function. There was a project in Baltimore where retired people went back into schools to tutor deprived students from low-income backgrounds who didn’t have much and they actually experienced improvements in cognition from doing that.