Use it or Lose it

I hope that I have recounted this anecdote accurately enough - I heard it from a friend in about 1995 so some of the details might not be accurate.  Anyway, here goes: In the early 1980s said friend was studying (piano and voice) at The Royal College of Music.  One day she and a fellow student attended a lunchtime recital by the veteran Polish pianist Vlado Perlemuter, who was about 80 at the time.   Perlemuter appeared at the edge of the stage and, to the great applause that would be expected for a performer of almost legendary status, walked across from the wings to the piano but, so slowly and with such evidence of his age, that this friend turned to her companion and said "For God's sake I've spent four quid on this and he can barely even get to the piano let alone play it!"   After his painful looking walk to centre-stage he slowly lowered himself onto the stool and then...set the keyboard on fire in a display of utterly dazzling virtuosity which included some of the most challenging material Chopin ever wrote.  My friend recalled "it was like he was twenty years old from his shoulders to his fingertips".  Why?  Because he continued to practice for several hours a day, of course.  His hands and arms had thus retained their strength and dexterity but the many hours of sitting still at the keyboard had taken their toll on his mobility. 

Jack  "The Dipsea Diver" Kirk ran his last endurance race at the age of 94 and famously said "You don't stop running when you get old; you get old when you stop running."

I wrote in an earlier article that being sedentary is, according to one of my medic contacts, a far greater risk factor for Covid-19 than being 70.  Older people who swim, cycle or jog maintain a good cardio-respiratory function (and this is said to benefit the brain too).   Others who stop taking vigorous exercise when they start a family (and that's the stop point for many) reach the age of 70 having taken no hard exercise for almost 40 years, with the attendant effect on heart and lung performance and consequent susceptibility to pneumonia, and worse. 

A former line manager told me that she did not like going on holiday with her (then) 73-year-old mother because although her mother looked like a "wrinkled prune" from the neck up (because she spent so much time lying in the sun), from the neck down she appeared to be about 30 because she religiously swam 40 lengths in her local pool, every morning, and would delight in parading her physique in a bikini, whenever possible, much to her daughter's consternation.

There was a post circulating on facebook a few years ago that said "If you won't make time for health now you'll have to make time for illness later".   

The most frightening data I've seen is this (from a medical professional): an 80-year-old male who is confined to a hospital bed for one week (getting up only to visit the bathroom) will lose over 15% of his skeletal muscle mass during those seven days.   The most encouraging statistic (I've checked this out and it's from a reputable source) is this one:  If two 40 year olds with the same physiology (eg identical twins who've led identical lives) decide on two different activity levels for themselves; where one takes no exercise other than walking around the house, going shopping etc and the other does two twenty-minute sessions of load bearing (maintenance load) exercise per week then, by the time they both reach 80, the exercising twin will have more muscle mass than the inactive one would have had at 65... Just think about that; forty minutes of gentle weight training per week buys you more than fifteen years' worth of muscle mass.  Just think what could be done with 90 minutes per week; just three half-hour sessions.

Irksome though exercise may seem, it really is a small investment in time for a big payoff in deferred decrepitude later.