What can exercise improve in older adults?
- Cardiovascular health and aerobic power
- Muscle strength and physical function
- Flexibility
- Weight control
- Mental function
What changes occur to the connective tissue due to aging?
- Altered ability to maintain and repair
- Decreased water concentration
- Collagen and elastin becomes more brittle
- Decreased load and energy absorption
What changes occur to cartilage due to aging?
- Calcification
- Decreased water content
- Intervertebral discs shrink and crack
- Decreased load and energy absorption
What changes occur to skeletal muscle due to aging?
- Sarcopenia: loss of muscle strength and functional quality
- Decrease in number and diameter of muscle fibers
- Muscle fibers infiltrated by fat or collagen
What changes occur to bone due to aging?
- Decrease in subchondral bone
- Osteopenia: increased osteoclast activity and decreased osteoblast activity
What are the functional implications of the musculoskeletal changes that occur with aging?
- Loss of ROM
- Pain
- Postural malalignment
- Decreased load tolerance and absorption
- Decreased strength and force production
What postural alignment changes occur with aging?
- Forward head posture
- Thoracic kyphosis
What cardiopulmonary changes occur due to aging?
- Reduced contractility
- Valve dysfunction
- Fibrosis
- Decreased maximum heart rate
- Stiff thorax
- Increased kyphosis that limits mobility of the rib cage
- Diminished elastic recoil of the lungs –> decreased lung volume –> less oxygen reaching limbs
What cardiovascular changes occur due to aging?
- Decreased maximal heart rate and decreased stroke volume leads to decreased cardiac output
- Less oxygen saturation and delivery
- Decreased aerobic capacity
What sensory changes occur due to aging?
- Decline in somatic senses due to loss of receptors
- Dizziness/vertigo due to loss of hair and nerve cells
- Vision/hearing declines rapidly between 60-80 yrs
- Decrease in taste and smell after 60 yrs
What neurological changes occur due to aging?
- Loss of myelin slows nerve conduction velocity
- Axonal loss decrease muscle activity and reduces sensory perception
- Waste products accumulate between inside neurons causing cognitive decline
- Decline in brain weight/volume
What are the implications of weight loss in the brain?
- Neuronal atrophy leading to loss of gray matter
- Axonal loss and decrease myelination leading to loss of white matter
- Prefrontal cortex, striatum, temporal lobe, cerebellum, and hippocampus most impacted
What information processing and attention changes occur due to aging?
- Decreased sensory input reduces processing speed
- Slower reaction time (accuracy remains intact)
- Decreased attentional capacity
- Decreased ability to divide attention
- Increased risk during dual tasks
What memory changes occur due to aging?
- Working memory is reduced to shorter chunks of information
- Retrieval of episodic memory from the hippocampus declines
How does steady state postural control change as you age?
- Increased sway
- Reduced limits of stability
How does anticipatory postural control change as you age?
- Slower activation of both postural muscles and mover muscles
- Decreased ability to stabilize the body in advance of voluntary movements
How does reactive postural control change as you age?
- Impaired timing of muscle
- Choose hip strategy over ankle strategy
- Take more than one step (steps are shorter and slower)
- More likely to laterally step than cross over to prevent limb collisions
What are falls associated with in older adults?
- Morbidity and mortality
- Loss of independence
- Social isolation
- Fear
- Activity restriction
What are risk factors for falls?
- Muscle weakness
- Sensory impairments
- Slower nerve conduction
- Postural alignment
- Slower/less effective anticipatory/reactive postural control
- Slower processing and response
What are the psychosocial aspects of aging?
- Adjustment to retirement
- Loss of lifetime roles
- Isolation
- Loss of others close to them
- Loss of independence
- Depression
How does part vs whole practice impact older adults?
- Part: reduces processing demands
- Whole: may produce better movement quality
How does random practice impact older adults?
Decreases performance but enhances retention
How does distributed practice impact older adults?
May decrease performance but enhances retention and reduces the risk of injury
How do older adults respond to feedback?
- Rely on visual feedback
- Implicit feedback may be better than explicit feedback
- Knowledge of results is better and improves learning
