Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences Large Type Edition
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Journals of Gerontology Series A: Biological Sciences and Medical Sciences, Vol 51, Issue 5 M223-M225, Copyright © 1996 by The Gerontological Society of America

JOURNAL ARTICLE

How fast do we age? Exercise performance over time as a biomarker

WM Bortz 4th and WM Bortz 2nd
Department of Medicine, University of North Carolina Medical Center, Chapel Hill, USA.

BACKGROUND: The rate of true chronologic functional change in humans has been previously obscured by inadvertent inclusion of data derived from sick or ill-conditioned individuals. The Masters athlete fulfills the need for a study cohort. METHODS: Performance data by age were collected from recognized certifying organizations for running, rowing, and swimming events and plotted as percent decline from age 35, and a rate of decline of performance by age was plotted. RESULTS: Close coincidence of the decay slopes of the events surveyed was observed. This rate is 0.5% per year. We argue that inasmuch as these strenuous events are subtended by most of the major body systems and are thereby rate-limited by them all, that no supporting system can decline faster than this rate. CONCLUSION: The virtual identity of the performance slopes of the different athletic events with one another and to that of other functions including that of a central physiologic measure, VO2 max, indicates that 0.5% per year may be a basic biomarker of the aging process.


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