Adherence to UK Physical Activity Guidelines benefits heart and builds muscles of older adults

In September, 2019, Department of Health and Social Care of UK released UK Physical Activity Guidelines nationwide, which is broken down by age group: under 1, 1-4, 5-18, 19-64  and older adults aged >65 years, respectively. To date, the impact of adherence to physical activity guidelines by older adults on cardiorespiratory fitness and skeletal muscle mass, which are both key parameters of intrinsic capacity, is poorly understood. Therefore, the team from Centre of Metabolism, Ageing & Physiology (COMAP) from University of Nottingham recruited 14 older adults (age: 66-80 years) completed a 4-week intervention in which they adhered to UK Physical Activity Guidelines via a combination of supervised and home-based exercise, aiming to assess the impact upon parameters related to intrinsic capacity in older adults.

“Although some efforts to tailor these guidelines for older adults have been made-for example, in the UK guidelines for older adults include “activities to increase balance and flexibility on at least 2 days a week to reduce the risk of falls” edits, these guidelines are often derived from experimental and/or epidemiological data in younger individuals. Furthermore, there are very few intervention studies assessing the impact of uptake and adherence to these guidelines by older adults, with those that do exist tending to focus on a single endpoint rather than multiple aspects pertaining to intrinsic capacity. That’s why we decided to conduct this interventional study.” highlighted by Prof. Bethan E. Phillips, corresponding author of this interventional study published in Translational Exercise Biomedicine (ISSN: 2942-6812), an official partner journal of International Federation of Sports Medicine (FIMS).

Once eligibility was confirmed, each participant attended for their first assessment session whereby they had their height and weight assessed to calculate BMI, completed three assessments of physical function comprising step-box test, handgrip strength, and cardiopulmonary exercise test, and had the architecture of their vastus lateralis muscle assessed by B-mode ultrasonography.

After 4-week interventional session adhering to UK Physical Activity Guidelines, cardiorespiratory fitness of independent community-dwelling older adults is significantly improved, a key feature of intrinsic capacity. Importantly, the magnitude of cardiorespiratory fitness improvement is beyond that previously reported to be the minimum clinically important difference. In addition, an increase in muscle thickness and whole-body muscle strength is observed across the intervention period, illustrating the potential of uptake and short-term adherence to physical activity guidelines for improving the health and functional well-being of older adults.

“This 4-week interventional session yields interesting outcomes!”, stated by Prof. Bethan E. Phillips while noting that “We have demonstrated that just 4 weeks adherence to UK physical activity guidelines by older adults can improve multiple aspects associated with intrinsic capacity. Future work should aim to determine if this holds true in a more diverse group of older adults, including those facing known physiological challenges such as elective surgery.”