55+ Living Guide Spring 2019 55 LG SPRING 2019 JOOM | Page 28

Health & Wellness
Running Over
50
By Judy Torel, MS
For many of us, putting the words
running and over 50 in the same sen-
tence appears to be a typo! Common
wisdom would have us believe that
once 50, any activity viewed as strenu-
ous should be systematically eliminat-
ed from our daily behavioral patterns.
But that way of thinking is gravely
wrong and factoring into the unnec-
essary symptoms of aging and the
aging before our time, which seems
to be happening in our country. This
article is designed to help to win you
over to an alternative way of thinking:
“if you want to keep life in your years
you have to keep movement in your
life BUT you have to follow a strategy
correct for your current stage of life.”
If you do, the pay-offs will be price-
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less! Adding running to your life or
learning how to continue to do it with
a program for 50+ is what this article
is all about.
There are several compelling reasons
for specifically targeting running as
an activity to add to your life in your
50’s and beyond. One of the biggest
reasons is that forward ambulation in
the form of crawling, walking, jog-
ging and running have been in all our
inventories of behaviors since infancy.
Christopher McDougall wrote the
book, “Born to Run” in 2009, high-
lighting this exact point and driving
home that the reasons for injuries
when running had more to do with
improper footwear and biomechanics.
Running in and of itself is one of the
May–August, 2019
least injury producing movements of
other activities that we have not been
practicing all our lives.
Another strong reason for starting
a running program is new research
linking it to increased longevity and
an easily available “fountain of youth”.
What this means is that activities that
sustain a higher than resting heart rate
and include intervals of higher than
comfortable heart rates (more on this
to come) cause repair to damaged
mitochondria and generation of more
mitochondria and minimize the
shortening of telomeres which are the
ends of our chromosomes. Running
at the proper intensities can enhance
the positive effects on both nano-
cellular changes which translates
as living longer lives at higher levels
of physical wellness and fitness.
I could do an entire article on the
benefits of running but in addition
to the two important ones already
mentioned, disease control of diabetes,
high cholesterol, high blood pressure
and almost all chronic illnesses, are
also benefits. Another is less brain
shrinkage and heightened memory
skills as highlighted in a 2012 study
in Neurology journal (among others).
Other benefits include higher calorie
burn on the days you run so weight
management and increased over-all
body circulation which can help with
erectile dysfunction and other circula-
tion related symptoms.
No one reading this article should
take the above information and decide
to start a running program that is
strictly running. You must walk before
you jog and jog in intervals before you
jog consistently then jog consistently
before adding running intervals and
then maybe graduate to straight run-
ning. But that end point isn’t really the
actual goal. It is the process because the
process done consistently is where you
will gain all the benefits already out-
lined. There are endless apps on your
phone (for free) that you can download
with programs that start you walking
and progress you to jogging safely.