Linda - I hope this is good news. I've been worried about my telomeres since I first heard about them. Seriously; medical people can have the weirdest hypochondriac obesessions.
When I hang out at big races with my new peers - the over 60s - I find that I have a very hard time telling who's who. Meaning often the 70 y/o will look "younger" than the 62 y/o. I'm talking about total image - body carriage, skin, hair, eye twinkle. I know there is something different about those who are still training at a high level at my age and above. But I don't think we know if the training is helping us stay "younger", or we can train because we are lucky enough to be "aging slower". I see so many of my triathlon peers who just start to break down after age 55 - mostly orthopedic issues with the legs, back and feet, but also things like hypothyroidism, hypertension, etc.
A scientist in the article "has been measuring telomeres and telomerase activity in a wide variety of tissues in mice and has found, he says, the protective effects from exercise only in some tissues." Explains things like grey hair, skin wrinkles, and cancer still happening even to those of us who are training at that level.
Finally, I tried to translate that "50 miles per week" of running into what I have done the past five years or so in swim/bike/run. Using 1 mile running = 400 meters swimming = 4 miles biking (based on RPE, and Dan Empfield's recommendation), I get 22 + 4 + 25 = 51 as my weekly average run miles equivilent. This is about 680-700 hours a year or 13 hours a week of training, which I know is quite a lot, and more than most over 50 triathletes will be doing. So, their study group was doing some serious work.
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Linda - I hope this is good news. I've been worried about my telomeres since I first heard about them. Seriously; medical people can have the weirdest hypochondriac obesessions.
When I hang out at big races with my new peers - the over 60s - I find that I have a very hard time telling who's who. Meaning often the 70 y/o will look "younger" than the 62 y/o. I'm talking about total image - body carriage, skin, hair, eye twinkle. I know there is something different about those who are still training at a high level at my age and above. But I don't think we know if the training is helping us stay "younger", or we can train because we are lucky enough to be "aging slower". I see so many of my triathlon peers who just start to break down after age 55 - mostly orthopedic issues with the legs, back and feet, but also things like hypothyroidism, hypertension, etc.
A scientist in the article "has been measuring telomeres and telomerase activity in a wide variety of tissues in mice and has found, he says, the protective effects from exercise only in some tissues." Explains things like grey hair, skin wrinkles, and cancer still happening even to those of us who are training at that level.
Finally, I tried to translate that "50 miles per week" of running into what I have done the past five years or so in swim/bike/run. Using 1 mile running = 400 meters swimming = 4 miles biking (based on RPE, and Dan Empfield's recommendation), I get 22 + 4 + 25 = 51 as my weekly average run miles equivilent. This is about 680-700 hours a year or 13 hours a week of training, which I know is quite a lot, and more than most over 50 triathletes will be doing. So, their study group was doing some serious work.