Don’t Ever Get Old
Since the start of my physical therapy career, I have been given the advice “Don’t ever get old”. Yes, there are changes that occur with aging. But, there are ways to decrease or slow these changes, especially within the musculoskeletal system. And so, I thought this would be the perfect topic for a newsletter.
The musculoskeletal system is used every day. It allows you to sit, stand, walk, hike, jump, and participate in many recreational activities. It consists of periarticular connective tissue, cartilage, bone, and skeletal muscle that all work together as a team to help you move!
- Periarticular connective tissue: Structures like ligaments, joint capsules, tendons, intramuscular connective tissue, and skin that connect, support, and surround a joint.
- Cartilage: A resilient, semi rigid form of connective tissue that allows for more flexibility.
- Bone: A hard form of connective tissue that makes up the human skeleton. It provides the body support, protection, and is the mechanical basis for movement.
- Skeletal muscle: The tissue that control movement and stabilization of bones and other body structures.
So what happens when you age?
- The periarticular connective tissue in your body can become stiff, which can cause decreased activity, slowed movement, and decreased movement within a joint. This happens due to changes in the amount, size, and aggregation of collagen within these tissues.
- Cartilage can become hard, brittle, or thin losing its resiliency, strength, and efficiency resulting in a decreased ability to dissipate forces across a joint. Poor nutrition in the cartilage due to a decrease in water content and increased cross linkaging between fibers can cause these changes.
- Bones can lose their density or mass making them more fragile, increasing risk of a breaking a bone. An individual’s peak bone mass occurs during late adolescence to early 20’s and gradually decreases each year due to changes in cell activity.
- Skeletal muscle fiber size, fiber amount, and fiber type can decrease with age due increase amount of fat and connective tissue as well as decreased protein synthesis.
- Muscle activation and fiber type can be altered as well due to decreased conduction velocity, the number and size of a motor unit, and changes at the neuromuscular junction. This can affect your strength, endurance, and power during every day activities.
So how do you prevent or slow all these things? Exercise, Yoga, Meditation
- The connective tissue in your joints can be positively affected using heat and stretching.
- Bearing weight into your joints, as in walking for your joints of the legs or planks for the joints of your arms, can promote cartilage health.
- Weight bearing, and exercise can also help maintain your bone health. Exercises can also be targeted at decreasing your risk for falls to prevent any damage to your bones.
- Exercise can also affect the health of your skeletal muscles. These positive effects are dependent on the intensity, frequency, duration, and mode of exercise. Exercise can improve your stamina, or duration you can perform an activity. It can also improve your strength, or the maximum amount of force you can produce.
- Let’s not forget about out state of mind also, slowing down and focusing on our breath can help us to focus on what is really important to us and put things in better perspective.